Office Insiders who have opted into the Monthly Channel (Targeted) should now be getting the April updates for the suite of apps. The latest updates bring the build number to 12730.20150, and they add features to almost all of the major Office apps.
In Word, Microsoft has introduced the new Action Pen in the Draw tab. It replaces the Ink Editor that was previously available, and the general goal is the same, which is making it easier to edit documents with ink. Another new feature in Word is the ability to easily create a private copy of a document to make annotations on without making them visible to everyone else who can access the document. This feature can be found in the View tab.
For Excel, there's the new Workbook Statistics view, which was also added in Office for Mac earlier this month. It lets users see a number of details about the current workbook, such as where the sheet ends, how many cells have data, and so on.
PowerPoint is getting two new improvements, which were also added to the Mac apps a couple of weeks ago. First is the ability to synchronize changes to a presentation even while the user is presenting. This can be done automatically by enabling the feature in the Slide Show tab, or manually with the "Update Slides" button in the presenter view. The other improvement is the ability to link to a specific slide in a presentation.
Outlook is getting the ability to join Teams meetings directly from the calendar to-do bar. When the bar is pinned in the app, a "Join Online" button will show up under Teams meetings so users can join with one click.
Another improvement in Outlook is a warning for when the user is connected to a Wi-Fi network with a captive portal. Before, Outlook would show technical errors, but now users will see a bar at the top of the window, prompting them to sign into the network using the captive portal in order to use Outlook. Finally, it's now possible to send uncompressed photos in Outlook e-mails.
There are some changes that affect all of the above apps, too. It's now possible to apply sensitivity labels configured by the organization that allow the user to set custom permissions. Finally, Microsoft is adding "premium creative content" including curated images, icons, and stickers that can be added to a document, presentation or e-mail. There are over 8,000 items to choose from, and they can be found in the Insert tab through the "Stock Images" option.
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