What is new in Office 365?

I find it difficult to keep up with the updates on software that I am using. I found trying to find updates confusing and waffly with lots of links to click. Therefore, I thought it was a good idea to create a blog compiling a bullet point for all the updates that you need to know about to make the best use of your Office 365 software.

I found this overview very useful to refer back to and also to understand how technology can make my life at University, work and personal use easier.

Excel

• Collaborate with comments: you are now able to add comments to cells. When a cell has a comment, there is an indicator which appears in the cell’s corner. You just need to rest your pointer of the cell and the comment appears. Adding a comment is the same as in Word.
• Discover more about your data: there are now high-level visual summaries, trends and patterns. All that needs to be done is clicking the ‘Ideas’ button on the home tab.
• More “auto” in autocomplete: when you type in a formula, the AutoComplete menu shows options for the formula to choose from.
• VoiceOver Navigation: move across sheets by pressing ‘VO+U‘. You can also enable this through the Trackpad on a Mac.

PowerPoint

• Visuals: Office now suggests captions for your pictures to make them accessible to those with impaired vision.
• New proofreading tools: additional grammar and writing suggestions as well as spelling. Red underline is for spelling, blue for grammar and gold for stylistic issues.
• Changes to hand-drawn text: you can replace drawn ink by using ‘Ink to Text’ or ‘Ink to Shape’ through right click on the ‘Draw’ tab.

Outlook

• Improved search: find items faster through viewing history and suggestions when clicking the ‘Search’ box.
• People suggestions in Schedule Assistant: if you select ‘New Meeting’ on your calendar and start typing a name on the ‘To’ line, a list of suggested attendees will be displayed.
• Reserving a room just got easier: you can now look for a conference room using more than one room list.
• Stop seeing reminders from past events: your calendar can be set to automatically dismiss reminders for events after they have ended.
• Shared Calendar: search for a shared calendar and open it on your device.

Word

• Watch graphics come alive: 3D graphics can now be inserted.

As you can see, this is just a very short overview of the new Office 365 features. For a more detailed information, videos and explanations, please see the Office 365 website here.