14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has recently announced a massive set of improvements coming to the search experience in Microsoft Word, and by the looks of things, the whole purpose is to make everything feel more like a typical search on the web.
Microsoft says that Word users would be allowed to get relevant information even if a typo exists in the query. This is because Word will be instructed to search for related matches, just like it happens today when you look for information on a web-based search engine.
Then, Microsoft Word’s search feature is updated with forms of words, so for example, you can search for tech and get results for technology. Synonyms would also be supported to provide you with better results, and so will be multi-word queries, which are supposed to help find exactly what you’re looking for in a large document.
“We’re utilizing well-established web search technologies, such as query and document understanding, and adding deep learning based natural language models. This allows us to handle a much broader set of search queries beyond exact match,” Microsoft explained last month.
Questions and answers
Another welcome improvement for the search experience is support for questions in the search box. In other words, this means that you can actually type a question and you’ll then get answers based on the content in your document.
“With the recent breakthroughs in deep learning techniques, you can now go beyond the common search term-based queries. The result is answers to your questions based on the document content. This opens a whole new way of finding knowledge. When you’re looking at a water quality report, you can answer questions like ‘where does the city water originate from? How to reduce the amount of lead in water?’” Microsoft explains.
Microsoft says the new search experience is projected to go live for users in the production channel “soon.”