Windows & Office October 2018 Update

What’s new in Microsoft Office & Windows 10?

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Note: Microsoft has recently stated that Windows 10 is now installed on more than 700 million machines around the world.

October 2018 Update

If you already have Windows 10 and have automatic updates enabled, this update will be installed on your device when it’s ready.

Here are the most recent updates.

Your Phone app

By installing Your Phone app on your Android smart device, you get smooth access to photos and texts from your mobile device on your Windows 10 PC. When you take a picture with your smartphone, you can drag and drop it from your device to your PC. So, you will be able to copy, edit or markup the photo.

You can also view, send and receive SMS text messages from your Android device on your PC through the Your Phone app.

There is an iOS version of the app that should be available in November, but the capabilities in iOS appear to be limited to being able to send a web page to your desktop or laptop, so you can pick up where you left off and continue surfing on a larger screen.

Inking & 3D

Microsoft announced new AI-powered inking and 3D updates for PowerPoint and Word. You can now sketch your project and Microsoft AI will transform it into perfectly designed slides. Artificial intelligence will also suggest slide designs based on handwritten ink or change written text to SmartArt.

The new 3D embedded animations will improve design by automatically turning your work into 3D animations.

Microsoft also added new pen gestures to simplify document editing: it’s now easier to insert new words, split or join words etc.

Timeline on smartphones

Microsoft rolled out the Timeline feature on Windows 10 in April. As you probably know, it lets you go back in time to find documents, URLs and other resources you were working on your desktop or smartphone.

The new Timeline update allows you to view and scroll back in time to find the files and websites you were using on your phone, computer and tablet. Share or remove activities from a specific day or hour. This feature is now available in preview for Android phone through Microsoft Launcher app and soon it will be available for preview also for iPhone.

Snip & Sketch

The new Snip & Sketch app will appear on screen once you press Alt + Tab, but you can quickly open the snipping toolbar by pressing the Windows key + Shift + S. Now you can simply snip a rectangle, the full screen or a free form area and you will be able to add text and share the screenshot, otherwise it will be stored to your clipboard, so you can share it later.

Microsoft has stated that the original Snipping tool for Windows 10 will still be available until/unless they receive feedback from their users suggesting that they don’t need both apps.

Microsoft Edge

In October, Microsoft introduced several new tools for the Microsoft Edge browser. Firstly, line focus which allows you to highlight a set of maximum five lines at a time, so you can focus on web content.

Microsoft Edge also brings new learning and grammar tools, an offline dictionary that allows users to look up definitions for any word in Reading View when scrolling a page or a document even if they are offline (not connected to the Internet).

Microsoft constantly explores how people use their software and hardware and focuses on further improving user experience. If your organization needs help implementing or configuring any Microsoft solution, reach us today at 855-397-8776 or at sales@computersupport.com.