At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We believe that education unlocks potential and that technology can play a decisive role in helping the students of today create the world of tomorrow. At our event in New York City earlier today, we announced a set of new strategic investments in education, including exciting new innovations in Office 365 for Education and a preview of Office in the Microsoft Store for Education.
New innovations in Office 365 for Education
With more than 100 million active users, Office 365 empowers individuals, teams and entire organizations to communicate and collaborate. Office 365 for Education builds on this foundation and adds education-specific innovations like the OneNote Class Notebook and Learning Tools—creating the most complete, intelligent and secure service for teaching and learning. It offers the broadest and deepest toolkit for content creation, personalized learning and modern classroom collaboration. And best of all, Office 365 for Education is free for students and teachers!
In March, we released Microsoft Teams, a chat-based workspace, as the newest addition to Office 365. And at our event earlier today, we introduced new classroom experiences in Teams—new features that make Teams in Office 365 for Education the digital hub for teachers and students. These new innovations are in limited preview today and will be broadly available this summer.
The new classroom experiences in Teams will help teachers manage their daily workflow more easily than ever before. Using Teams, they can quickly and efficiently create classes with automatically populated student rosters from their school information system; share files and teaching materials; make announcements; divide the class into project groups and monitor progress; create, distribute and grade quizzes; deliver personalized learning with OneNote Class Notebooks; and distribute, collect and grade assignments. And because Teams is a digital hub, students can work together anytime, anywhere, and on any device; teachers can connect with their peers and continue their own development in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs); and school administrators can communicate and collaborate with their entire staff.
Even more exciting, the new classroom experiences will also help prepare students for the future. Anthony Newbold, principal at Bear Creek Middle School in Fairburn, Georgia, is an early adopter of Teams and helped us demonstrate the value of these new capabilities for teachers and students at our event this morning. He observed, “These new features do more than just simplify routine tasks. They also help students develop the communication and collaboration skills they’ll need to be successful in the future.” Word, Excel and PowerPoint Online already allow students to co-author documents in real time. But the rich, persistent conversation experience in Teams takes classroom collaboration to a whole new level. This running class discussion allows everyone to read, contribute and learn at their own pace—in class or at home. And moderation controls allow a teacher to easily delete a message, mute a student or pause the conversation. Teams conversations can include just about anything students need to work together, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents; OneNote notebooks; and Planner for group projects. And with just one click, the text-based discussion springs to life with voice and video—making it the ultimate collaboration experience.
Teams gets even better with partners, and today, we’re announcing four new integrations from education tech leaders busuu, Canvas, Flipgrid and Kahoot!. From directly within Teams, teachers can now help students learn a language with the busuu quizbot; access all their information and tools in Canvas; add video discussions with Flipgrid; and easily create and share Kahoot! learning games. All four integrations will be available this summer, and we’re committed to bringing more partners on board before the beginning of the next school year.
A preview of Office in the Microsoft Store for Education
Also at our event earlier today, Terry Myerson introduced Windows 10 S, a new Windows experience streamlined for security, simplicity and superior performance in the classroom. We’re pleased to announce a preview of Office in the Microsoft Store for Education starting in June—so teachers and students can enjoy the power of the full-featured Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps on Windows 10 S devices.
This preview of Office contains the Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps you know and trust, now delivered and updated from the Microsoft Store for Education. There are some differences in the apps that are worth calling out. The apps delivered from the Store will use new Store-based install and update technology; the apps will only be available in 32-bit format; and while web add-ins are fully supported, Office COM add-ins aren’t supported on Windows 10 S. The preview period will allow us to make sure things are running smoothly before we make Office in the Microsoft Store for Education generally available later this calendar year, and the apps will automatically be updated by the Store at that time. Additionally, it’s important to note that OneNote is already available in the Store today and the Teams app will be available in the Store in the third quarter of 2017.
Schools can install the preview on devices using the Set Up School PCs app or Microsoft Intune for Education. The preview will also be available for consumers through the Windows Store and can be activated on a Windows 10 S device with an Office 365 subscription.
