14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft’s Office overhaul continues, and after the company rolled out new icons for the apps included in the productivity suite, it’s now unveiling redesigned filetype icons.
Erin Woo, part of the product design team at Outlook Mobile, published a short video revealing the new filetype icons for Microsoft Office.
The new icons are gradually being rolled out to users, and Outlook for iOS is the first one getting it, with the Android sibling to receive it “soon,” as Woo puts it. Other apps, like OneDrive, are also expected to be updated with the new Office filetype icons in the near future.
As you can see in the video embedded below, the new icons are much simplified and use a rather straightforward design, so it’s pretty easy to tell when you’re looking at a Word or PowerPoint document.
New icons for Office apps
Microsoft’s transformation of the Office productivity suite is still under way, and a few months ago, the company introduced a new set of icons across all platforms. Already available on Windows 10 and mobile, these icons are available for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Skype, and others.
“Whereas prior Office icons had a document outline for Microsoft Word and a spreadsheet outline for Excel, we now show lines of text for Word and individual cells for Excel. By focusing on the content rather than any specific format, these icons embody the collaborative nature of the apps they represent,” Microsoft explained.
It remains to be seen how these icons are received by users out there, but for the time being, it just looks like Microsoft wants to give Office a complete makeover in terms of icons. Office 365 has become one of the main cash cows of the company, and this attention to every little detail is something that Microsoft is very keen on delivering to customers.
