14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has just shipped a new update to Office insiders in the Slow ring that includes support for Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro, thus preparing for the release of this feature in an upcoming cycle.
Office 2016 for Mac version 15.31 comes with two different improvements, namely Office Insider on the iPhone and iPad, and the aforementioned Touch Bar support on the new MacBook Pro.
It goes without saying that only the MacBook Pro is supported for this new feature since it’s the only one having the Touch Bar and Microsoft says that Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook are all prepared to display the essential controls on the little display above the keyboard.
How Office works with the Touch Bar
Microsoft originally announced Touch Bar support for Office in late 2016, explaining that all its productivity apps would be updated to support this feature.
In the case of Word, the Touch Bar will display controls to enter the Focus Mode, but also formatting buttons to edit text, such as colors, font size, style, and others.
PowerPoint users who bought the new MacBook Pro will be provided with almost the same options as those using Word, but the company says that this time a graphical map of all the layers in a slide will also show up to give more control over each presentation.
Excel will display the recently used functions, as well as cell colors and recommended charts, while Outlook will come on the Mac with recent documents when composing an email, as well as a Today view to display events for a specific day.
The February feature update for Office 2016 for Mac should become available in the coming weeks after Microsoft fixes the bugs that insiders discover after installing this new version. We’ll let you know when it becomes available, but if you really want to try out the productivity suite with the Touch Bar, you can join the Office Insider program right here.