Special Office and Emoji keys coming to a keyboard near you

Microsoft is releasing two new keyboards with new keys; an Office key and a dedicated Emoji key.

Back in June we talked about the plans for an Office key to go alongside the existing Windows key. Here it is …

Source: Microsoft

The Office and Emoji keys are on the right of the spacebar.

Source: Microsoft

The new keyboards are Microsoft Bluetooth Keyboard and Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard they will be released on 15 October 2019.

Update

We’ve now laid our hands on a keyboard with the Office key and fully tested it see Office Key, all about Microsoft’s new keys

Office Key

Pressing the Office key opens the Office for Windows 10 app … the gateway app into the separate Office programs.

More useful are some key combinations for opening common Office programs:

Office + W – opens Word

Office + X  – Excel

Office + P – PowerPoint

Emoji Key

Microsoft obsession with Emoji continues with the addition of a dedicated Emoji key.

The Emoji key opens the emoji/character app that’s now in Windows 10.

If Microsoft would like to fix and improve the emoji panel, the emoji key would be a useful addition to the keyboard.

Unlike the Office key, there’s are perfectly good keyboard shortcuts already available:

Windows + . (period/fullstop)  or  Windows + ; (semi-colon)

Will they spread?

The Windows key started on Microsoft keyboards and spread to other manufacturers via a licensing agreement.

There’s no similar agreement for Office and Emoji keys … at least not yet.