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 May.
May 29, 2020
Outlook
Quick Action buttons now appear in pop-up notifications
You’ll start seeing Quick Action buttons in your pop-up notifications when running Outlook on Windows 10. Now you’ll be able to flag, delete, or complete other actions from the notification. To configure the actions, right click in the Outlook message list and choose Set Quick Actions.
PowerPoint
Faster playback comes to Microsoft Stream videos
Microsoft Stream lets people in your organization upload, view, and share videos securely. You can share recordings of classes, meetings, presentations, training sessions, or other videos that your team needs. We previously enabled Stream as one of the supported online video sources in PowerPoint. Over the last few months, we’ve made significant performance improvements to the video playback experience. Now you’ll experience faster playback of Stream videos in your PowerPoint presentations.
Notable Fixes
- We fixed an issue where slides were not centered after zooming using the mouse wheel.
Word
Notable Fixes
- We fixed an issue where copy and pasting text to a comment pane would not be displayed.
- We fixed an issue where comment hint bubbles appeared blurry at 100% zoom.
- We fixed an issue where files with long path names (greater than 32K) would not open and an appropriate error message was not being displayed.
- We fixed an issue where enabling policy Word 2007 and later Binary Documents and Templates would cause some co-authoring cases to fail.
Excel
Notable Fixes
- We fixed an issue where Excel would occasionally shut down when engaging OneDrive.
- We fixed an issue where clicking a bookmarked hyperlink within the same workbook would cause the workbook to be hidden.
- We fixed an issue where some copy and pasted chart links used mapped drive addresses rather than universal addresses.
- We fixed an issue where Excel could become unresponsive after using Ctrl+Shift+Arrow keys to scroll when the Excel window was shared through Teams.
May 22, 2020
Excel,
Word and
PowerPoint
Pin your folders makes saving Office files easier
We received feedback that users want more control over the folders available when a new file is saved. We’re excited to bring a new capability to you: pin your folders in the Save dialog. This new capability will make saving your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files easier.
Excel
Notable Fixes
- We fixed an issue where the error message “This workbook is currently referenced by another and cannot be closed” would appear because add-ins were being loaded in alphabetical order rather than in a user specified order.
- We fixed an issue where memory was being corrupted when managing fonts between Excel and some third-party assistive technology applications.
- We fixed an issue where Excel would crash when add-ins ask for Host Items on worksheets that contain shapes with noSelect locks.
Word
Notable Fixes
- We fixed an issue where hyperlinks in comments weren’t working.
- We fixed an issue where pasting HTML into WordMail for Calendar wasn’t working.
- We fixed an issue where replying to a comment in a co-authored session could sometimes cause Word to freeze.
- We fixed an issue where zooming in and out from the presentation area resulted in a gap between the zoomed selection marquee and the mouse pointer.
- We fixed an issue where Word would crash when add-ins ask for Host Items on documents that contain shapes with noSelect locks.
PowerPoint
Notable Fix
- We fixed an issue where zooming in and out from the presentation area resulted in a gap between the zoomed selection marquee and the mouse pointer.
Outlook
Notable Fixes
- We fixed an issue where the Folder.BeforeItemMove event didn’t fire correctly when a user moved items between folders.
- We fixed an issue where users saw calendar items that spanned the midnight threshold as All day events.
- We fixed an issue where Outlook crashed when two add-ins added a button to the same group in the ribbon.
- We fixed an issue where users were unable to share a calendar with a guest user.
Project
Notable Fix
- We fixed an issue where Project would crash after clicking on Options.
May 15, 2020
PowerPoint
Use your Surface Earbuds to control your PowerPoint presentations
If you forget your clicker or don’t want to use, your Surface earbuds have you covered. You can swipe forward and backward on the left earbud to navigate your presentation when it is in Slide Show mode. You can play or pause videos embedded in your presentation by double tapping.
How it works
Once paired, you’ll need to enable the feature in PowerPoint.
- Start a presentation by pressing F5 or selecting Slide Show > From Beginning.
- In Slide Show, right click on the slide and under Surface Earbuds Settings choose Use Gestures to Control Presentation. This setting will be remembered for all future presentations.
Notable fixes
- We fixed an issue where keyboard shortcuts and spell check wouldn’t function as expected when using an English Switzerland (QWERTZ) keyboard.
Excel
- We fixed an issue that caused printer names to be duplicated in the list of available printers.
- We fixed an issue that resulted in improved performance time for users when they deleted merged columns.
