In Word, however, searches for “insert bold text,” “insert footnote,” and “find Web art” all brought up what I was looking for. In Outlook 2015, I tried searching for “out of office,” instead of the more Office-like “automatic replies.” Neither query worked, whether as a search for the terms themselves or a more naturally-phrased query. At this point, it doesn’t work all that well. The “Tell me” search bar allows you to simply ask the app what you want to do. The best part is that it doesn’t tell you how to perform a specific function it simply offers you a simple step to actually do it. The “Tell me” bar, as Microsoft calls it, invites you to ask in the search field how to perform actions (such as adding footnotes), rather than hunt the feature down through a maze of menus. One of the more useful features of Office 2016 is the specialized search bar at the top of many of the Office apps. I did notice a slightly narrower, less legible menu font during my testing on a Surface 3, compared to what Brad saw on his desktop, which could be a scaling issue with our different displays. Otherwise, most Office 2016 apps are virtually identical to Office 2013, for now. In Word 2016, this seems to be the extent of “real-time editing,” for now. An alert box also let me know that I wouldn’t be seeing real-time updates, just static changes. Once Brad saved, I could see his edits, but only if I weren’t trying to edit the same text field at the time. Brad was able to sign in with his PCWorld/IDG credentials and open the document in-app, but the “real-time” collaboration was more like playing checkers than Pong. What we expected to happen, of course, was for Word to allow us to edit the document collaboratively in Word 2016, or else for Office to open Office Online and do it there. If the file isn’t there, it will be attached. In Outlook 2016, most file “attachments” are links to the file stored in OneDrive. An error message said the operation failed due to an installation problem, and I’d be forced to reinstall. When it rebooted and updated, Outlook and other Office apps wouldn’t launch. After this story was written, the Surface 3, my test machine, crashed. The installation was simple and painless, unlike the earlier Office 2016 IT Pro and Developer Preview. The preview expires in 180 days, the software says. Microsoft used its click-to-run technology to stream and install Office in the background, downloading preview copies of Access 2016, Excel 2016, OneNote 2016, Outlook 2016, PowerPoint 2016, Publisher 2016, and Word 2016 to my machine. You can also install it through an Office 365 subscription if you have one. I downloaded a 32-bit version of the Office preview using the Office 2016 preview download methods my colleague Brad Chacos described, replacing the version of Office 2013 installed on my test machine. Microsoft released the preview on Monday. You’ll need a Microsoft account to take full advantage of what Office 2016 offers. The “death of downloading” hasn’t happened yet, but it seems nigh. Office 2016 also shifts how we interact with data in one important way: It actively encourages you to share data via the cloud, rather than files that you download and append to documents.
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