Office Insiders get Touch Bar support on the Mac

Microsoft today rolled out a new update for Office apps to Office Insiders in the Slow Ring. The latest update for the Office apps on the Mac introduces support for Touch Bar on the new MacBook Pro, which gives users access to quick controls on the Office apps such as Word, Excel, and Outlook.

As we detailed back in October, here’s how the Office apps will work with the Touch Bar:

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.

The support for Touch Bar on the Mac is available with the latest update (version 15.31), if you are an Office Insider, you can get the latest update for Office by checking for updates from the Help section. Once you install the update, the Touch Bar support should work as expected.