Spade Technology: Blog

New Features in Microsoft Office That are Turning Heads

Tucked away in every release of Microsoft Office is a handful of slick new features designed to make work life just a bit easier. Here are some of the best that are turning heads.

Microsoft releases its Office suite on a nearly annual basis, designed to provide you with the best computer work tools possible, every version is aimed at improving your user experience. For the Microsoft Office 2016 release, there are a handful of new features that may go unnoticed at first, but you need to check out. Each of these features can improve productivity, cut down work time and simply offer you a more enjoyable experience while in the suite.

New Features

Co-Authoring in Real Time

Sometimes two heads are better than one. Perhaps you have a presentation you need to work on with a co-worker, or you’re writing a report for class with another student. It doesn’t do much good to have both of you looking at the same computer screen, and copying two projects together isn’t always as fluid as possible. With the co-authoring feature, two different users can work on the same project in real time. This way, whether both of you just pick out corrections as you go or work on different areas of a document, this feature is a true time saver.

Historical Versions

Have you ever worked on a file, only to realize you completely cut out an important part of the document? Sometimes you can backtrack, other times you may have not realized what you did and saved over the previous version. Now, with the versioning feature, it no longer is a problem. If you have the Office 2016 Business Edition, any file you save on SharePoint or OneDrive receives a new historical version whenever the file is saved. This makes tracking down old work easier than ever before. Plus, as it is stored on cloud storage, you won’t need to worry about it taking up valuable hard drive space.

Smart Lookup

This can really be a lifesaver. If you are in the middle of an email, Word document or other file and you need to look something up, leaving the application can be frustrating and cause you to lose your place. With the Smart Lookup feature, all you need to do is highlight a word or phrase and Microsoft Office will automatically bring up helpful information through Bing right in the program.

“Share.”

Have a work file you need to share with co-workers? Not a problem. You no longer need to email a file to everyone in the office or send it attached to an IM. With the “Share” feature, all you need to do is click “Share” button, and it instantly makes the file accessible to everyone else. This is perfect for when you want to work on something on your own and then share it once it is a bit more polished.

At Spade Technology, we are here to assist you with all your Microsoft Office Suite needs. So whether you’re interested in upgrading to the latest release or you have more questions, feel free to give us a call at (508) 332-4849. You can also shoot us an email at info@spadetechnology.com, so contact us at your convenience. When it comes to working in Mansfield, we want to make it as successful and productive as possible.