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Google Adds Passkeys to Advanced Protection Program for High-Risk Users

The Hacker News - 10 Červenec, 2024 - 12:06
Google on Wednesday announced that it's making available passkeys for high-risk users to enroll in its Advanced Protection Program (APP). "Users traditionally needed a physical security key for APP — now they can choose a passkey to secure their account," Shuvo Chatterjee, product lead of APP, said. Passkeys are considered a more secure and phishing-resistant alternative to passwords. Based on
Kategorie: Hacking & Security

Google Adds Passkeys to Advanced Protection Program for High-Risk Users

The Hacker News - 10 Červenec, 2024 - 12:06
Google on Wednesday announced that it's making available passkeys for high-risk users to enroll in its Advanced Protection Program (APP). "Users traditionally needed a physical security key for APP — now they can choose a passkey to secure their account," Shuvo Chatterjee, product lead of APP, said. Passkeys are considered a more secure and phishing-resistant alternative to passwords. Based on Newsroomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]
Kategorie: Hacking & Security

Copilot for Microsoft 365 deep dive: Productivity at a steep price

Computerworld.com [Hacking News] - 10 Červenec, 2024 - 12:01

The AI age has come upon us more quickly than anyone imagined. In just a year and a half, OpenAI’s generative AI tool ChatGPT and its offspring Microsoft Copilot went from a fad to must-have business tools in which the companies are investing billions.

Now the genAI frontrunner, Microsoft is building Copilot into its full product line. There’s a free version of Copilot in Windows and in the Edge browser. There’s a paid Copilot Pro subscription for individuals. There’s a Copilot for Security, a Copilot for Sales, a Copilot for Finance, and many more.

Several months ago, the company released the most anticipated Copilot of them all, the subscription-based Copilot for Microsoft 365, which integrates AI features into the business versions of Microsoft’s office suite. That signaled the end of the hype phase of genAI. It’s now time to see how much it can help businesses in the real world. The rubber’s finally met the road.

Is Copilot for Microsoft 365 right for your business? Is it right for anyone’s business? To find out, I put it through its paces, testing how well it works (or doesn’t work) in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, the core Microsoft 365 apps. I also tested its ability to help you get big-picture overviews that combine information from all those apps.

Based on those results, I made recommendations for whether it’s ready for prime time for businesses, and if so, which companies could benefit from it. Read on to see what I found.

In this article: Copilot in Word

One way or another, many people’s work revolves around drafting text documents — reports, memos, planning documents, marketing materials, budget suggestions…the list is endless. So odds are that a significant amount of time you spend in Microsoft 365 will be in Word.

How much Copilot will help you depends not only on how much time you spend in Word, but also on the complexity of the documents you write and how comfortable you are with writing. Some people — think of them as the lucky few — sit down at the keyboard, and words start flowing in a well-organized way, everything phrased succinctly and to the point, with very little editing or rewriting required, even in complicated documents. For them, Copilot might not be a tremendous time-saver or productivity booster.

But then there’s the rest of the world. Those who stare forlornly at the keyboard when they’ve got to write a memo. Who feel angst when confronted with a deadline for a project proposal or a marketing document. Who live by the saying: “Writing is easy. You just open up a vein and bleed.”

Those are the people for whom Copilot in Word is designed. And while Copilot won’t solve all their problems, it does quite a good job making efficient writers of most people.

Creating document drafts from a description

Copilot’s help starts the moment you want to create a document. Press Alt-I and the Draft with Copilot screen appears. Describe the document you want to create, including an outline or notes if you have them. Copilot goes to work right away and produces a draft for you.

Copilot can help you draft a new document when you describe it or give it an existing file as a starting point.

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Copilot can help you draft a new document when you describe it or give it an existing file as a starting point.

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Copilot can help you draft a new document when you describe it or give it an existing file as a starting point.

