Microsoft Universal Office Apps Preview Ready for Windows 10 Smartphones
Piece by piece, Microsoft (MSFT) has been putting in action the elemental parts of its new strategy for Windows and Office on every platform, promising the release this week of Office applications it refers to as “Universal” for Windows 10-based smartphones.
Jared Spataro, general manager for the Office marketing team, said in a blog post that the “Office Universal apps preview for Windows 10 for phone is expected to be available by the end of the month. With this announcement, we’re rounding out our Office on Windows line-up.”
The Universal Office apps release maps to Microsoft’s blueprint to have Windows and Office omnipresent on the desktop and mobile devices. The vendor’s strategy is to offer Office 2016 for the desktop and its touch-centric Office Universal apps for tablets and smartphones. In effect, Universal apps are for every other format beside the desktop.
“Our Office Universal apps are designed for on-the-go productivity,” Spataro wrote. “They’re touch-first, built for tablets and phones, and optimized for viewing, quick edits, notes and mark-up. On a tablet, the Universal apps are fast, fluid, and streamlined for an immersive, hands-on experience,” he said. “On a phone, the Universal apps adapt to the smaller form factor.”
Microsoft has said it will pre-install Office Universal apps on smartphones and small tablets running Windows 10 free of charge, and will make the suite available to download from the Windows Store for other devices.
As for Office Desktop, Microsoft has updated the productivity suite’s look and feel to be consistent across form factors, added a new search tool in Word, PowerPoint and Excel called Tell Me that instructs users on how to do certain tasks, linked Outlook attachments to OneDrive, incorporated new business intelligence features into Excel, and baked new data loss prevention code into Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
“No matter what form factor you’re using, your Office experience will be familiar, consistent, and intuitive,” Spataro said.
Microsoft’s Universal apps for tablets went live in February with the Windows 10 Technical Preview and the Desktop IT Pro and Developer preview delivered Office 2016 in March. The Windows 10 Technical Preview contains the Universal apps preview, Microsoft said.
New Windows 10 Technical Preview
Microsoft late last week released Windows 10 Technical Preview build 10061 for PCs.
The new version delivers new Mail and Calendar apps, the three-pane email UI with a toggle to quickly move between email and calendar, and includes customizable Swipe Gestures. The new Mail and Calendar apps support Office 365, Exchange, Outlook.com, Gmail, IMAP, POP and other formats.
Other updates include improvements to Start, Task Bar and Action Center, including the new black system across all three features; a tablet optimized Taskbar, visual updates to Task View, and the ability to create unlimited Virtual Desktops.