Outlook
Find just what you need
Narrow your search with options like folder, sender, date, attachment info, and more.
Word
Notable fixes
- We fixed an issue where files with custom xml values opened extremely slowly.
- We fixed an issue where inserting or updating an Index in a document containing more than a hundred entries would result in the application crashing.
- We fixed an issue where adding a new comment on a blank document wouldn’t do anything.
Office Suite
Notable fixes
- We fixed an issue in Visual Basic for Applications in Microsoft Office where certain VBA projects that contain references to code libraries with double-byte characters in the library name or library path would be viewed by the Office application as corrupt on load.
May 14, 2020 ( Office insider monthly channel )
Excel
Natural Language Queries in Ideas in Excel
Tired of trying to remember tons of complicated formulas? Now you can simply ask Excel questions to glean insights from your data, all with the power of your voice! Using the intelligence that powers Ideas in Excel, natural language query will quickly answer users’ data questions with formulas, charts, or pivot tables. Simply click a cell in a data range, and then click the Ideas button. Enter a question in the query box at the top of the pane, and press Enter. Ideas will provide answers that you can insert into the workbook in the form of charts, tables, PivotTables and formulas answers.
Outlook
Outlook’s Calendar gets a refresh
After the successful refreshing of the mail experience last year, it was the calendar’s turn to get a facelift. Thanks to your feedback, we were able to implement updates that are fresh but familiar, so seasoned Outlook users, like you, can immediately be more productive.
Check out the screenshot below to take a look at some of the updates: bold headers, calendar-colored outlines, a new time indicator bar, and badges.
Access
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.
May 8, 2020
Outlook
Search at the top
The search box has moved to the title bar. This new home for search will leave a cleaner message list where you’ll have space to fit additional messages.
Excel,
Word,
PowerPoint and
Outlook
GIFs now play
Animated GIFs now play in the editor when previously there were static. They also have user controls with play and pause buttons.
Excel,
Word,
PowerPoint,
Outlook and
OneNote
Notable Fixes
- We have fixed an issue where an Office 365 ProPlus deployment via InTune was paused after an Office Suite shutdown.
May 1,2020
Excel
Notable Fixes
- Fixed an issue where chart data table could render values in a date axis incorrectly.
- Fixed an issue where page breaks could not be disabled after going into Page Layout or Page Break Preview.
- Fixed an issue where inserting a column in a filtered list would take longer than expected.
- Fixed an issue where chart line styles could be lost after hiding and unhiding columns with series data.
- Fixed an issue where a crash could occur when trying to list changes on a new sheet for a workbook using legacy Shared Workbook mode.
- Fixed an issue where custom formatting in Pivot charts may not be saved when the “Invert if negative” option was enabled.
- Fixed an issue where custom formatting for a single data point in a Pivot chart was not saved if the Invert if negative option was selected.
- Fixed an issue where entering the @ symbol added in a CSV file would result in the string following the @ symbol being converted to a formula.
- Fixed an issue where decimal values in the SEQUENCE function were not rounded correctly.
Word
Notable Fixes
- Fixed the issue where closing a document with draft comments would prompt the user to close the document without saving the draft comments and clicking Cancel would close the document rather than leaving it open.
- Fixed an issue where translating a posted comment would result in the Inserting translated text failed error message being displayed.
- Fixed an issue where clicking on a hint in Web View/Immersive reader would scroll to the top of the page even though it was already in view.
- Fixed an issue where inserting comments on a document in collaboration mode would not always work.
- Fixed an issue where the People card would flash if the @ mention was clicked.
- Fixed an issue that, when attempting to save a file containing a macro under a new name, would cause it to be saved with .docx extension and the filename WRO0004.docx, regardless of what the user entered, rendering the document unusable.
Outlook
Notable Fixes
- Fixed an issue where very long safelinks that users clicked on would fail to load due to truncation.
- Fixed an issue where Outlook folders with names containing DBCS (Double Byte Character Set) characters would intermittently disappear when synchronizing with the server if using an IMAP account and running on a system with the locale set to Japanese.
PowerPoint
Notable Fix
- Fixed an issue where if a user created a comment without posting it and closed the Comments pane, then opened a new window, navigated through multiple slides and, closed the window, and finally re-opened the Comments pane in the original presentation, the draft comments would not be available.
Project
Notable Fix
- Fixed an issue where if Project is connected to Project Web App and the decimal separator is a comma, the TaskDependencies.Add method fails when Lag is added.