Microsoft has officially confirmed that the cloud-based Office suite will soon be no more, with all its applications soon to come under the Microsoft 365 banner.
In November there will be new branding for office.com, then from January 2023 the changes will begin rolling out across the Office mobile and desktop app. These will have “a new icon, a new look, and even more features”, according to Microsoft.
The changes are coming to all current Office users – everyone with enterprise, education and personal subscription packages.
Despite these changes at the very top, the Microsoft suite of tools that sit underneath it (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams and others) will be largely unchanged.
Where change would come, though, is in the Microsoft 365 app itself. One of the biggest new features is My Content Hub – a feature previously only open to business subscribers – which pulls all the information shared with users into their own centralised, easy-to-navigate system.
Elsewhere, users can expect new templates across the Microsoft 365 suite, whilst business subscribers will be offered custom tags, to more easily categorise and index their content.
There will also be a better way for users to reach their most-used programs, with the functionality to pin them across Microsoft 365’s new Apps module. Plus, users can see their subscription and storage usage at-a-glance with the so-called ‘Welcome Badging’ headed to users on the web and Windows.
It’s thought that Microsoft’s decision to make this change was to put even greater emphasis on the features and functions of its cloud offering. In fact, the official announcement on the company website proclaimed early on: “Microsoft 365 is the cloud-first platform for all the ways that people work today”. It went on to explain how the new Microsoft 365 app was a “secure, integrated experience… that brings together all your documents, files, contacts, meetings, and more – with intelligent, Graph-powered recommendations personalized for you.”