We live in exciting times, and the pace of change can be breathtaking. With our new investments in education, we’re empowering the students of today to create the world of tomorrow. The new classroom experiences in Teams will not only help teachers manage their daily workflow more easily than ever before, they’ll also help students develop the communication and collaboration skills they’ll need to be successful in the future. And Windows 10 S will open a new world of possibilities in education. Combined with the power of Teams, OneNote and the full-featured Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps delivered from the Store, this new Windows experience will offer an affordable and easy-to-manage learning platform—inspired by teachers and students and streamlined for performance and simplicity.
As part of this month’s update, a new Excel feature gives you the ability to personalize the default layout for your PivotTables. Enabling users to personalize the PivotTable defaults started as a feature request in our Excel UserVoice forum. Now, when you’re building complex reports or performing one-off analyses, you can quickly get started with your favorite PivotTable layout. This feature is available for Excel 2016 on Windows as part of an Office 365 subscription. If you are already an Office 365 subscriber, find out how to get the latest update.
This month, we also included a tip when using OLAP connections to make your PivotTables much faster. Read on to learn more.
Personalize your PivotTable layout
There are two ways you can adjust the layout settings for the PivotTable defaults. One way is to simply click the newly added Edit Default Layout button under the File menu to display the Edition Default Layout dialog. Here you can make changes to many of your favorite layout options. Included are all the settings in the “Layout” chunk of the PivotTable Design contextual ribbon. We also included all the settings in the PivotTable Options dialog.
You can also import a layout from a PivotTable already in your workbook and customize the layout. This is a great way to start if you have a PivotTable in your workbook that has a layout you’d like to use all the time. Simply open the Edit Default Layout dialog, click anywhere within a PivotTable in your workbook and then click the Import button.
Either way, all new PivotTables you insert will have your favorite layout!
To learn more about how you can use this new feature, visit our support page.
Tip for OLAP PivotTables
If you use OLAP connections, making a change to your default layout could make the PivotTables you create much faster! Disabling the Subtotals and Grand Totals will help you take advantage of the performance improvements delivered in a previous update to Excel 2016.
In the Edit Default Layout dialog, simply set the Subtotals option to Do Not Show Subtotals and set the Grand Totals option to Off for Rows and Columns. This tip can work alongside changes to all the other options in the Edit Default Layout dialog. So feel free to keep toggling!
If you have any suggestions for a new feature you would like to see in Excel, head over to the UserVoice forum and become a part of the conversation!
We are excited to announce our second major update to Office Online Server (OOS), which includes support for Windows Server 2016 as well as several improvements. OOS allows organizations to provide users with browser-based versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote, among other capabilities offered in Office Online, from their own datacenter.
In this release, we officially offer support for Windows Server 2016, which has been highly requested. If you are running Windows Server 2016, you can now install OOS on it. Please verify that you have the latest version of the OOS release to ensure the best experience.
In addition, this release includes the following improvements:
Performance improvements to co-authoring in PowerPoint Online.
Equation viewing in Word Online.
New navigation pane in Word Online.
Improved undo/redo in Word Online.
Enhanced W3C accessibility support for users who rely on assistive technologies.
Accessibility checkers for all applications to ensure that all Office documents can be read and authored by people with different abilities.
We encourage OOS customers to visit the Volume License Servicing Center to download the April 17, 2017 release. You must uninstall the previous version of OOS to install this release. We only support the latest OOS version—with bug fixes and security patches available from Microsoft Updates Download Center.
Customers with a Volume Licensing account can download OOS from the Volume License Servicing Center at no cost and will have view-only functionality—which includes PowerPoint sharing in Skype for Business. Customers that require document creation and edit and save functionality in OOS need to have an on-premises Office Suite license with Software Assurance or an Office 365 ProPlus subscription. For more information on licensing requirements, please refer to our product terms.
Introducing Groups in Outlook for Mac, iOS and Android
More than 10 million people rely on Groups in Outlook every month to work together and get things done. Groups is proving useful to our customers. And for that, we couldn’t be more thankful. Groups in Outlook offers huge improvements over traditional distribution lists, with a shared space for group conversations, calendars, files and notebooks, the convenience of self-service membership and much more.
