Elly Yates-Roberts |
Microsoft has rolled out a number of updates for Excel, PowerPoint, Yammer and more. The new 365 features aim to improve the user experience for the modern workforce, creating a more productive, collaborative and secure work environment.
Users can work faster and easier with a range of new feature in the Office suite. In Excel, issues with the VLOOKUP formula have been fixed in the new XLOOKUP, enabling users to find and retrieve data quickly. In Excel, PowerPoint and Word workers can create work-in-progress diagrams and slides with Sketched Shapes, transforming standard shapes into rough outlines that look hand-drawn and convey a sense of in-progress work.
PowerPoint on the web has also received updates – while previously users need the PowerPoint Desktop App to add subscript, superscript, or change text casing in their slides, now you can simply select your text and click the new ‘Subscript’, ‘Superscript’, or ‘Change Case’ buttons on the Home tab of the ribbon.
Working on the go has also been simplified with the new rollouts. You can now insert shapes in OneNote for iPad, such as arrows to point to information or a graph to show a trend – which can be found in the Draw tab – and you can add Outlook meeting details. Hand-written annotations are another available option in OneNote for iPhone.
Microsoft’s Yammer mobile experience brings live events, group search, updated feed and conversations views, enhanced encryption, and more to devices. With it, users can access a modernised feed experience, Seen Counts to show how many people have viewed your messages and group search to find specific content more easily.
The new Dark Mode for Outlook mobile and Office.com will not only reduce strain on the eyes and extend battery life, it will also make it easier to work more discreetly in certain environments like darkened airplanes.
The new features also include options to streamline IT management, for example with FastTrack guidance for Windows 10 to support its deployment, and new Microsoft data centre capabilities. With the latter, Microsoft Teams customers in South Korea will have their data stored in an in-country data centre, helping organisations with data residency requirements meet their obligations. Additionally, Multi-Geo Capabilities are now available to customers in South Africa and United Arab Emirates, enabling them to move users and data between Microsoft cloud geos to address data residency needs.