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Don’t expect anything flashy or unique; Copilot won’t wow anyone with its writing style. It’s workaday and often pedestrian. But for many people in many jobs, workaday and pedestrian is fine, as long as all the information is there, the writing is clear, the document is organized well, and there are no obvious grammatical errors. And I found every time — whether drafting a project proposal, marketing document, or sales pitch — Copilot turned out exactly that kind of document.

Making it more useful is that after it generates a draft, it asks if you want to change it in any way — for example, to make it more or less formal or to make it shorter or longer. You can keep iterating it like this until it reads the way you want it.

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After you draft a document using Copilot, it allows you to refine the draft in any way you’d like.

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And keep in mind that the hardest part of writing is often just getting a first draft written; you can add flash and pizazz afterwards if that’s what you want. So even experienced writers can find some use for it, because it can quickly generate initial drafts.

Beware of ‘hallucinations’

Copilot at times will do research on its own about the topic you’ve asked it to write about, and include that information in the draft. That can be both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s good when the additional information reflects what you’ve asked it to do. But it can be seriously problematic when it makes up information on its own — especially when that information is incorrect. In my tests, it did that on several occasions.

For example, I asked it to write an email memo to the Director of Data Engineering of an imaginary company I created (Work@Home, which I say sells home office furniture) complaining about data inaccuracies I’ve found. I didn’t provide specific details about what those inaccuracies were.

Copilot, on its own, wrote that I had found “missing values, incorrect labels, inconsistent formats, and duplicate records.” It added in the draft, “I have attached a spreadsheet with some examples of the data errors I have found, along with the sources and dates of the data.”

None of that was true, and I certainly had no spreadsheet that contained the imaginary errors.

I also found that Copilot for Word wrote different drafts for me when I asked the same question on different days. The second time I made the request I detailed in the previous paragraph, it made up far more details than the first, citing nonexistent problems such as “many rows with missing values for important variables such as customer ID, purchase date, and product category… incorrect labels for some variables, such as gender. Some values were labeled as M or F, while others were labeled as Male or Female.”

The draft also complained about outdated information, such as old prices. (Again, none of this existed.) It even added a section with recommendations about how to fix the problems — recommendations that I never made.

The lesson here: You need to very carefully review whatever Copilot creates for you. Copilot, like all generative AI software, is subject to what researchers call “hallucinations” – that is, making up things, and doing what we would call lying if a person did it.

So as always when using genAI tools, it’s important to check Copilot’s output for factual errors, whether you’re using it in Word, PowerPoint, or other apps. Even when it’s creating a draft based on an existing document, it may introduce new material that is incorrect.

I found in my tests that when I included a great deal of detailed information in my request, Copilot tended not to hallucinate like this. So keep that in mind when using it. Asking Copilot to list the sources where it got its information from can also help mitigate hallucinations.

I found another oddity with Copilot for Word. When you create a new document in Word, there are two ways to make a Copilot request: You can click the Copilot icon on the Ribbon or else press Alt-I. When you click the icon, a Copilot pane slides in from the right, and you type in your prompt there. The draft appears in that pane as well. You’ll have to copy and paste it into a Word document manually.

When you press Alt-I, there’s no Copilot pane. Instead, a small “Draft with Copilot” screen appears, and you type your request there. In that instance, the draft is created in the document itself. You’ll be much better off pressing Alt-I, not just because it simplifies your work by creating the document directly in Word.  When do it that way, you can also ask Copilot to use an existing file as a starting point for your draft. (Details about how to do that follow.) You can’t do that using the Copilot right pane.

In addition, I found that when you use Alt-I, you get a more comprehensive draft. Although that’s a good thing, I found that Copilot is much more likely to make up information on its own when using this method to create a draft.

Creating drafts based on existing materials

As I mentioned above, there’s another even more useful feature when creating a new file — having Copilot reference an existing file as the basis for creating a new one. You can feed it several Office file types, including DOC, DOCX, FLUID, LOOP, PPT, PPTX, and XLSX, as well as OpenOffice ODP and ODT files, RTF files, PDFs, and many image files, including GIF, JFIF, PJPEG, JPG, PNG, and WebP.

