14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has released a new preview build of Office for Android, and this time the company has included several notable improvements, including new capabilities for Outlook.
First and foremost, Outlook is now getting an option to call people using only your voice, but as with everything that works with voice input, this feature is only available for English and only in the United States.
Microsoft will probably expand this feature to more markets as it keeps refining it, but for now, this is a limitation that would hopefully be dealt with rather sooner than later.
“Give your thumbs a break and use voice commands to speed up everyday tasks such as initiating a call. Tap the microphone in the search bar and say “Call Anna” or “Call Anna on Teams” and Outlook will place you a tap away from making that call. Available for eligible accounts in English in the United States.,” Microsoft explains.
Only in preview stage for the time being
In addition, the new version of Office, which with this build reaches 16.0.13801.20004, comes with options to create tasks from email in Outlook.
“You can now create tasks in Outlook! To follow up on an email, create a task from it. Tap on Create a Task from the menu on any email in your inbox, edit the task name, and save it to your task list in To Do,” Microsoft says.
And last but not least, you can now choose your own theme for Outlook on Android from Settings > Appearance, but also synchronize your contacts, a feature that has until now been limited to iOS.
Keep in mind these improvements are only available as part of the Insider program, but once the testing is complete, they should go live for all Android devices out there.