Microsoft Office Gets A New Identity With Added Features, Benefits

"Used by more than a half-billion people, free Office, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Skype, Outlook, OneNote, and OneDrive apps enable people to co-author, video chat, organize, and come together. We are committed to improving and innovating on these experiences every day," said Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President, Windows and Devices Group.

Additional Features

In addition, Microsoft unveiled two new Microsoft 365 experiences that will be available for preview in the coming months, namely the Microsoft Family Safety app and the Microsoft Teams. The first is designed to keep families safe across the digital and physical worlds, while the later is to help manage work and balance it with personal life.

Adding to the list, Microsoft Edge also gets a revamp to protect users while surfing the net. Password Monitor and Collections are new features added to Edge.

New Microsoft 365 Experiences

As part of the new Microsoft 365, the company has brought in AI-powered Microsoft editor, which looks quite similar to Grammarly. The new Microsoft Editor is available in 20+ languages and is infused with Word and Outlook.com. Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers have access to advanced grammar and style refinements such as rewrite suggestions and more.

Microsoft has also introduced Presenter Coach Features in PowerPoint, an AI-powered tool to help correct and refine speeches for presentations. For now, the feature is available as a free preview and will eventually be available for Microsoft 365 subscribers. There is also a PowerPoint Designer to boost creativity with access to over 8,000 images, notes Microsoft.

Microsoft Excel also gets revamped with new Data Types and Smart Templates, where a different and less time-consuming way to interact with data, providing deeper meaning for over 100 topics is available now.

Outlook also gets a couple of new features allowing users to manage all commitments, across work and life, in one place. With these new features, they can link their personal calendar to their work calendar to show their real availability, while still maintaining their privacy.

Microsoft 365 Availability, Price

The new features start rolling out to current Office 365 customers immediately. Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions will be available worldwide on April 21. These include premium desktop Office apps, 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage per person, 60 Skype minutes for calling mobile phones and landlines.

Users will also get advanced security features to protect users from malware, phishing attacks, ongoing technical support, plus all the new features and benefits just announced. Microsoft 365 Personal costs ₹4,199 a year. For the best value, a family of up to six people can use Microsoft 365 Family for ₹5,299 a year.