When you do this, Copilot can take existing information, reorganize and rewrite it, using new information that it finds. For example, I used my initial brief, disorganized notes about this review and created a file from it. Then I fed it into Copilot, which did a credible job of writing a brief description of what Copilot is, listed its pros and cons, and summarized what I wrote.

The more detailed the information in the file you give to Copilot, the better the new document will be. You can, for example, tell Copilot to write a sales pitch based on a marketing document. That’s exactly what I did: I had it write a sales pitch for buying office furniture for those working at home, based on a marketing document — a document that I had previously asked Copilot to create based on my suggestions. In the new sales-pitch document it did an excellent job of highlighting the product’s benefits and making a well-targeted sales pitch. As with everything Copilot creates, the prose wasn’t scintillating, but it did the job.

Word in Copilot created this sales pitch based on an existing marketing document.

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Word in Copilot created this sales pitch based on an existing marketing document.

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Word in Copilot created this sales pitch based on an existing marketing document.

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This sequence of events showcases how Copilot, when used properly, can be a tremendous productivity booster. It took only about five minutes of typing in notes for me to have Copilot create the original marketing document, and once it was done, only a few minutes of my time to create an accompanying sales pitch. Add in another twenty minutes for checking the drafts and rewriting, and I came away with two well-done pieces of sales and marketing materials. All that took less time than it would take most people to write even a single initial draft of a marketing document.

There is one minor problem with the feature. When you click the “Reference a file” button to choose your existing file, you see only the three most recent files you’ve opened in Word. There’s no way to navigate to others. So if you haven’t opened the starting file recently, you’ll have to open it, then close it. That’s not a tremendous problem, but it’s annoying enough to notice.

Also, keep in mind the source file has to be stored in OneDrive, either locally on your PC, or in the cloud in your OneDrive or someone else’s in your business.

Summarizing documents

Copilot in Word does more than create new documents. You can also use it to edit or summarize existing ones. Open a file, then click the Copilot icon on the upper right of the screen. Copilot’s right pane appears. It will have suggestions for what you can do to the file — for example, summarize it, check it for a call to action, and so on. But you’re not just limited to that. You can also ask Copilot to rewrite it in a more or less formal tone, to reduce its length, and so on.

I was surprised at how well it worked. Summaries were succinct and on-target, it followed my directions for rewrite well when I asked it to make a more or less formal document. It even correctly identified the call to action in a marketing document.

Keep in mind that because it’s a chatbot, you’re not limited to pre-created actions. Ask it to do anything you want. The worst that could happen is it will balk at doing it.

There’s another use for Copilot in Word as well — not just working on your own documents, but getting information from one sent to you by a colleague. You can ask it to summarize the document, its most important points, and so on. You can also ask Copilot specific questions about the document, such as finding a particular data point. I found it surprisingly accurate.

Copilot in Word: The verdict

Copilot in Word surprised me — it was far more useful than I expected. It drafted documents according to my specification, did a very credible job creating new documents based on existing ones, and was quite useful when I asked it to rewrite. Those who have trouble writing will find it exceptionally useful. Even experienced writers may be able to reduce tasks they find unpleasant — for example, if they need to provide summaries of a document to others.

However, there is a significant caveat here. You need to carefully review everything it creates in case it includes inaccurate information. That brings up a larger point for enterprises. If they decide to deploy Copilot for Microsoft 365, they should offer serious training to their employees with a significant focus on how to detect Copilot-created errors, and how to use Copilot in a way that makes it less likely it will create errors in the first place.

Copilot in Excel

Word may be the most used application in Microsoft 365, but still, most of us need to create an Excel spreadsheet at one time or another. For people who aren’t spreadsheet jockeys this can be particularly problematic — how, again, do you create charts? How do you insert formulas? How can you make sense of complicated spreadsheets?

