Office 365 Gets New Word, PowerPoint and Outlook Features (networkworld.com) 99
New submitter Miche67 writes: As part of the July 2016 update to Office 365, Microsoft is adding several features across the board to Word, PowerPoint and Outlook. Word, however, is getting the biggest new features -- Researcher and Editor -- to improve your writing. "As its name implies, Researcher is designed to help the user find reliable sources of information by using the Bing Knowledge Graph to search for sources, and it will properly cite them in the Word document," reports Network World. "[Editor] builds on the already-existing spellchecker and thesaurus to offer suggestions on how to improve your overall writing. In addition to the wavy red line under a misspelled word and the wavy blue line under bad grammar, there will be a gold line for writing style." The new features are expected to be available later this year. In addition to the two new features added to PowerPoint last year -- Designer and Morph, Microsoft is offering Zoom, a feature that lets you easily create "interactive, non-linear presentations." "Instead of the 1-2-3-4 linear method of presenting slides, forcing you to place them all in the order you wish to display, presenters will be able to show their slides in any order they want at any time," reports Network World. "This way you can change your presentation order as needed without having to stop PowerPoint or interrupt the display." As for Outlook, Focused Inbox is coming to Office 365. Focused Inbox separates your inbox into two tabs. The "Focused" tab is where all of your high-priority emails will be found, while everything else will be in the "Other" tab. Outlook will learn from your behavior over time and sort your mail accordingly. In addition, @mentions are coming to Outlook 365 and Outlook for PC and Mac, "making it easy to identify emails that need your attention, as well as flag actions for others."
So in other Words, (Score:5, Informative)
they didn't add any new useful features except to force more searches through Bing.
Re: (Score:3)
That's a non-sequitur. High priority emails are those with a Priority:urgent header. There's nothing to learn, it's a simple, straightforward rule, which has been done for decades by any decent MUA. If they're doing something different, they shouldn't call it "priority.'
Re: (Score:2)
Moreover, most MUAs can be set to ignore the X-Priority, X-MSMail-Priority, etc. headers altogether. Everyone's email looks the same to me, so a few times a year I get to take an angry call from someone asking why I haven't replied to their urgent priority message yet. Sorry, but "Subject: data export for October" isn't as urgent as you think it is, and the guy who sent "Subject: Utility work at Chicago datacenter tomorrow" with a normal priority header is actually going to get attention first. Outlook's re
Re: (Score:3)
High priority emails are those with a Priority:urgent header.
Except that most antispam software treats that as a clue it's not really high priority, but spam.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
It's all clueless hype.
No, it actually is not. And this is from a person who really despises Microsoft and has no intention to upgrade from Windows 7.
That's a non-sequitur. High priority emails are those with a Priority:urgent header. There's nothing to learn, it's a simple, straightforward rule, which has been done for decades by any decent MUA. If they're doing something different, they shouldn't call it "priority.'
The priority you are describing is what the sender of the email is stating.
That sender-stated priority may or may not have nothing at all to do with what you consider to have a high or low priority, which is what the feature is about.
So, the sender's priority may or may not factor in to the overall classification, and will most likely still be able to show up in red or whatever styl
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, it most certainly is. The point flew over your head, you just didn't hear the "whoosh" because of how far over your head it went. "Priority" is a long time, well defined term with regard to email. Everyone does email priority, which makes this PR release hype. Whatever MS is doing, they're wrong to call it "priority."
More crap to turn off (Score:5, Funny)
Word rarely does what I want it to do so I've turned off most of the "help". Once we're forced to upgrade to this crap this will be more cruft to disable.
I can't wait to hear from our users when they whine about not being able to get their work done because Word is trying to be "helpful".
Word for Office 365: Revenge of Clippy
Re: (Score:1)
> I can't wait to hear from our users when they whine
Sounds like you're the one whining.
Re: (Score:2)
Completely useless format, I use the ISO A4 format.
Re: (Score:3)
AbiWord is surprisingly good for its small size.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:365 = You pay for it 365 days of the year (Score:5, Insightful)
Office had all the function you needed back in Office 2000.
