Microsoft Office 2019: What’s New And Different

While Microsoft has well and truly made the transition to the cloud, through Office 365, Azure and many other cloud-based services, regular desktop software is still important. Office 2019 for Windows and Mac was released overnight, at the company’s Ignite event. Office 2019 includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Project, Visio, Access, and Publisher.

Office 2019 includes a bunch of enhancements and new features that focus on better collaboration, use artificial intelligence and offer improved security.

PowerPoint 2019 gets new features to make your presentations really pop and new inking features across all the Windows apps in Windows further bolster Microsoft’s commitment to using tablets and well traditional computers The new features include a roaming pencil case, better pressure sensitivity, and tilt effects that allow you to naturally create documents.

Excel 2019 receives new data analysis tools such as new formulas and charts and enhancements to PowerPivot.

Word 2019 and Outlook 2019 get a new Focus Mode to block out distractions and the new Focused Inbox moves less important emails out of the way.
IT admins get new features to help them with deployment as well. Click-to-Run, which arrived in Office 2013 gets a boost and will make Patch Tuesday monthly security updates easier. There will also be a simplified migration to Office 365Pro.

Updates to Exchange Server 2019, Skype for Business Server 2019, SharePoint Server 2019, and Project Server 2019 will also be coming soon.

Commercial volume license (trusted) customers can access Office 2019 starting today from today with the broader consumer and commercial release expected in a few weeks

New Features

Word

• Black theme
• Learning tools (captions and audio descriptions)
• Speech feature (text-to-speech)
• Improved inking functionality
• Accessibility improvements

Excel

• Funnel charts, 2D maps, and timelines* New Excel functions and connectors
• Ability to publish Excel to PowerBI
• PowerPivot enhancements
• PowerQuery enhancements

PowerPoint

• Zoom capabilities for ordering of slides within presentations
• Morph transition feature
• Ability to insert and manage Icons, SVG, and 3D models
• Improved roaming pencil case

Outlook

• Updated contact cards
• Office 365 Groups
• @mentions
• Focused inbox
• Travel and delivery summary cards

Intelligent security

• ATP in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneDrive for Business
• Office 365 Message Encryption
• Office Enterprise Protection
• Add sensitivity label in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook