QuickStarter, audio and new styles in Sway

Last week, we announced the launch of QuickStarter, a new intelligent service that lets you go from the blank canvas to a great, working outline in seconds. Just enter your topic and QuickStarter automatically pulls in recommended sections, relevant content and suggested images tagged with Creative Commons licenses into a starter Sway. For our Office 365 education customers, the suggested content appears as hints in the Storyline—so students can still bring in their original ideas and content to their projects, reports and presentations. To get to QuickStarter, simply sign in to Sway.com, click Start from a topic, enter your selected topic and then click Create outline.

Watch the animation below to see how QuickStarter makes it even faster to get to a great, polished output in Sway in seconds:

sway-quickstarter

QuickStarter is available today for Sway on the web, in English within the U.S., U.K. and Canada. QuickStarter in PowerPoint will roll out for Office 365 subscribers in the coming months.

Audio

We heard from many users that you wanted to add audio clips to your Sway. We are pleased to release the ability to insert the most common audio formats (such as .mp3 and .wav) in your Sways so you and your audience can have an even richer multimedia experience. To do this, navigate to the Cards pane and select Audio or go to the Insert pane and select OneDrive or My Device as your content source, and then insert your audio files. Please read, “Add video and audio files into Sway“ to learn more.

audio-card

New styles

Finally, we recently added a new set of styles that give your Sways a more holistic and striking visual aesthetic. Apart from adjusting your color palette and font, you can now apply vibrant filters to the photos in your Sway—making for more visually impactful outputs. You can find the new styles by navigating to the Design pane and selecting from any of the styles on the top row.

new-designs

We hope you enjoy using the newest features in Sway, and as always, we look forward to your suggestions, feedback and comments on our UserVoice page.

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