I could argue (at least up to a point) that WordStar 5.5 had everything you need for, you know, writing. And once you learned the key patterns, which made eminent sense in terms of finger motions, using a mouse would just slow you down (a lot). Try using Word without frequently lifting your hand off the keyboard to grab the mouse.
Word and the rest of MS Office have too much stuff that only adds confusion and bloat.
Re:365 = You pay for it 365 days of the year (Score:5, Funny)
I could argue (at least up to a point) that WordStar 5.5 had everything you need for, you know, writing.
Not at all. By far the hardest part of writing is thinking of something to say. Wordstar didn't help with that. But Bing-enhanced Word-365 can actually help you create the content. This is especially useful when you have no opinion or knowledge about the subject, such as writing a school term paper.
Re: (Score:3)
You're saying that Bing searches, embedded in Word, help you write? I suppose they help you do research, which you can do equally well in your web browser. About the only thing special here is the citation feature. Embedded research isn't new; Google Docs has it, for one.
But yes, what to write is one of the hardest parts of writing. I'd argue that a word processor's role is to write your words down, not do research. It's the Unix philosophy: have a tool do one thing and do it well.
Re: (Score:2)
I have to add that Emacs has had comprehensive web lookup since at least 2011 (the xah-lookup package). Your choice of Wikipedia, Google, and six different dictionaries, but surprisingly(!) the package maintainer didn't include Bing search.
Re: (Score:2)
The nice thing about MS products and Windows itself is that there are keyboard shortcuts for nearly every function.
I don't often use my mouse when in Office apps. Even in Windows, I use the keyboard as much as possible.
I guess it just depends on how much you are willing to learn. The mouse is for beginners.
Re: (Score:2)
I actually preferred WordStar 3.31 to the later versions. And running on the 8-bit CP/M systems of the time, it was *still* faster than Word running on a modern system.
Office 2K (Score:2)
I am still using it even though rarely. It works well for me. Better compatibility than the non-MS Office softwares.
Re: (Score:2)
If it's buggy and crashing all the time, then it's poor programming, poor QA, or unrealistic timeframes set by the higher-ups. If it's the features that are completely useless and laughable, then I wouldn't be blaming the programmers. But that's just me...
Re: (Score:2)
Word 2.0c was decent.
Re: (Score:2)
Word 2.0c was decent.
I'll second that. Word 2 and Excel 4, on OS/2.
Woah, non-linear PowerPoint (Score:1)
Now it's almost caught up with Hyper-Card.
Re:Non-linear Presentation (Score:5, Funny)
>> Whatever the fuck that means.
It's a new feature that allows the audience to read whatever they want into your presentation. Very popular, I would imagine.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Whatever the fuck that means. What, are people trying to make games in PowerPoint now?
Choose-Your-Own-Presentation. While most people prefer the Edward Packard slide decks, R. A. Montgomery does have a substantial following in the board room circuit.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh $DEITY, Have Pity on Me! (Score:2)
Re:Oh $DEITY, Have Pity on Me! (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you ever BEEN to a PowerPoint presentation?
Re:Oh $DEITY, Have Pity on Me! (Score:5, Funny)
The only good thing about PowerPoint was that it forced people to think about what they were going to say and in what order.
Exactly. If Abraham Lincoln had Powerpoint, the Gettysburg Address could have looked like this [washingtonpost.com].
Re: (Score:2)
The only good thing about PowerPoint was that it forced people to think about what they were going to say and in what order.
Too funny! I'm gonna print this out and frame it, that's how funny it is.
Revenge of Clippy (Score:3)
which was codenamed "Clippy", right?
LibreOffice (Score:1)
I suppose this confirms LibreOffice has almost caught up in the interoperaton stakes.
MS had to introduce new incompatability features.
Re: (Score:2)
My Office 2008 has a couple incompatibility "features" with the version the rest of my office is using... So I decided to try Libre Office again. It has gotten pretty good, although there are a few things I find mildly annoying. Just might switch the office over to it, no real reason at this point not to, at least from what I see today.
Cut 'n Paste (Score:1)
Re:Cut 'n Paste (Score:5, Funny)
If you've ever tried to get anything done with Tables or moving text round then it's taken you way longer than it used to.
Me: "I want to move this paragraph a little to the left."
Word: "No, I'm going to fuck up the entire document instead."
