If there’s one Microsoft product you should care about more than Windows 10, it’s the company’s Office suite. And Microsoft just announced that its Office 2019 preview is available for Windows 10 users to try right now.
If you’re already an Office 365 user, then Microsoft’s Office 2019 isn’t for you because your subscription-based productivity suite already offers the same features that are being introduced in Microsoft’s newest update. But if you hate the subscription model and want an Office version that you only pay for once, then you could always check out Office 2019.
In a blog post on Friday, Microsoft’s Jared Spataro announced that the commercial preview of Office 2019 includes a bunch of updated applictions, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, Access, Project, Visio, and OneNote for Windows 10. Spataro teased a bunch of new features for Office 2019, which may sound familiar to Office 365 customers:
Office 2019 delivers new features to help end users create amazing content in less time. Updates include new and improved inking features across the apps, like the roaming pencil case, pressure sensitivity, tilt effects, and ink replay; more powerful data analysis in Excel, like new formulas, new charts, and Power BI integration; and sophisticated presentation features in PowerPoint, like Morph and Zoom. These features are already included in Office 365 ProPlus but are not available in Office 2016.
Microsoft also said that with the arrival of Office 2019, all Office versions will be moved to Click-to-Run, a deployment platform that allows IT managers to quickly and easily update Office across a large number of devices.
You can sign up for the Windows 10 version of Office 2019 at this link. In the coming months, preview versions for Mac, as well as Exchange 2019, SharePoint 2019, Project Server 2019, and Skype for Business 2019 will be rolled out. Microsoft also announced on Friday that its new Windows 10 April 2018 Update will begin rolling out on April 30th.
