14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has released a new Office for Mac update for Office insiders, as the company previews the next stable version coming later this month.
With this new update, Office for Mac has reached version 16.18.181008, and it sports improvements for nearly every app in the productivity suite.
It all starts with PowerPoint, which now features animation triggers. Previously available on Windows exclusively, this feature is available for Office 365 subscribers only.
“You can trigger an animation effect to start when you click the shape or object that will be animated. For an audio or video clip, you can trigger an animation effect at the beginning of the clip or while it is playing,” Microsoft explains, adding that the new feature is available in the Animations tab.
New Word and Excel features
This version also introduces Ideas for Excel, which is a new feature that relies on AI power to provide you with more information on your data.
“Ideas in Excel empowers you to understand your data through high-level visual summaries, trends, and patterns. Simply click a cell in a data range, and then click the Ideas button on the Home tab. Ideas in Excel will analyze your data, and return interesting visuals about it in a task pane,” its description reads.
Excel also gets improvements for the autocomplete tool, as well as better VoiceOver navigation, which technically lets you move across by pressing VO + U, while also offering Trackpad Commander support.
Word and Excel are being updated with caption suggestions for pictures embedded in documents in order to make them accessible to people with impaired vision, while Outlook now comes with improved search suggestions for recent search history.
All these improvements are currently in early testing stage, so their public release date depends on the feedback that Microsoft receives after insiders try them out.