Office 365 changes include ink editing in Word and ink to text in PowerPoint

Microsoft has announced upcoming new features in Office for Windows, Office 365.  We’ll be looking at them in detail but here’s Microsoft’s summary.

We’ll start with the important rollout information, these features aren’t in Office yet, they are coming to Insiders first and later to regular users.

Here’s the Microsoft blurb ….

• Ink analysis in PowerPoint–Rolling out to Office 365 and Microsoft 365 customers enrolled in Office Insiders over the next month.
• New ink gestures in Word–Rolling out to Office 365 and Microsoft 365 customers enrolled in Office Insiders over the next month.
• AI enhancements in Word for Mac–Rolling out to Office 365 and Microsoft 365 customers enrolled in Office Insiders over the next month.

Ink analysis in Microsoft PowerPoint–We enhanced shape and text recognition in PowerPoint to give users more freedom to create content in a natural way. Now Microsoft 365 subscribers can convert any handwritten words on their slides into text and draw new shapes like hearts and clouds. You can also sketch out an entire slide and then convert all your drawings at the same time, instead of addressing each shape individually, making it easier to convert ideas to professional looking slides in a matter of moments.

Easily convert hand-drawn words and shapes into text and objects in PowerPoint.

New ink gestures in Microsoft Word–New ink gestures for editing in Word allow you to add handwritten text to a document and interact with existing content using a pen. Now Microsoft 365 subscribers can quickly split paragraphs into multiple lines, insert words into existing sentences, and join separated words, all using natural pen-based gestures. These top requested features make it easier to naturally edit documents and quickly implement changes and suggestions.

Quickly insert words in sentences by drawing a “caret.”

AI enhancements in Word for Mac–We brought popular AI capabilities to Word for Mac to help you work more confidently and produce superior documents. Now Mac users can translate sections of text or entire documents from over 60 languages, including 11 that use neural machine translation to understand sentence context and produce more accurate results. Subscribers can also use Resume Assistant to craft compelling resumes with personalized insights powered by LinkedIn.