Office Online Gets a Massive Update, You Really Need to Download it

2 min. read

Published on February 23, 2015

published on February 23, 2015

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Microsoft has finally announced the first bigger update for its Office Online service, the in-browser version of the company’s productivity apps, including Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote. Microsoft collected info from users’ feedback, and made a proper update based on that.

Office Online is a light version of Microsoft’s Office apps and is available for everyone with Microsoft account for free on Office.com, or as a part of Office 365 subscription. Although it’s just a lite version of the actual Office that is made for little editing on the go, it actually offers some useful features, like Skype integration.

Here’s a quick review of the improvements from the upcoming Office Online update:

Editing experience is improved: Speed of opening a black document has been improved, also you’ll be able to easily navigate through your most recent documents and edit them faster. The experience is now more similar to the desktop version of Office.
Add files to OneDrive from the toolbar: You can now make copies of documents you couldn’t open for editing (view-only) that will be saved to your OneDrive with a new command that can be found on the toolbar.
More options to save and manage your files: The Save As options now include saving a copy to your OneDrive, Rename, Download a Copy (if it’s stored on OneDrive), and Download as PDF.
Enhanced reading experience: While you read your document in Reading View, in which you’ll faster access to the toolbar for commands such as Edit, Print, Share and Comment, as well as Translate or Download.
Improved proofreading tools: Now there’s a highlighted word count feature, and the proofreading and spell check services are improved.
Tell Me: You’ll be able to easily find what you’re looking for with the new Tell Me box.
Office On the Go: You’re now able to open your Office Online document in Android or Desktop app, which offers more features.