By AppleInsider Staff
Monday, October 02, 2017, 04:35 pm PT (07:35 pm ET)
Microsoft on Monday issued a number of so-called 'Insider Fast' builds of Office 2016 for Mac to Office Insider beta testers, teasing a slate of upcoming features that should roll out to consumers in the coming weeks.Monday, October 02, 2017, 04:35 pm PT (07:35 pm ET)
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Detailed in a combined release notes webpage for current Office for Mac apps, the latest Insider Fast builds are considered previews of the 'next major version' of Microsoft's app suite.
The latest releases incorporate a number of highly requested features, new additions and bug fixes for Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint. As expected, most upgrades impact users with Office 365 subscriptions, Microsoft's cloud-based productivity solution.
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Starting with Word, Office 365 subscribers will benefit from a new AutoSave feature when working with OneDrive and SharePoint files, which automatically saves documents as users work. The function is similar to other auto-save products like Google Docs, and can be deactivated in program settings.
Also new for Word is real-time collaboration and sharing. Office 365 subscribers can co-author OneDrive and SharePoint files with other users, while new options streamline the process of sharing OneDrive for Business and SharePoint files with colleagues.
Finally, Microsoft is adding a series of new chart types for embedding in Word documents, including Waterfall, Histogram, Pareto, Box & Whisker, Treemap and Sunburst. The company touts the charts as designed to enable quick visualization of common financial, statistical and hierarchical data.
Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet tool benefits from collaborative features similar to those built into Word, meaning users can simultaneously edit workbooks stored in OneDrive and SharePoint. The app also gets access to the same new chart types mentioned above.
Specific to Excel are new IFS and SWITCH functions, which simplify and shorten spreadsheet formulas. The Insider Fast build includes better support for charts with PivotTable data sources, as well as Table Slicers for quick filtering.
Microsoft is bringing its Mac iteration in line with Widows with updated Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), though not all object models are supported at this time.
PowerPoint comes with a raft of upgrades, including real-time collaboration, document change and revision tracking, auto-save and more.
QuickStarter, which leverages the Bing Knowledge graph to build a presentation outline on specified subject mater, is now available for Mac, as is Trim Media, which allows users to cut unwanted content from the beginning and end of inserted audio and video clips. PowerPoint Designer on Mac adds additional triggers and layouts to match the full functionality of its Windows counterpart.
Moving on to Outlook, the email management tool receives a modest update with emoji support when composing messages.
Microsoft's OneNote, did not receive a new Insider Fast build on Monday, suggesting only minor changes are in store for the digital note taking tool.
When Microsoft plans to roll out the major Office 2016 for Mac update is unclear, though a rapid Insider Fast build release schedule suggests public availability is imminent.
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One of the many small, but annoying, limitations in Office for Mac is the Insert Symbol feature.
In Word for Windows it’s quite developed with a list of recently used characters:
Or open up the main dialog to scroll through many more symbols or jump to exactly the one you want.
But Word 2016 for Mac is just a cursory effort that’s typical of Microsoft’s ‘just enough – but no more’ attitude to the Mac version of Office.
Here’s Insert | Advanced Symbol. We assume the term ‘Advanced’ is used here sarcastically because there’s little ‘advanced’ about it.
As Office-Watch reader, Peter C. noted in an email to us
“I cannot seem to access symbols not visible in the panel, … has Microsoft intentionally restricted the range of non-keyboard characters and symbols available on the Mac version of Word?“
The Word for Mac dialog only shows the first 228 characters in a font! That’s OK for an old-fashioned ASCII font but modern Unicode fonts can have over 100,000 characters! At least in Word for Windows you can scroll through the list.
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Also missing is the important ‘subset’ pull-down list. If Word for Mac supported the full range of characters, the subset feature would let you jump to a group of characters.
![Mac Mac](/uploads/1/2/6/1/126133231/109484207.png)
Even if you know the ASCII or Unicode number for the character, you can’t type it in as you can in Office for Windows.
The Keyboard Shortcut option is no help either, because it’s limited to making shortcuts from the symbols visible on the dialog.
The fix
The fix for Macintosh users is the same as in Office for Windows … look to the operating system.
In Office for Windows, use the Windows Character Map
The equivalent on the Mac is the expanded keyboard setting. Go to Apple | System Preferences | Keyboard and check the option ‘Show Keyboard and Character viewers’.
Or
Command + Control + Spacebar
shortcut to open the Character Viewer.Now the top toolbar has an extra icon. Choose the Keyboard viewer or the Emoji & Symbols floating window.
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