Starting today, Windows 10 users have a great new way to get started with Office and jump into their work quickly – a new app simply called, Office.
The Office app provides users with a simple experience that helps them get to what they need quickly – whether that’s an app, a document, or even a person in your organization. We released the app as a preview to Windows Insiders in December 2018 and have heard lots of great feedback from people who have found it to be a helpful way to get started with Office. We are thrilled to now make it available for free to anyone using a current version of Windows 10, whether at work, at school, or at home.
You can use the Office app with almost any version of Office – even the free version of Office Online. The experience will look familiar to anyone who has used Office.com with users finding quick access to all their Office apps and documents. However, we’ve made the experience even better by bringing it to an app form. Now you can get to the Office desktop apps if installed on your device in addition to the web apps on Office Online, access files stored on your local device in addition to OneDrive and SharePoint, and use it while working offline.
Here are a few of the most compelling things you can do with the Office app:
- Quickly access the most common Office apps and services you need to get things done.
Now you can access all of the Office apps available to you whether you have them installed on your device or not. If an app is installed on your machine the Office app knows to take you there; otherwise it knows to take you to the web version on Office Online.
- Find a full list of all the Office apps and services available to you along with helpful tutorials and links to learn more about them.
You can easily see every Office app available to you by clicking on “Explore all your apps” under the menu of commonly used apps on the home screen. There you will find a few helpful tips and tricks at the top of the screen, or click on “Learn more” next to any of the apps to understand what they do and how to use them.
- Easily get to the documents you need from any application, all in one place.
The Office app keeps track of the most relevant documents to you so you can jump into your work quickly. You can get to the documents you have most recently used, you have pinned for easy access, or that have been shared with you by others. It will even help you find content relevant to you created by colleagues within your organization.
We have also built the Office app with organizations in mind. There are several capabilities that IT Administrators may choose to enable for their organizations:
- Customize the user experience with branding from the organization
- Enable users to access third party apps using AAD through the Office app
- Activate Microsoft Search so users can use one search experience to find documents and people across the organization in addition to their own apps and documents
To see the Office app in action and learn more about these and other features, check out the latest Microsoft Mechanics video about progressive web apps which highlights the Office app at the 5:30 mark.
The Office app is free to use and simple to access. It will become available to users on a rolling basis over the next few weeks and will be installed automatically as an update to the MyOffice app, which comes pre-installed as part of Windows. Just search for “Office” in the search bar of the Windows start menu to open it. The app can also be downloaded from the Microsoft Store if needed. Once you open the app, just sign in with your work, school, or free personal Microsoft Account to get started. The app works with any Office 365 subscription, Office 2019, Office 2016, and Office Online – the free web-based version of Office for consumers.
Go try out and explore the Office app to see how you can use it to make you even more productive with Office.