14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has released a new update for the Windows desktop of Microsoft Office in the Insider program, and this time the company has included some pretty significant improvements.
First and foremost, beginning with this release you can use your Surface Earbuds to control PowerPoint presentations. Microsoft launched the Surface Earbuds earlier this month, and given they support gestures, you can now control a presentation with just a simple touch.
“If you forget your clicker or don’t want to use, your Surface earbuds have you covered. You can swipe forward and backward on the left earbud to navigate your presentation when it is in Slide Show mode. You can play or pause videos embedded in your presentation by double tapping,” Microsoft explains.
As far as Microsoft Excel is concerned, there’s one major addition in this update. Beginning with this new release, Microsoft Excel and import and analyze data from PDF documents, which is one of the most requested features for the Office suite.
This feature can be enabled from Data > Get Data > From Files > From PDF.
Other welcome improvements
There are also other improvements for Outlook and Microsoft Word, including a fix for a bug that broke down the action of adding a new comment on a blank document.
Microsoft says it has also corrected a problem affecting Visual Basic for Applications in Microsoft Office.
“We fixed an issue in Visual Basic for Applications in Microsoft Office where certain VBA projects that contain references to code libraries with double-byte characters in the library name or library path would be viewed by the Office application as corrupt on load,” the company explains.
The new Office for Windows desktop version in the Insider Fast ring is version 2006 (Build 12905.20000) and you can already download it if you’re part of the testing program.