Today, we’re pleased to announce Groups is now rolling out to Outlook for Mac, iOS and Android. Groups is already available in Outlook for Windows and on the web—so now you can access your group conversations and content no matter which platform you use.
With these updates, you can:
View your group list.
Read and reply to group conversations.
Add group events to your personal calendar.
View unread messages sent to the group.
View group details within the group card (Outlook for iOS and Android only).
There is more to come as we continue to work on making Groups better in response to your input, so stay tuned.
Recently released updates for Groups in Outlook
In addition to bringing groups to more Outlook apps, we’ve released several new features for Groups in Outlook on other platforms, too.
Give guest access—Last fall, we updated Outlook on the web to give you the ability to set up guest access for people outside your organization, set group classification as defined by Office 365 admins, and view usage guidelines. Now, these same capabilities are available in Outlook for Windows.
Invite people to join—One of our most requested improvements was an easier way to invite multiple people to join a group. We’ve released the Invite to join feature to Outlook on the web, which lets you create invitation links and share them with others via email or other channels, giving them a quick way to join the group.
Multi-delete conversations—Group owners can now multi-select conversations and delete them from the group conversations space in Outlook for Windows.
Send email as a group—Office 365 admins can grant send-as and send-on-behalf-of permissions to members of a group using the Exchange admin center. Group members who have these permissions can then send emails as the group, or on behalf of the group, from Outlook for Windows and Outlook on the web.
What’s next
We’re always listening to your feedback as we deliver new Groups capabilities to Outlook. Here are a few of your key requests we are going to tackle next:
Add appointments to a group calendar in Outlook for Windows—When adding an event to a group calendar, you will have the option to do so without sending an invite to everyone in the group.
Addition of Mail Contacts as guests—You will be able to easily add Mail Contacts in your company’s directory as a guest in a group.
Thanks for the feedback, and please keep it coming via our UserVoice site.
New to Sway—recording, closed caption, navigation, autoplay and view counts
Over the last few months, we’ve been on the ground asking users what features they would like to see in the Sway app. We heard all the ways you use Sway in your personal, school and work lives, and listened to tons of great recommendations on how we could make these experiences even better. As a result of this partnership, we’re proud to announce another round of updates from the Sway team.
Audio recording
The ability to add audio to Sways was the top request from educators—as students and teachers (among others)—love to express their ideas and thoughts in this natural and intuitive way. Now, you can record your voice directly in Sway web app to make your Sway more interactive and engaging.
For more information on how to record audio in Sway and what browsers support audio recording, please see “Record audio in Sway.”
Closed caption
With the Microsoft mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, we continue to add features to improve accessibility. We are excited to announce that authors can now associate closed caption files with their audio recordings or audio files added from their local drive or OneDrive/OneDrive for Business. Office 365 authors can also associate closed caption files with any video files uploaded from their local drive or from OneDrive for Business.
First, add a new video or audio card to your Sway—by either uploading the content, recording it or adding the content from your OneDrive/OneDrive for Business account—and then expand the card using the Details button. Next, click the Add closed caption button at the bottom of the expanded card and select your closed caption file (.vtt format) and the language it is in.
When viewing a Sway that has a video with closed captions available, it is easy to simply select the option to turn closed captions on and the language of the closed caption they’d like to see.
Navigation view
Sways are now easier to navigate. Jump back and forth between sections or get a glimpse of the Sway content—all from the new Navigation view.
When you click or tap the Navigation icon (in the bottom-right corner), the Sway fades into the background and the Navigation view appears. Your Sway title, section headers, images and text collectively form an engaging and informative navigation view.
Here’s an example of the Navigation view in the Universe Sway:
Autoplay
You told us you wanted to automatically play and continuously loop a Sway for unattended cases such as billboards.
We’re happy to announce that, if you have an Office 365 subscription, you can now set your Sway to play automatically! If you are the author of the Sway, use the … menu on the top right to go to Settings and turn autoplay on. Additionally, you can autoplay any Sway you are viewing by clicking the Settings gear at the top right-hand corner of the Sway. In the Autoplay settings box, set the delay and then press Start. The Sway will now play automatically.