That’s where I hoped Copilot would help. In my tests, though, it didn’t. Unlike in Word, I wasn’t able to invoke Copilot when I created a new spreadsheet, describe what I wanted done, and have Copilot do it for me. Instead, I had to create a spreadsheet as I normally would and face the dispiriting vision of its emptiness laid out in front of me.

And I soon discovered another limitation when I clicked the Copilot icon on the upper right of the screen. The Copilot pane slid into the right part of the screen but said only: “You need an Excel table in this sheet to continue. If you want to see an example, I have one ready for you.” If I didn’t know how to create a table, I’d have to figure that out before I could start using Copilot in Excel.

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Copilot in Excel initially wouldn’t do anything unless your data was in table format.

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However, Microsoft recently announced some improvements to Copilot in Excel. The biggest one: Copilot will no longer be limited to use in tables. If you format your data with a single row of headers on top, you’ll be able to use Copilot on it.

This change is gradually rolling out to users, and I don’t have it yet, so I’m currently unable to test it. But it remedies one of the major limitations I encountered with Copilot in Excel.

Creating charts

Continuing my testing, I created a table that included revenue data, including monthly revenue. I asked Copilot the most basic of requests: “Chart revenue by month.” I wanted to see whether Copilot would choose the right kind of chart (a line chart), and whether it would then create it for me.

The answer was both yes and no. It knew enough to create a line chart and to select and chart the proper data. However, Copilot created the chart in its side pane, not in the spreadsheet itself. I couldn’t find a way to have Copilot insert the chart into the spreadsheet. I had to ask Copilot to create a new spreadsheet, and then asked Copilot to insert the line chart there by clicking “Add to new sheet.”

At that point I had a spreadsheet that had only the line chart and the small amount of data accompanying it. But I wanted the chart in the original spreadsheet. So now I had to manually copy the chart back to the original spreadsheet. I ended up spending far too much time doing something very simple: creating a basic line chart. I could have saved myself a lot of time by creating the chart myself. Copilot had made me less efficient and productive, not more.

It took far too much work to get Copilot to use the table on top to create the simple line chart at the bottom.

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It took far too much work to get Copilot to use the table on top to create the simple line chart at the bottom.

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It took far too much work to get Copilot to use the table on top to create the simple line chart at the bottom.

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Again, though, a fix appears to be coming. Among the improvements being rolled out, Microsoft says, are “more conversational and comprehensive answers to a wide array of Excel-related questions.” So you should be able to do things such as getting step-by-step instructions for accomplishing certain tasks in Excel. These instructions can include formula examples. Copilot, Microsoft claims, will also be able to correct and explain formula errors it finds.

Because I don’t have the new features yet, I can’t say how well the improved Copilot lives up to these claims — but Microsoft is clearly working toward addressing a major shortcoming of the initial version of Copilot in Excel.

Finding data insights

Even testing its earlier iteration, however, I found one very useful application for Copilot in Excel. Instead of asking Copilot to do a specific task for me — say, create a specific chart — I asked it to find insights that I might not have found myself in an existing table. With a table opened in a spreadsheet, I clicked “Show data insights” in the Copilot pane. It created a bar chart that showed the total number of days that were required to finish each type of task in the table. I most likely would never have found that on my own — I wouldn’t have even thought of looking for it.

It was, however, quite a useful insight. It could help me do a number of things: more accurately put together a project schedule, identify bottlenecks in projects, examine tasks that took the most time to see if they could be streamlined.

I kept clicking “Can I see another insight” and saw other charts— some useful, some not. I still couldn’t directly insert the charts next to my original table — each chart was placed, along with its data, into a new spreadsheet on a new tab, and I would have to copy and paste them into a new tab or spreadsheet if I wanted to use them in other ways. Still, it’s a powerful tool that does a very good job of mining tables for useful, real-world insights.

