Microsoft is Refreshing Office.com

Microsoft has rolled out a nice new Office.com portal user experience for it Microsoft 365 commercial customers. There’s no announcement yet, so it’s not clear if or when this change is coming to Microsoft 365 consumer users. But I assume it is.

The new portal was first spotted by Aggiornamenti Lumia, but I checked with my own Microsoft 365 commercial account, and am seeing it as well. The new interface puts recent, pinned, and shared documents up-front and center and moves the Office app shortcuts to a left-mounted side-rail. You still open the app launcher by clicking a button in the upper-left of the interface.

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Looks great to me.

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Conversation 13 comments

  • olditpro2000

    Premium Member
    06 July, 2020 - 5:26 pm

    <p>That looks…not bad.</p>

  • brinel321

    Premium Member
    06 July, 2020 - 5:57 pm

    <p>Nice. It aligns well with how Teams handles it's side bar.</p>

  • GCalais

    06 July, 2020 - 6:21 pm

    <p>This is very cool, although personally I don’t think I’ll ever get used to going into a central Office hub to open a Excel document I’ve been working on! It’s still weird opening the specific app and then finding the document. My muscle memory is to find every single document in its local windows folder. </p>

  • will

    Premium Member
    06 July, 2020 - 6:41 pm

    <p>This has a very "Teams" feel to it and I am curious if other Office apps will use a side bar for functions?</p>

  • taswinfan

    06 July, 2020 - 7:14 pm

    <p>Someone hand the windows project over to office please…unless Panay can work something magical first. But office seems to be the team that best functions at MS…</p><p><br></p><p>Looks Slick. </p>

  • rmlounsbury

    Premium Member
    06 July, 2020 - 7:34 pm

    <p>This looks like a good update to the interface. A clear "Teams-ification" of the M365 platform which is fine by me. It will make it easier for admins to train users on how to use M365 + Teams if the overall design language is the same. </p>

  • jabi

    07 July, 2020 - 1:17 am

    <p>Looks very clean!</p><p><br></p><p>How I would love it if they put the same effort in Windows UI/UX to modernize it.</p>

    • navarac

      07 July, 2020 - 2:50 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#552570">In reply to jabi:</a></em></blockquote><p>Yes, more eye candy changes that do nothing, except keep designers employed.</p>

  • wright_is

    Premium Member
    07 July, 2020 - 2:13 am

    <p>I started my portal this morning, not seeing it here, yet.</p><p>That said, we don't use the portal anyway. But it looks interesting and modern. Maybe not seeing it, because we don't have the web apps active?</p>

    • beckoningeagle

      Premium Member
      07 July, 2020 - 7:41 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#552572">In reply to wright_is:</a></em></blockquote><p>I'm not seeing either, and I do have the web apps enabled. This is probably one of those stage rollouts. I usually get them on Thursday one or two weeks after it begins in mainland USA.</p>

  • justme

    Premium Member
    07 July, 2020 - 2:30 am

    <p>Looks very Teams-like. Its like Teams is taking over the world. Sigh.</p>

  • saint4eva

    07 July, 2020 - 3:35 am

    <p>Woow. This is looking exceptionally clean and pleasing to the eyes.</p>

  • dxtremebob

    Premium Member
    07 July, 2020 - 3:04 pm

    <p>A recent change: the Office app is now forcing me to upload Office files to OneDrive if I want to continue opening them from the app. There are some files I'd rather not upload. So this app's usefulness has now been diminshed, at least for me. </p>

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC