Today is the first day of Microsoft"s Ignite 2019 conference in Orlando, where it announced a number of new improvements in the Office 365 arena. The biggest list of new features goes to Outlook.
For one thing, Outlook for Mac is getting a redesign, and it will also come with new tools that are meant to help you to organize your day. Those tools include email replies that can scale based on your preferences, suggested searches, and connections with other Office apps. Microsoft says that it"s built on the same sync technology as other Outlook services.
Outlook mobile apps are getting plenty of improvements as well. Features like Meeting Insights, Up Next, and inferred locations are all coming before the end of the year. On iOS, there"s a new Play My Emails feature that will be generally available today. It will read your emails and changes to your day, and is meant to be great for commuters.
There"s a new security feature as well, which will encrypt your email notifications if your device is locked. You"ll be able to see the notification once you unlock the device.
The Coming Soon feature is coming back to Outlook on Windows, so you"ll be able to preview new features. These include a number of things, such as moving Search to the top of the window, and improvements to Search such as intelligence with suggested emails.
Microsoft announced Ideas for Word a while back, and the preview is rolling out on the web for Office 365 commercial users now. It provides ideas for cleaning up spelling, grammar, and refining your style.
Of course, there are new AI features. In Excel, you can now make natural language queries, allowing you to query your data as if you were talking to a person. It"s available for Office Insiders now. There"s also Office Scripting in Excel, which lets you record your actions into a script, and then integrate it into Power Automate. Office Scripting will be in preview by the end of the year.