Copilot is open-ended enough that you should be able to endlessly query data for useful insight and information in this way.

Microsoft claims Copilot can also help with creating complex, advanced formulas. However, I’m not a spreadsheet jockey, so can’t judge its ability to do this.

Copilot in Excel: The verdict

Copilot in Excel falls short in several important ways, especially for people who don’t have advanced spreadsheet skills. It can’t create spreadsheets from scratch based on a person’s needs, which can be the most difficult and time-consuming task for many people. And when you ask it to create charts, it can’t insert them into your existing spreadsheet — it can only insert them into a new spreadsheet in a new tab.

In its initial iteration, Copilot in Excel would only work with data in tables, and it was less than helpful when asked to perform basic spreadsheet tasks. Microsoft is gradually rolling out changes that address these limitations; you may or may not yet have them in your instance of Copilot for Microsoft 365.

All that said, Copilot in Excel can also be quite useful, notably in identifying insights that you might otherwise miss, no matter your level of expertise. And it may be able to create advanced formulas that could be quite useful. Overall, it seems more suited to people who are comfortable with spreadsheets, rather than those who don’t use them on a regular basis.

Copilot in PowerPoint

Could there be anything more dispiriting than encountering an empty PowerPoint screen when you’ve got to build a presentation for a product launch, marketing plan, or any other reason? A blank Word document is bad enough — but there, you’ve only got words to work with. With PowerPoint, there are visuals, slides, transitions, maybe even multimedia…what could be more intimidating?

Copilot in PowerPoint can help. It can draft an entire presentation for you from scratch, or by pointing it at a document. Will the presentation be perfect from the get-go? No. But it’ll give you a solid starting point.

At first glance, there appears to be no way to get Copilot to create a presentation. When you launch PowerPoint, the Copilot icon on the upper right is grayed out, so there appears no way to use it. Pressing the Alt-I key combination, as you do in Word to have Copilot draft a new document for you, won’t work either.

Instead, you have to create a new presentation or else open an existing one, then click the Copilot icon. When you do that, you’ll be asked if you want to create a new presentation from an existing document, create a new slide in the presentation you’ve opened, or create a new presentation based on your description of what you want done.

In PowerPoint, you can have Copilot create a new presentation or slide based on your description, or work from an existing file.

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In PowerPoint, you can have Copilot create a new presentation or slide based on your description, or work from an existing file.

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In PowerPoint, you can have Copilot create a new presentation or slide based on your description, or work from an existing file.

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Creating presentations from a description

Asking Copilot to create a presentation from scratch proved to be significantly problematic. Using the Copilot prompt, I asked it to create a marketing document in presentation form for my imaginary Work@Home business selling home office furniture. I didn’t provide a document as a starting point. Instead, I wrote a brief description of what I wanted: “Create a sales presentation for Work@Home home office products.”

Within minutes, Copilot created a comprehensive 15-slide presentation with a remarkable amount of granular detail and accompanying graphics. One slide, for example, touted the Work@Home line of chairs due to their “Ergonomic design,” “Variety of Styles and Colors,” and “Adjustable Features,” along with detailed, paragraph-long descriptions of each of those benefits.  Other slides did the same thing for Cable Management, Desks, Lighting, Optimal Illumination, Monitor stands, and many more.

It was impressive, given the bare-bones instruction I had given Copilot. Unfortunately, it was all purely a hallucination. Copilot had gone out to the web, done research on its own, and created a presentation that had nothing to do with reality.

In subsequent attempts, I provided more details, including the specific number of slides and what each should say. That led to a presentation without hallucinations. But it didn’t save me much time, if at all. I might as well have created the presentation myself without Copilot’s help.

Creating presentations from existing materials

A better approach is to feed an existing document with the appropriate information into Copilot for PowerPoint. (Copilot in PowerPoint can handle the same file types as Copilot in Word, listed above.) If you’ve got the right document as a starting point, that’s the way to go.

