Office 365 October news—exciting new value coming to Windows 10

Today’s post was written by Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office team.

Today, Microsoft announced the Windows 10 Creators Update coming in early 2017, as well as stunning new devices: Surface Studio, Surface Dial and Surface Book with Performance Base. At our event today, Satya Nadella, Terry Myerson and Panos Panay showcased innovations to the Office apps that are coming first to Windows and brought to life on Surface. These advances make using a digital pen even better than traditional pen and paper, offer new ways to interact with your documents, and expand your options for creating rich and interactive content.

Inking is more powerful in the Office apps

We’re continuing to expand what’s possible with digital ink in Office. This year, we’ve already released capabilities for instant inking, shape conversion and even learning with ink. Today, we introduced even more inking capabilities coming first to Windows touch-enabled devices and designed to work best with your Windows Ink enabled pen:

  • Ink EditorOriginally shown by the Windows team at //build, we are now launching Ink Editor. This makes your pen a more powerful document editing tool than ever. Strike through words to delete them, circle text to select it and automatically snap highlighter ink to text. And this is just the beginning. We’re planning to add even more Ink Editor capabilities and extend the feature to other Office apps in the future. Get started with Ink Editor in a few easy steps.

Use your pen intuitively to make edits directly in Word.

Availability: Ink Editor is available today in Word on Windows desktops for Office 365 subscribers in the Office Insider program.
  • Ink Replay control with Surface Dial—In August, we introduced Ink Replay, which lets you rewind and replay ink you see in your document. Today, we announced tight integration with Surface Dial and Windows 10, making ink playback as natural to control as a spin of the device. This helps you effortlessly set the pace at which you review step-by-step instructions, reveal lesson ideas and more.

Effortlessly set the pace of Ink Replay when you use Surface Dial.

Availability: Ink Replay is available today in Word, Excel and PowerPoint on Windows desktops, and OneNote for Windows 10, for Office 365 subscribers. Integration with Surface Dial works automatically (devices sold separately).
  • Digital ruler—Also originally shown by the Windows team at //build, you’ll soon be able to draw straight lines and align objects with the help of a built-in digital ruler in PowerPoint. Only with Windows 10 technology can you use pen and touch simultaneously, allowing you to position the built-in software ruler with one hand while using your pen to draw with the other. We’ll add the built-in ruler to more apps, like Word, Excel and OneNote, in the future.

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Use the built-in digital ruler to draw straight lines, and drag the Segment Eraser over excess bits of ink to create precise ink shapes and clean up your drawings.

Availability: The built-in digital ruler in PowerPoint on Windows desktops is coming in early 2017 for Office 365 subscribers.
  • Segment Eraser in PowerPoint—Create precise ink shapes easily with the help of this new eraser that intelligently removes excess bits of ink, right up to the nearest line. It’s easy to drag the Segment Eraser over multiple bits of excess ink to remove them all at once. We’ll extend this capability to more apps, like Word and Excel, in the future. You really need to see Segment Eraser in action to understand what it can do—check out the video above!
Availability: Segment Eraser in PowerPoint on Windows desktops is coming with the November Office 365 updates, for Office 365 subscribers.

Office innovations optimized for Surface Studio and Surface Dial

We’re excited to announce additional capabilities in the Office apps that uniquely and seamlessly integrate with Surface Studio and Surface Dial. This helps you work in an intuitive and optimized way using those devices.

  • New large-screen page view in Word—Review and edit documents using a new page view specifically designed for large-screen devices such as Surface Studio and Surface Hub. Naturally swipe to flip through pages with a fluid two-page magazine-style layout, and pinch to zoom out to navigate longer documents in a grid view.

Word will provide a new reviewing and editing experience optimized for large-screen devices.

Availability: The new large-screen page view in Word on Windows desktops is coming in early 2017 for Office 365 subscribers.
  • Additional Office integrations with Surface Dial—Surface Dial is an entirely new class of device that enables people to interact with their apps and devices. In Office, you can use it to control capabilities such as Ink Replay (outlined earlier) as well as advance slides and animations in PowerPoint presentations. You can even use Surface Dial to navigate across on-screen elements when using Narrator, the screen-reading app built into Windows 10 that reads aloud and describes content on your PC screen if you’re blind or have low vision.
Availability: Integrations with Surface Dial are available in Office apps on Windows 10 desktops for Office 365 subscribers. Integrations with Surface Dial work automatically (devices sold separately).

Office apps are adding support for new modern content types

We’re continuing to expand the modern types of content you can add and edit in the Office apps, coming first to Windows. This helps you present your ideas in more creative, interactive and polished ways.

  • 3D in the Office apps—As showcased during today’s event, we’ll be adding support for 3D models in Word, Excel and PowerPoint over the next year for the Windows 10 Creators Update. 3D helps expand the creativity and visual impact you can bring to your documents, presentations and reports. Insert 3D models from Remix 3D (the new online community filled with millions of pieces of content) or your desktop. Easily change the perspective of 3D material with rotation handles for all three dimensions. Office features work seamlessly with 3D models. For example, in PowerPoint, effortlessly apply transitions like Morph to create cinematic 3D animation that brings your presentations to life and celebrates your content. Stay tuned for more.

3D in PowerPoint will help you bring your presentations to life and increase their visual impact.

Availability: 3D in Office apps on Windows desktops is coming next year for Office 365 subscribers using the Windows 10 Creators Update.
  • Icons and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs) in Office apps—Now you can insert and edit SVG icons and images in your documents. We’re adding a built-in library of professional, high-quality icons you can use to make your content more visual. Since these icons are vector-based, they look great at any size without getting pixelated. In addition to icons, you can add and format other SVG images such as company logos, graphics created in applications like Adobe Illustrator and many other types of high-end visuals.

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Now you can add and edit SVGs in Office. An SVG icon library is coming soon.

Availability: Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) support is now available in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook on Windows desktops, for Office 365 subscribers in the Office Insider program. SVG support in Office Mobile apps on Windows and Android is coming with the November updates, as is the icon library on Windows desktops for Office 365 subscribers.

It’s an exciting set of capabilities the Office apps are bringing first to Windows. Office will continue to fully support the latest innovations in Windows and on Microsoft devices, with more to announce in the future.

You can learn even more about what’s new for Office 365 subscribers this month at: Office 2016 | Office for Mac | Office Mobile for Windows | Office for iPhone and iPad | Office on Android. If you’re an Office 365 Home or Personal customer, be sure to sign up for Office Insider to be the first to use the latest and greatest in Office productivity. Commercial customers on both Current Channel and Deferred Channel can also get early access to a fully supported build through First Release. This site explains more about when you can expect to receive the features announced today.

Thanks for your continued feedback and support!

—Kirk Koenigsbauer

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