Microsoft has announced a raft of new and improved features for Office 365 that were made available to subscribers this month.
Office Version 1811 was rolled out in early December, offering numerous functionality improvements across the entire suite. Among them was a new tool for Outlook that Microsoft dubbed ‘Zoom and stick’. Here, users would be presented with a message and then asked the level of zoom they’d prefer. This would be set as the default, so it didn’t need to be adjusted each time.
Also in Outlook was a feature designed to make it easier for meeting organisers to reserve a room. With this, anyone sending a meeting request could look for a location using more than one room list, and switch lists without losing the rooms that had already been selected.
Access, meanwhile, has had a more aesthetic tweak. Four themes have been rolled out that users can change as often as they like. These are: colourful, dark, grey and white.
The visual tweaks continue over on Word, with improvements to the way images can be displayed and amended within a document. A new feature enables users to alter the transparency of an image easily and quickly, meaning text can be clearly displayed over a faded picture.
Microsoft has also added animated 3D graphics to MS Word. In what’s now a world away from the famously rudimentary clipart graphics of yesteryear, the latest version will see hearts beat, planets orbit and dinosaurs rampage across the page.
In announcing these updates, Microsoft reiterated the opportunity for users to see new features before most other users, and feed back on them to influence the form they will eventually take. The Office Insider program allows access to early builds of features and updates for anyone who wants to sign up.
One feature currently only available to Insiders include the ability to easily turn documents into interactive, shareable pages. If it proves successful, this is likely to get a full roll out in Office 365’s next iteration.
