NEW FEATURES/FIXES
You can find and follow all monthly Office insider new features and fixes (updates) on our blog. 👍🏻 Officer insider gets updates and new features regularly. It is important to follow these Office insider updates and use them in terms of increasing your knowledge. Now let’s take a look at what kind of changes happened in Office insider in the month of April.
April 24, 2020
Outlook
Automatically shorten links for OneDrive & SharePoint files
We’ve made these updates to improve the readability of links to OneDrive and SharePoint files that are shared with recipients using Outlook for Windows. Senders will also be warned if Outlook detects potential access issues for recipients. Then they will be given the ability to address them prior to sending. This will ensure that the links you send will work for recipients.
How it works
- When you’re composing an email, you can perform one of these actions:
- Copy a link to a file stored on OneDrive or SharePoint. Then paste it into the body of an email message.
- On the Message tab, select Link > Insert Link and select a file stored on OneDrive or SharePoint.
- Right-click the body of an email message and select Link > Insert Link. Then select a file stored on OneDrive or SharePoint.
Notable fixes
- We fixed an issue where the Categorize button in the ribbon was disabled.
- We fixed an issue where enterprise customers with group folders that were not implemented or not working, would result in Outlook displaying a “not responding” message.
Excel
Notable fixes
- We fixed an issue where the chart trendline R-squared value (in the forced y-intercept case) was incorrect even though the LINEST function returns the correct value.
- We fixed an issue where the customized chart trendline formatting was not always being saved.
Word
Notable fixes
- We fixed an issue where the option “Show bookmarks” would not display bookmarks.
- We fixed an issue where text with hyperlinks were not displaying if the option: “Show field codes instead of their values” was enabled.
PowerPoint
Notable fixes
- We fixed an issue where hovering over the asterisk (*) symbol did not display the username and date of the last person to update the document.
April 17, 2020
Excel
Notable fixes
- We fixed an issue where workbooks saved with a digital signature in Excel 2016 could have the signature invalidated when opening the workbook in the current version of Excel.
- This change fixes an issue where conditional formatting information was not being saved to XLSB files correctly.
- We fixed an issue where the Custom Error Bar box had narrow fields for the error values cells.
- We fixed an issue where the check box in form controls was shrinking when you selected Print or Print Preview.
- We fixed an issue where Application.Evaluate was not working for user-defined functions in some cases.
Outlook
Notable fixes
- We fixed an issue where users were unable to add a personal contact group as a meeting attendee.
- We fixed an issue that was preventing Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions default signing configuration from being enforced via group policy.
- We fixed an issue where delete rules for mailboxes other than the user’s primary one wouldn’t work.
- We fixed an issue where attachments would get dropped when an encrypted message was forwarded.
- We fixed an issue where meeting subjects wouldn’t display in Scheduling Assistant if the meeting was more than two months away.
- We fixed an issue where users were seeing message body truncation when forwarding large HTML messages.
Project
Notable fixes
- We fixed an issue where Project was sometimes crashing when a user changed the board status field on a project that was connected to a SharePoint task list.
- We fixed an issue where Project was sometimes crashing when saving projects created with older versions of Project.
- We fixed an issue where when a user edited Predecessor/Successor data in Form view, an extra ProjectBeforeTaskChange would launch.
OneNote
Notable fixes
- We fixed an issue where line breaks were being stored as vertical tabs.
April 16, 2020
Meet the new Action Pen in Word
In addition to our general Drawing Tools, we are bringing intelligent tools, optimized for core experiences to each app. The new Action Pen in Word helps you edit documents with ink gestures. This is an easier way to launch the ink editing experience in Word. It replaces the previous Ink Editor button that you had on the Draw tab in Word.
How to access
1. Locate the Action Pen on the right side of the toolbox (next to the other drawing tools), select it and start using intelligent ink.
Excel
Workbook Statistics – get a quick summary of what’s in your workbook. Click Review > Workbook Statistics.
