Categories
MacBook Pro Microsoft News Software Touch Bar

Microsoft offers Touch Bar features in Office for Mac via Office Insider beta program

This could be pretty nifty.

Following the original October event for the 2016 MacBook Pro, wherein it was announced that Microsoft Office would offer Touch Bar integration in the coming months, this appears to be about to come true.

Microsoft has announced that Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook would feature Touch Bar support, including quick access to text formatting, object ordering and other tools.


In the case of Word, users can enter Focus Mode to hide all distractions on their primary display with the most-commonly used formatting options visible, instead, on the Touch Bar.

Heading and paragraph styles appear pre-rendered as Touch Bar buttons so you can preview what the text will look like at a glance.

For PowerPoint, the the Touch Bar offers a miniature slide deck, wherein you can navigate and reorder a presentation with a few taps. You can also tap a Reorder Objects button to bring up a graphical map of all the slide’s elements.

With regard to Excel, common formula functions such as sum and average can be found in the Touch Bar.

Finally, Touch Bar integration within Outlook offers quick email triage while a custom menu allows you to take Skype calls and perform functions such as toggling video, sharing a desktop and hanging up on a Skype call.

The Microsoft Office update with Touch Bar integration should be released soon and is currently only available to members of the Office Insider beta program. Still, it’s easy to join the pre-release pool should you decide to sign up for the beta.

Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.

Via 9to5Mac, The Verge and Microsoft’s Mac Office Insider Program