Microsoft details upcoming Touch Bar support on Office for Mac
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Yesterday, Apple announced that Microsoft will be adding support for the new “Touch Bar” feature on Apple’s new MacBooks to some of its apps. At the event, we didn’t really get a lot of details on how exactly Microsoft plans on integrating the Touch Bar on its apps — but Microsoft released a new blog post last night, detailing the upcoming Touch Bar support on Office for Mac.
First up is Word, where the Touch Bar will allow users to enter Word’s Focus Mode easily which allows users to focus on the content and remove all the other things like the ribbon, etc. From there, users can use the formatting buttons on the Touch Bar to edit their text — for example, they can change the color of the text, change the font style, etc.
On PowerPoint, you also get most of the same things as Word but the Touch Bar will show a graphical map of all the layers on a slide — which you will be able to reorder right from the Touch Bar. Excel, on the other hand, gives you access to the recently used functions in the Touch Bar which can be quite useful if you are an Excel power user. In addition to the functions, users will also get access to cell colors and recommended charts on the Touch Bar.
Microsoft is adding support for Touch Bar to Outlook on Mac as well. When composing an email, the Touch Bar will display a list of your recent documents — allowing you to quickly attach a file to an email. Additionally, there will also be a “Today” view on the Touch Bar which will essentially display a list of events from the day — you can either view that event or start up a Skype for Business meeting right from the Touch Bar. And lastly, Touch Bar integration is coming to Skype for Business where you will be able to quickly mute, share desktop, hang-up a call, enable/disable video on a Skype for Business call from the Touch Bar.
Microsoft didn’t share when these features will be available, but we assume they are already available and you should be able to try them out when you get your new MacBook Pro.
