Category: Microsoft Office

A new feature to Google Drive is currently in the process of rolling out to all G Suite versions that will allow for commenting – and to be able to see those comments – on Microsoft Office files, PDFs and image files.  The new feature means that users of G Suite will be able to collaborate with colleagues or others outside of their organization who use Microsoft Office.  More importantly, this can be done without having to convert the files.

The new feature appears in Google Drive online and when you open up the preview pane on a Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint file, you will be able to see the comments on that file and be able to add comments.  They will be saved and will stay attached to the file.  This should significantly lower the friction on collaborating on projects within organizations and with customers of an organization.

In a move that will surprise some, Microsoft has announced that the upcoming Microsoft Office 2019 release will only be able to run on Windows 10 PCs.  According to the announcement, the following platforms will be able to run the perpetual version of Office

• Any supported Windows 10 SAC release
• Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2018
• The next LTSC release of Windows Server

Further, Microsoft will not support MSI installs for Office 2019 but will be installed only by click-to-run technology.  MSI’s will be offered for the server products.

Microsoft has rolled out a nice update to the Microsoft Office suite of apps for Android.  Excel, PowerPoint and Word for Android have all been updated to build 16.0.7301.1013 for those keeping score at home and bring with it some improvements around file sharing and collaboration.  In fact, in the release notes for each of the apps, Microsoft points out that collaboration is now “front and center” for each of the apps.  So what does that mean?  It means that you can now easily and quickly find documents that have been shared with you in the new “Shared with me” section of the menu.  Here you can see files others have shared with you from their PC, Mac, iOS device or Office online when they used the “invite people” option on a document.  It is a faster way of finding those files without having to search through the app to find that document. This collaboration also means that you can quickly share a document and have the ability to see who is working on it in the Android apps.

The Microsoft Office suite of apps for Android – Excel, PowerPoint and Word – have all been updated today with several new features and improvements.  Perhaps the biggest new feature across all three apps is the ability to store your files on an SD card on your device.  To this point you could only save your files in your device’s main storage.  That can be problematic for those who do a lot of file editing on their devices, especially those with low storage devices.  This new feature, which is across all three apps, should help solve that problem.  There is nothing special you as a user have to do other than tell the apps to store on your SD card.  Your device, however, must be running Android Lollipop or later to take advantage of this feature. All three apps now also give you the ability to annotate files.  You can use a stylus or your finger to write, draw or highlight.  These new tools found in the Draw tab, a new tab in each app.

Microsoft has quietly rolled out updates to the Office suite apps Excel, PowerPoint and Word for Android today, bringing a few product enhancements and tweaks to each app.  For those of you who use and have the apps on your phone or tablet, the OTA updates are in the Google Play Store now and should be hitting your devices over the course of the next few days.  With these update, each app has gotten a bit of attention when it comes to new features or improvements to existing features.

Microsoft has released updates to their suite of Office apps for Android, bringing several new features to each of the apps.  The updates are for Excel, PowerPoint and Word and while some features are unique to each app, there are some common improvements across all of them.  One of those is the ability to send a file to someone as a PDF.  Before this update, you were not able to share a file in any other format than the native Office format.  Now when you go to share a file as an attachment, you can still do that or you can send it as a PDF.