Once the Sway is playing, you can change the delay, pause or stop playback using the controls on the bottom-right corner.
View count
We also heard from our users that they want to know how engaged their audience is with their Sways. Now, authors can see how many people have viewed their Sway. We officially started the view count on March 13, 2017, so if you see “No data,” this means that the Sway has not had any viewers since that date.
We hope you enjoy using the newest features in Sway, and as always, we look forward to your suggestions, feedback and comments on our UserVoice page.
Create and manage up to 30,000 projects in Project Online
The Microsoft Project team is continuously innovating to meet our customers’ most-pressing needs. That’s why we’ve released additional features during the past six months—and why we’re now excited to announce a huge increase in the number of projects you can support through Project Online, a Microsoft Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) solution.
Create more projects, get more done
In the past, Project Online only allowed for 5,000 projects. Today, that increases six-fold, enabling you to create and manage up to 30,000 projects in the cloud. You’ve been asking for greater scale through Project Online, and we believe 30,000 projects gives you ample space and flexibility to get more done without resorting to cumbersome workarounds.
We’re also excited to announce several updates that improve performance and help you get the project information you need faster. One of these updates is the ability to create more project sites—also called subsites or collaboration sites. Before, there was a limit of 2,000 project sites. If you wanted more, you had to split them into multiple Project Web App (PWA) sites, impacting team productivity. Now, there’s a one-to-one relationship between projects and project sites. For example, if your Operations department creates 4,000 projects, it can also create 4,000 project sites across multiple site collections, boosting collaboration and information-sharing among project teams. Additionally, you can set the destination of these project sites in the Enterprise Project Type (EPT) template to help streamline project creation.
Access the Project Center data faster
More projects also means more data. Every time you go to the Project Center, Project Online calculates aggregate information—like total cost of all projects—which slows the time it takes to pull up that page. Going forward, you have the option to disable rollup groups and Gantt charts, bringing you the project data you need faster—especially as you create more and more projects. We also expedited the process for displaying a list of projects within Project Center and improved the custom filtering feature to help you quickly find the right project data.
We also released OData performance enhancements to decrease the transmission time for retrieving data from project reports. This is particularly helpful if you use SQL Server Integration Services to transfer data from Project Online into your own warehouse. You can download all your data at once, then pull the changed records at regular intervals to keep project data updated.
Lastly, we added modify dates to the following entities:
AssignmentBaseline
AssignmentBaselineTimephasedData
AssignmentTimephasedData
Engagement
EngagementsTimephasedData
ProjectBaseline
TaskBaseline
TaskBaselineTimephasedData
TaskTimephasedData
TimesheetLineActualData
ResourceDemandTimephasedData
ResourceTimephasedData
The Project team is always innovating to help customers achieve better project outcomes. Please go to our UserVoice page to submit ideas for improving Project. You can also visit the Microsoft PPM website to learn more about Project Online and other PPM offerings.
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Get your message across with Pickit add-in for Microsoft Office
Pickit makes it easy for Microsoft Office users to tell impactful stories by leveraging specially curated photos. Today, they announced their new image collection, “Talk Like a Rosling,” which features inspired content from statistician and presenter Hans Rosling and the latest project from his team at Gapminder—Dollar Street.
Learn more about the partnership and how you can use Pickit and their new collection at betterwith.office.com.
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When you click or tap the Navigation icon (in the bottom-right corner), the Sway fades into the background and the Navigation view appears. Your Sway title, section headers, images and text collectively form an engaging and informative navigation view.
We’re happy to announce that, if you have an Office 365 subscription, you can now set your Sway to play automatically! If you are the author of the Sway, use the … menu on the top right to go to Settings and turn autoplay on. Additionally, you can autoplay any Sway you are viewing by clicking the Settings gear at the top right-hand corner of the Sway. In the Autoplay settings box, set the delay and then press Start. The Sway will now play automatically.
