New to Office 365 in November—new collaboration capabilities and more

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

This month, we’re announcing several updates to the Office apps to help you easily and effectively collaborate with others. This includes real-time co-authoring in PowerPoint, the ability to upload attachments to the cloud directly from Outlook and other collaboration capabilities.

Expanding real-time co-authoring to PowerPoint

When we launched Office 2016 last year, we said we would expand real-time co-authoring to more of our native apps beyond Word on Windows desktops. We are excited to announce that real-time co-authoring is now available in PowerPoint on Windows desktops, allowing you to see what others are typing as it happens on a given slide.

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Real-time co-authoring is now available in PowerPoint on Windows desktops.

Availability: Real-time co-authoring is currently available in PowerPoint Mobile on Windows tablets, and it is now also available in PowerPoint on Windows desktops for Office 365 subscribers in the Office Insider program.

Use Outlook to move attachments to the cloud and share with others

Outlook already lets you attach cloud-based documents to an email, helping you better collaborate with others using a single version of the file. Now you can easily transform a traditional attachment into a shared cloud document right within Outlook. Upload a file to your own OneDrive or a shared OneDrive as part of an Office 365 Group. Then specify sharing permissions for the email recipients. Get started with cloud attachments in a few easy steps.

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Easily transform a traditional attachment into a shared cloud document in Outlook.

Availability: Uploading attachments to the cloud is currently available in Outlook on the web, and it is now also available in Outlook on Windows desktops for all Office 365 subscribers.

Stay on top of changes to shared documents with mobile notifications

We’re introducing notifications in Word, Excel and PowerPoint on mobile devices to alert you to activity with your shared cloud documents. Notifications let you know when changes are being made while you are away from a document, so you can stay connected and know when you need to act. Together with the integrated activity feed already available on Windows desktops, you can collaborate more confidently. Commercial customers and consumers receive notifications when documents are shared with others. Consumers are additionally notified when documents are edited. We’ll continue enhancing notifications to provide more detail and transparency around activity in shared documents in the future.

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Mobile notifications alert you to activity with your shared cloud documents.

Availability: Sharing and editing notifications are now available for consumers in Word, Excel and PowerPoint on Android and Windows Mobile for Office Insiders. Sharing and editing notifications for consumers on iOS are coming with next month’s updates. Sharing notifications for commercial customers in all Office mobile apps will be available on all platforms in the coming months.

Find, open and save documents more easily with Shared with Me and Recent Folders

We’ve added a Shared with Me tab in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Just like in OneDrive, this view makes it easy to find and open documents that others have shared with you without leaving the app you’re working in. We’ve also added a Recent Folders list in the Recent tab, making it easier to navigate to the right place to find or save your files as desired.

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The Shared with Me tab helps you find and open documents more easily.

Availability: The Shared with Me tab is now available in Word, Excel and PowerPoint on Windows desktops and Macs for all Office 365 subscribers, as well as on iOS and Android. It is coming soon for Windows Mobile. The Recent Folders list is now available in Word, Excel and PowerPoint on Windows desktops for Office 365 subscribers in the Office Insider program.

Other Office 365 updates this month

We also have a few additional updates this month. Learn more by clicking the links below:

Learn 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.

—Kirk Koenigsbauer

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