“We are taking bold steps at Microsoft,” Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft said at the press conference in San Francisco. “The new, modern Office will deliver unparalleled productivity and flexibility for both consumers and business customers. It is a cloud service and will fully light-up when paired with Windows 8.”
Here’s our list of top 10 features that the new Office has to offer.
1) Touch everywhere – The new Office responds to touch as naturally as it does to keyboard and mouse. One can swipe their finger across the screen or pinch and zoom to read documents and presentations.
2) Inking – Use a stylus to create content, take notes and access features. Handwrite email responses and convert them automatically to text. Stylus can also be used as a laser pointer when presenting. One can also add colour to their content and erase mistakes with ease.
3) Apps – OneNote and Lync represent the first new Windows 8 style applications for Office. These applications are designed to deliver touch-first experiences on a tablet. A new radial menu in OneNote makes it easy to access features with finger.
4) SkyDrive – Office saves documents to SkyDrive by default, which means content is always available across all devices tablet, PC and phone. Documents are also available offline and sync on reconnecting.
5) New subscription services – The new Office is available as a cloud-based subscription service, which means consumers will automatically get future upgrades in addition to exciting cloud services including Skype world minutes and extra SkyDrive storage. Subscribers receive multiple installs for everyone in the family and across their devices.
6) Stay connected – Follow people, teams, documents and sites in SharePoint. View and embed pictures, videos and Office content in activity feeds to stay current and updated.
7) Skype – The new Office comes with Skype, which gives 60 minutes of Skype world minutes every month. Integrate Skype contacts into Lync and call or instant message anyone on Skype.
8) Reading, markup – The Read Mode in Word provides a modern and easy-to-navigate reading experience that automatically adjusts for large and small screens. Zoom in and out of content, stream videos within documents, view revision marks and use touch to turn pages.
9) Digital note-taking – Digital note taking helps keep notes handy in the cloud and across multiple devices with OneNote. One can take notes with touch, pen or keyboard, or use them together and switch easily back and forth.
10) Meetings – PowerPoint features a new Presenter View that privately shows your current and upcoming slides, presentation time, and speaker notes in a single glance. While presenting, one can zoom, mark up and navigate slides with touch and stylus. Lync includes multiparty HD video with presentations, shared OneNote notebooks and a virtual whiteboard for collaborative brainstorming.
