Microsoft Office Web Apps: Five Needed Fixes - underwoodthints

Microsoft officially completed its rollout of Office 2022 on Tuesday by releasing its new productivity cortege to retail stores, and conclusion the Office 2022 unbound explorative testing program. One of the just about discussed pieces of the late Office 2022 suite is Microsoft's bran-new free Office Web Apps including browser-based versions of Word, Stand out, PowerPoint and OneNote.

Overall, the new Web App suite is a jolly secure start for Microsoft, and will likely encourage users to stick to Microsoft Office as an alternative of switching to online competitors like Google Docs or Zoho. The new online version of Office is not meant to replace the background version, but is something you can habituate to get together online with different users operating room to use when a full-fledged version of Office International Relations and Security Network't useable.

Despite the fact that Web Apps aren't theoretical to be as full functioning A their desktop counterparts, thither are individual things Microsoft could do to its Place Entanglement Apps. Hera are 5 trouble spots that are crown of my mind:

Add Autosave to Word of honor

Autosave is an obvious feature. Google Docs has it, as does Microsoft's Surpass WWW App. But for some reason, Microsoft has left autosave prohibited of Word–meaning you are vulnerable to losing your work if you father't regularly sink in the save button. Microsoft figured out a age agone how important autosaving was, and added a version of IT called AutoRecover to the screen background version of Word. So why not add a kindred feature to the Word Web App, and save citizenry the hassle of worrying about losing their work?

Warn Me If I Accidentally Close A Tab

Some other problem I found was that Word will not e'er warn you if you try to close a Web App tab with unsaved work in it. So if you use the Watchword Web App, keep in head that regularly saving your work is up to you and not the app.

Support More Text file Formats

If you want to use Microsoft's Web Apps you can only save and download your documents victimization the DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX lodge formats that were first introduced with Microsoft Federal agency 2007. The problem is many users favour to use the MD, XLS, and PPT formats used by Microsoft until Office 2003. It would also constitute convenient if you could download your documents in other popular formats like unrhetorical text, lavish text, CSV, HTML and PDF; Google Docs and Zoho both offer this functionality.

Clearly, Microsoft wants to further people to update their Agency package and switch to the newer file formats, but that "boost" comes at the cost of convenience for Office Web Apps users.

Browser Parity

One of the more interesting and helpful features in Office WWW Apps is the fact that, with antimonopoly unmatched click of a button, you can outdoors a document forthwith in its desktop counterpart. If you're redaction monthly sales projections in Excel, you just hit the 'Receptive in Surpass,' button and your work opens up connected your desktop software system only is still saved online. The problem is that this have only plant with Firefox and I browsers along Windows, and doesn't work on all on a Mac computer.

The rationality for this is that the Open in Surpass, Word of God, OneNote, or PowerPoint function relies on Microsoft's ActiveX framework, which is not available for Macs or new major browsers in Windows like Chrome, Opera house, and Campaign. It would be improved if Microsoft could figure out a way to extend this functionality to all browsers and Mac computers that have Microsoft Office installed.

Word Is Not Oculus sinister Informal

Mack users will find another annoying feature in Word, this one tied to how the keyboard shortcuts function. Macintosh programs, including Microsoft Part for Mac, typically bank on the 'command' key nonnegative a letter key for shortcuts such as bold (command + b), cut (command + x), simulate (command + c), and paste (command + v).

But in the Word Web App, Mac users have to use their 'control' key rather of 'command' for keyboard shortcuts. The argue for this oversight is probably tied to the fact that Microsoft Windows uses the 'control' or 'CTRL' headstone instead of 'command' for keyboard shortcuts across most programs.

But this failure by Microsoft to adjust its Web Apps to multiple in operation systems, as Google does, shows a lack of understanding or so how people are accustomed to using their computers. Even up many puzzling is that the other Web Apps, including Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, allow Mac users to manipulation the control key for keyboard shortcuts. Only the Word Web App forces the control key onto Mac users.

As I said, overall Microsoft's Office Web Apps are beautiful good, but these five tweaks would make the cartesian product even better and to a greater extent competitive with online offerings from Google and Zoho.

Connect with Ian on Twitter (@ianpaul ).