Outlook
Join Online button
You can now join Teams meetings with one click when you pin your Calendar to-do bar. Users will see a Join Online button for any ongoing or upcoming Teams meetings in the Calendar to-do bar.
Easier sign in when you’re away
When users would previously access WIFI with an outside portal, like at a hotel or on a plane, Outlook would show technical errors. A new feature eliminates the error notifications and instead shows a bar at the top of Outlook that tells you what’s happening and provides a link to finish connecting. To give it a try, join a WIFI network that requires a web page interaction to gain network access (Starbucks, Gogo Inflight, etc.)
April 10, 2020
Excel, Word, Outlook andPowerPoint
Introducing premium creative content
Office 365 subscribers can now easily add high quality, curated images, stickers, and icons to their personal or professional documents, files, and presentations in Excel, Word, Outlook and PowerPoint. Search from more than 8,000 royalty-free images and icons with more to come!
How it works
1. Select Insert > Pictures > Stock Images.
2. Select the content type you want to explore: Stock Images, Cutout People, Icons, or Stickers.
3. Enter some keywords in the Search box.
4. Select the image you want and select Insert.
Word
Private Annotations
Private Annotations is a way for you to easily create a Private Copy of shared documents for your personal annotations. This allows you the time and space to collect your thoughts, and thoroughly review a document on your own.
Notable fixes
- We fixed an issue where hovering a cursor over a ScreenTip would not highlight its card.
- We fixed an issue where the text in grouped shapes would temporarily disappear when using the Lasso tool.
- We fixed an issue where if a paragraph whose style is an ancestor of a style linked to a list, then the numbering of that list could be lost.
- We fixed an issue where when a user was creating a comment, the comment anchor didn’t come into view when the document was in two page view.
- We fixed an issue where the rendering of a legacy Excel chart embedded as an OLE (object linking and embedding) in Word did not always display the chart title.
PowerPoint
Synchronize changes while you are presenting
For years, PowerPoint didn’t allow changes made to slides by others to be displayed while presenting. However, while some presenters may still desire this design, we’ve heard from others that they are seeking more flexibility. We’re excited to make available the ability to synchronize changes whenever they are made, even when the presentation is in Slide Show mode.
Notable fixes
- We fixed an issue where copying text from Excel to PowerPoint could change the formatting.
- We fixed an issue where finding special characters using “find whole words only” didn’t always work.
- We fixed an issue where the rendering of a legacy Excel chart embedded as an OLE (object linking and embedding) in PowerPoint did not always display the chart title.
Access
Synchronize changes while you are presenting
New Add Tables pane
Navigating tables and queries to establish relationships just got easier in Access! The new Add Tables pane will increase your productivity when you’re developing and viewing relationships and provide an enhanced querying experience.
How it works
1. Select Database Tools > Relationships.
2. The Add Tables pane should appear to the right of the screen. If it does not, right-click and select Show Tables, and it will appear.
Excel
New Add Tables pane
Navigating tables and queries to establish relationships just got easier in Access! The new Add Tables pane will increase your productivity when you’re developing and viewing relationships and provide an enhanced querying experience.
How it works
1. Select Database Tools > Relationships.
2. The Add Tables pane should appear to the right of the screen. If it does not, right-click and select Show Tables, and it will appear.
Outlook
High resolution photos in email
Previously when users would insert an image into an Outlook message, the photo would be converted to 96 ppi resolution. This new feature does not convert the images to a smaller size and instead adds your PNG, JPEG, BMP, GIF images to your message at their original resolution.
Notable fixes
- We fixed an issue where some reminders failed to launch when the time zone was changed on a machine.
- We fixed an issue where users experience a crash when attempting to view the properties of an Organizational Forms Library.
- We fixed an issue where categories would occasionally disappear from messages.
- We fixed an issue where delegates would see different folder hierarchies on different machines for shared mailboxes.
Proje
Notable fixes
- We fixed an issue that was preventing users from entering time-phased Baseline Work when the setting to protect actual work was on.
