The world’s most popular authoring experience, Microsoft Office, is now going to reach a whole new level. Microsoft today announced via a blog post that they are rolling out three huge updates for their Office and OneDrive services. The updates, apparently, will make working with others easier.
While both these services used together or otherwise were already quite handy, the new features are going to make the work experience over them a lot more enjoyable.
The three feature updates announced through the blog post for the services are:
- The ability to sync folders/files to your desktop.
- Push notifications when someone edits shared content.
- Easier to search for shared content.
Let’s start with the basics. OneDrive, as of yesterday, allowed users to access shared content via the Shared list in OneDrive.com. This was all well and good but most people found it to be a headache to keep logging onto the cloud service to just gain access to a few files.
To make it much simpler and easier for users to utilize the service, OneDrive has now received a new feature called “Add to my OneDrive” which lets users add shared folders to their main OneDrive folder so they sync down to the OneDrive app on their Mac or PC. This can be later viewed and edited in the OneDrive mobile app.
The service can also be used during a collaborative project where a group of people work on a single file. The service is very easy to use and it avoids problems such as forking etc too. The feature is exclusive to Office and OneDrive and will be available on Windows 10, Windows 7, and Mac (8.1 users can upgrade to Windows 10 for free).
The second big upgrade OneDrive has received today is the new notification feature that will let users know when someone edits their shared content.
You could get notifications in two ways. The first of which is like a push notification service. You get real-time notifications of which document is being edited and who edited it. You can also couple your Apple Watch to this service. The second method is more traditional. You will receive an email containing a daily summary report of edits to files you’ve shared. This feature also enables you to roll back to a previous version of your file if you do not like the latest one.
The third and final big update OneDrive and Office have scored is the new search technique. While searching for your own files is quite easy as you might remember its name or some other key phrase, most users remember other shared files through their content. Using this to their benefit, folks at Microsoft have designed a new algorithm to search for shared files. You will now be able to find files by their content.
Concluding the announcement, Jason Moore, Group Program Manager of OneDrive says:
Office is the world’s most popular authoring experience, and with these new capabilities we hope that OneDrive and Office will continue to be the best way to get work done with others. We hope you’re as excited about these updates as we are, and as always, please let us know about future updates you’d like to see on our UserVoice!
