Here Come the February Updates for Office 365

Microsoft today highlighted the updates it is providing across various Office 365 products and services this month.

“This month, we released several improvements to our cloud-powered intelligence services,” Microsoft corporate vice president Kirk Koenigsbauer explains. “These services use machine learning and advanced algorithms to create magical experiences that save you time and help produce polished, gorgeous content. And they will just get better each month as we deliver continued innovation and further tune our intelligent recommendations as more people use them.”

Here’s what’s new.

PowerPoint QuickStarter. Available now in PowerPoint for Windows desktop (for or Office 365 subscribers in Office Insider Fast), QuickStarter makes it easier than ever to get going on a new presentation: Just type in a topic and QuickStarter will provide a curated outline, recommended categories, and license-free images.

Word Editor. A new Editor pane in Word on Windows desktops (for Office 365 customers in Office Insider Fast) replaces the Spelling & Grammar pane and provides advanced spelling, grammar and writing style recommendations. You can learn more here.

MacBook Pro Touch Bar support in Office for Mac. As I reported earlier this month, Microsoft has begun rolling out support for the Touch Bar in the new MacBook Pro in Office for Mac. This feature is now available in Word, Excel and PowerPoint on Mac, for all customers, and is coming soon in Outlook on Mac.

New security and compliance features. Microsoft released three big new security and compliance features this month for Office 365 commercial customers: Office 365 Secure Score, which helps you understand your organization’s security configuration and the actions you can take to enhance security and reduce risk; Office 365 Threat Intelligence, which helps you stay ahead of cyber threats by leveraging billions of data points from the Microsoft Intelligent Security Graph; and Office 365 Advanced Data Governance, which helps you find and retain important data while eliminating redundant, obsolete and trivial data that could cause risk if compromised. You can learn more here.

But wait, there’s more. There were other new features across Office 2016 for Windows desktop, Office for Mac, Office Mobile for Windows, Office for iPhone and iPad and Office for Android this month as well.