Microsoft is working on the next major update to its productivity suite, Office 2016. Today, the company has announced that it has over one million users testing out the apps, and that previously announced features such as real-time presence in Word, simplified file sharing, and Insights for Office, are now live.
When the first public preview was released, Microsoft said that they would frequently add new features and they are making good on that promise with the announcement of an update for the platform. Listed below are the new features now live in Office 2016 Preview that were first announced at Ignite last month:
- Real Time Presence in Word—While Real Time Typing will ship in subsequent builds, we are rolling out a key part of that collaborative experience with Real Time Presence. Real Time Presence allows you to see where in a document your teammates are editing. We are turning this on first for OneDrive for Business subscribers but it will be available more broadly soon.
- Simplified file sharing—We are simplifying the process of sharing files and making them available to others to review, comment, and edit. Just clicking Share on the Ribbon will save your file to the Cloud and make it available to others in one easy step.
- Insights for Office (currently in Word and Outlook)—Insights, powered by Bing, brings you contextual information from the web right into your reading experience. Try it by selecting keywords, like people or places, in your content and watch as Insights pulls relevant information into the Task pane to help you learn more.
- Version History improvements—We made it easier to find different versions of files stored on SharePoint or OneDrive for Business. You can click the History command in the File menu to view or restore any previous version.
Microsoft says that there are other minor improvements with the latest release
If you want to try out Office 2016 but have not downloaded the release yet, you can join the program here.