Microsoft on February 4, 2015 rolled out early versions of its Office suite designed for Windows 10, software that is optimized for touch-friendliness and compatibility with devices of every category and screen sizes.
The desktop edition of Office 2016 for Windows 10 (Word, OneNote, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook) is expected to ship this year. The new Office apps will be pre-installed on tablets and smartphones running Windows 10, and will also be available for download from Windows Store for other devices.
All-new Office Suite
The Word app will let users create, edit, review and mark up documents. Users can also share their work with others for real time collaboration. Insights in read mode will provide additional online resources such as images, definitions and web references to further enhance the reading experience.
The Excel app will let users update, analyze data and visualize it on their spreadsheets. Users can also touch-control select ranges of cells, format of their charts and manage their workbooks.
Similarly, the PowerPoint app will let users create and edit presentations. The Presenter View feature will help prepare, present and annotate their slides.
Outlook and Calendar will be available at a later date.
The touch-friendly build and device-screen compatibility is a move to orchestrate its OS platform will help the Satya Nadella let company to offer a large user base to its nearly extinct bunch of developers. It might also motivate developers out there to create enticing apps for its software.
The move comes after Microsoft recently announced versions of Office for iOS and Android. The Office suite for Windows 10 is now partially released and will work best on touch-enabled laptops, smartphones, desktops and tablets, an ability that its predecessor did not handle. The user preview for the apps running Windows 10 is expected to arrive in the coming weeks.
