Microsoft Details Improvements to Office Online Coming in 2015

Microsoft on Wednesday announced the list of upcoming improvements for its Office Online suite of apps. The company said that it is rolling out updates which will improve "the Reading View, file management and editing experiences."

Starting with the new reading experience, the Microsoft Office team on its blog said the 'Reading View' mode has been enhanced with an updated toolbar so that the Edit, Print, Share and Comments commands are now one click away, and that advanced tools, such as Translate or Download a file, are easier to find. Users will also be to print faster, with Microsoft enabling the direct printing of pdf files without having to download them first.

The Office team has also expanded the 'Save As' option, which saves a copy of the file to OneDrive, will now allow users to select a new location and rename the file as well. Additionally users will also be able download a copy of a file onto a computer, or convert and download it as a pdf.

With 'Add to OneDrive' option on the toolbar, users will also be able to save files which only have "view only" permissions. Once saved, the files can be edited or shared.

The Help tool icon now features the 'Tell Me' box, located on the top part of the ribbon. Here users can directly type search queries, and then either select the relevant Office tool, go to a help article, or get additional information from Bing.

The Office team has also revamped the Office Online start page, suggesting that "the new start experience is optimised to get you into the right editing experience as fast as possible. Now you can directly navigate to your most recently used files or see more files on your OneDrive. You can also quickly create a document with the new blank page template or any other template on your screen."

(Also see: Microsoft Office 2016 Scheduled to Release in Second-Half of 2015)

For proofreading documents, the company is introducing the highlighted word count feature. "Instead of only knowing the total word of your document, you can check on specific sections. Highlight the relevant text and then in the lower left corner of the screen you'll see the highlighted word count and the total document word count together," explains company.

With the recent release of the preview Office for Android tablet apps, the company has added another feature to Office Online that lets users with the preview apps installed choose to open the files in those apps, by using the Open in Word, Open in Excel, and Open in PowerPoint commands in Office Online (only in the Chrome browser app).