Me: "Insert an extra-indented bullet point here."
Word: "Excuse me while I ruin all your formatting and renumber everything from the start of your thesis."
Me: "Remove this line from the Table Of Contents."
Word: "HEY! Look at all the extra shit I found and slammed into the Table Of Contents!"
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Cut 'n Paste (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is what we get when somebody tries to use a word processor for complex document layout. This is what's behind all the bloat in Word: people using the wrong tool for the job.
I know people do it all the time, but that doesn't mean it ever made sense. Typesetting and layout should be mostly independent of content creation. When you try to combine the two dynamically, this kind of crap is just bound to happen.
You want to do layout and actual decent typography? Use a tool designed for it. InDesign works. LaTeX is good.
Or heck, learn how to use styles and proper global formatting settings in Word, rather than direct formatting hacks everywhere... And suddenly a lot of this crap won't happen.
(P.S. I hate Word with a passion and rarely use it except when forced to. And Word is buggy. But if this stuff happens too often, it's likely also because you're trying to do things like you're still using a typewriter instead of the right features or even the right software application.)
Re: (Score:2)
Word makes it difficult sometimes to use it as a word processor. In particular, I find it's implementation of styles somewhat clunky and it is painful to create and manage tables, figures, and pictures. The fields also have odd behavior that hasn't been updated in decades. They keep bolting stuff on, but not fixing the underlying warts - presumably for compatibility. The result is several different "layers" on the document, with a combination of new and old objects that you can stick on various layers, each
Re: (Score:2)
And this is what we get when somebody tries to use a word processor for complex document layout.
I couldn't agree more, but Microsoft promotes Word as a tool that can do all of these things. Look at any of their promo stuff and it shows Word being used as a layout tool, a graphics design tool, etc etc.
Zoom (Score:2)
As in the video conferencing software that has pretty much replaced Skype in academia and business?
Or another Zoom?
Does outlook now sync with Google calendar / Andro (Score:3)
you know, without hacks, 3rd party synchronizers, gapps subscription, etc etc.
just painless straightforward two way synchronization like almost any other calendar client does.
genuinely interested to know if it works. last time I checked it was a nightmare.
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't look like it. The crazy thing is that Windows 10's default mail and calendar apps seamlessly work with Google calendar. Are the codebases really so different that they can't import that feature into Outlook 365?
Re: (Score:2)
Excel alone has it's own completely vertically integrated team who maintains their own compiler... doubt that there is much shared code between Excel and the other Office apps, let alone Windows 10.
Re: (Score:2)
Yup, but I doubt it's a "technical issue" anyways...
Plenty of 3rd parties are using the Google Calendar API to update back and forth - so it cannot be rocket science.
More likely that it's a battle of corporate overlords ("do we have more to gain or more to lose, if we allow this?")
What about Excel? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Sheets was far behind a year or two, but what do you think it can't do today? Pivot tables, filters, formatting are all comparable, and some of the formula building stuff is actually better.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm torn on this... Excel is so abused by engineers already, I'm not sure I want too many more engineering-friendly features added. Python, R, MATLAB, JMP... please, just use another tool. The other solutions are not quick and dirty, and sometimes quick and dirty is all you need - but good lord, know when to move on to another tool. We have an abortion of an Excel sheet that does data collection, including ftp and telnet, and then tries to manipulate the resulting huge data sets. I blame MS for removing the
Re: (Score:2)
Try Libre Office. Only been a week or two since I started using it again, but it definitely does the job for me.
Re: (Score:2)
My hat's off to you on wrestling Word into that workflow. You are a patient man/woman.
Not yet! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Search? (Score:4, Funny)
Bad grammar (Score:2)
"the wavy blue line under bad grammar"
I don't see any wavy blue line. Network World doesn't use Word, I surmise.
Re: (Score:2)
Dude, you majorly misunderstood my comment.
Is it just me with this concern? (Score:2)
I am concerned that because of the ubiquity or Word/Office, many corporate sheep are already unjustifiably using Microsoft tools as the final arbiter of proper grammar/writing style, and will now start to use them to determine the veracity of all knowledge.
That puts Microsoft in one hell of a powerful position that they have already proven themselves to be far to untrustworthy to actually be in.