When I used the Work@Home marketing document that Copilot had created for me in Word, I got exactly what I wanted. Within minutes, Copilot built a well-organized, seven-slide presentation, complete with graphics and speaker notes, that closely mirrored the marketing document.

PowerPoint can create entire presentations, including graphics and speaker notes, based on a document you’ve already created.

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PowerPoint can create entire presentations, including graphics and speaker notes, based on a document you’ve already created.

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PowerPoint can create entire presentations, including graphics and speaker notes, based on a document you’ve already created.

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The presentation flowed the way it should, starting with an opening slide and the tagline: Work@Home: The Perfect Solution for Your Home Office. The next slide was an agenda, the next was an introduction, and after that were several slides with the top selling points, another detailing how to order the furniture, and a conclusion. Copilot hit all the high points, made everything succinct, and chose suitable, if quite bland, graphics.

The speaker’s notes left much to be desired — they were just a rehash of what’s on the slide. The graphics were generic and dull. And there were no transitions between slides. Still, it was more than a solid start. For many purposes, you could consider it 75% ready to go; it just needed some polish, new graphics, and animated slide transitions.

As with Word, there was nothing unique here, nothing to knock anyone’s socks off. But it was serviceable. More important, it was a great jumping off point to a solid presentation.

Enhancing presentations, summarizing them, and more

Copilot does more than just create a draft of a presentation. You can also ask it to create new slides, after you describe what you want them to say. Particularly impressive is that it can also gather information by itself about a new slide. I asked it to create a slide explaining that a business might pay for someone’s home office furniture if they work from home. It provided details that I hadn’t suggested, such as asking HR for help in getting reimbursement.

You can also ask Copilot to improve a presentation, for example, asking if there are any slides that should be deleted. I found it was only partially helpful. When I added a nonsensical slide titled “Time to Buy a New Horse” into the presentation, Copilot flagged it immediately. However, when I added one that was off-topic, although peripherally related — “How to Improve Your Posture at Your Desk” — it didn’t flag it.

And as in Word, you can ask Copilot in PowerPoint for a summary or other information about a presentation shared with you by a co-worker in OneDrive.

Copilot can also offer design advice. When prompted, it will have Microsoft’s design tool Designer suggest several design alternatives.

Copilot can tap Designer to offer multiple alternative layouts for your presentation.

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Copilot can tap Designer to offer multiple alternative layouts for your presentation.

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Copilot can tap Designer to offer multiple alternative layouts for your presentation.

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There are limits to what Copilot can do in PowerPoint, though. I asked it to create transitions between slides and it responded, “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that. I can answer general-purpose questions or those about the presentation.” I asked it to find royalty-free images I could add to the presentation without violating copyright laws. Here, too, it said that was beyond the scope of what it could do, but it did point to several web sites that it claimed were good places to find those kinds of images.

In general, I found a thin line between what Copilot will and won’t do in PowerPoint. My recommendation: Ask it to do anything you want, just in case it can do it. You can also type “View prompts” to get a sample of things it can do that you might not have thought of.

Copilot in PowerPoint: The verdict

Copilot can be a powerful tool for creating presentations, notably by creating presentations from scratch based on an existing document. It can be a tremendous time-saver, giving you a first draft of a presentation in minutes with surprising accuracy. Slides follow a logical flow. It also does quite a good job of creating new slides for an existing presentation when you describe what you want added.

That’s not to say it will do everything you want. It won’t add transitions between slides, for example, and it won’t find new graphics. Also, don’t expect knock-your-socks-off creativity. Rather, you’ll get a solid straightforward starting point, which you can then customize and improve.

Keep in mind that if you ask Copilot to create a presentation via your typed-in description rather than by using a document, you may end up with a presentation riddled with misinformation. So whenever possible, use an existing document. And the same caveat applies here as in Word: Double-check your presentation very carefully for errors and misinformation.

