Microsoft Office – already the world’s favourite user productivity application suite – is now packed with more features than ever before.
“Not only do users get all the great features and benefits of Office 365, they get them automatically and at no additional cost,” explains Schellton Pillay, Microsoft product manager at Axiz.
Among the new features are:
* Simplified ribbon – A new, updated version of the ribbon is designed to help users focus on their work and collaborate naturally with others. People who prefer to dedicate more screen space to the commands will still be able to expand the ribbon to the classic three-line view.
* New icons and colour – Across the apps users will start to see new icons and colors built as scalable graphics — so they render with crisp, clean lines on screens of any size. These changes are designed to both modernize Office design and make it more inclusive and accessible.
* Search – Search will become a much more important element of the user experience, providing access to commands, content and people. With “zero query search” simply placing your cursor in the search box will bring up recommendations powered by AI and the Microsoft Graph.
Pillay explains that these design changes are focused on customer needs. “Microsoft uses a customer-driven innovation process to co-create the design of the Office apps, so they are always relevant and user-friendly.”
Importantly, Office 365 applications are smart enough to understand context, so they surface only the most relevant features based on the work users are doing at the time.
But users are still in control, and are able to toggle significant changes to the user experience on and off.
“These design changes have resulted in a more simplified user experience while maintaining the full power of Office and a design ethos that is more inclusive,” Pillay says.
Office 365 is a subscription service, so users always have the very latest version of the software – with no effort and no additional cost.
This also means that Office 365 is available on all of their devices: their PC, tablet and phone. And using OneDrive in the cloud means that all of their work is available wherever they are, while they can also easily share and collaborate with others.
The Office 365 suite includes a wealth of applications: Outlook, OneDrive, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Yammer and more.
Office 365 is distributed in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Mozambique by Axiz.