Copilot in Outlook

American may run on Dunkin’, if you believe the coffee chain’s sales pitch, but businesses run on email. So Microsoft made sure to integrate Copilot into Outlook to handle the many problems email causes for people — notably drafting emails, responding to emails, and keeping track of complex, often-rambling email conversations.

Composing emails

I started testing Copilot in Outlook by asking it to help me create new emails. To do it, click the Copilot icon on the Outlook ribbon, select Draft with Copilot, and describe what you want done. If you’d like, select the Generate options icon (it’s at the bottom left of the screen and looks like two sliders) to customize the length and tone of the email. You can choose short, medium, or long and a tone of direct, neutral, casual and formal. (There’s also an option to “make it a poem” that clearly is unsuitable for business communications.)

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Choosing options when drafting a new email.

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After it generates the draft and you’ve reviewed it, you can make changes yourself, ask Copilot to discard or retry creating a draft, or ask it to make specific changes — for example, to make it shorter or longer, more direct, or more casual.

I found in every instance that Copilot did precisely what I asked it to do, creating well-organized drafts that laid out all the points I requested. Copilot didn’t hallucinate or add errors at any point, even when I wrote an email complaining about data errors someone’s team had made — essentially the same request I had made of Copilot in Word. However, you should always double-check any email crafted by Copilot for errors.

 Although the emails were clear and to the point, they also tended to be quite stilted and came across as being written by an AI chatbot rather than a human being. This happened even when I asked that Copilot use a casual tone. So you’d do well to spend a few minutes editing the draft to make it sound more human and like yourself.

For my ultimate test of drafting new emails, I set Copilot a task every manager dreads: sending a stern message to a team member warning that his work has been subpar, he comes late to work too often, and he misses deadlines. I also asked that he come to my office for a meeting.

Copilot did an excellent job, not only accurately portraying the issues I asked it to address, but getting the tone right — in fact, likely better than I might have done. It’s easy in pressure-filled situations like these to let one’s emotions seep into the email. Copilot, being an AI, doesn’t have emotions, and so the message it sent was less confrontational and likely to be a better received than one that I might have sent. For example, Copilot’s email concluded, “I look forward to our discussion and finding a solution to these issues.” The language may sound stilted, but it was spot on for the task.

Replying to emails

Copilot shines when replying to emails as well, at least if you use it correctly. There are two ways to respond to an email: you can give Copilot specific suggestions about what you want the email to say, or you can allow it to automatically respond on its own, without your input.

I tested the feature by responding to an email sent to me that had a recommendation for new lines of business to help revive Work@Home’s flagging business. First, I had Copilot respond automatically.

It gave me four choices for general ways to respond: “Working on memo,” “Memo attached,” “Need more time,” and “Custom.” The first three ways resulted in a generic, stilted response whose recipient would know it was drafted by AI. I’d recommend never using the first three automated responses, because it could come across as almost offensive to the recipient that you didn’t bother to take the three or four minutes yourself to draft a simple email response.

The fourth choice, Custom, allows you to describe the draft you want Copilot to create. This choice is a winner. I asked Copilot to thank the sender, summarize his recommendations, and ask for a more detailed memo of 1,500 words by the following Tuesday.

Asking Copilot to respond to an email.

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Asking Copilot to respond to an email.

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Asking Copilot to respond to an email.

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Within about 15 seconds, it created a draft that was right on target. Not only did it follow my request exactly, but it put in all the niceties that can make business communications flow smoothly rather than being misunderstood or fraught with tension. It noted that the recommendations “all seem like promising options,” for example. And its phrasing was similarly thoughtful throughout — for example, “I would appreciate your insights and further thoughts on how we can move forward.”

Yes, it’s true those are timeworn phrases and can feel like throwaway clichés. But there’s a lot to be said for simple politeness and directness in business communications, and in this instance, Copilot did a very good job of getting the tone right, even if the phrasing felt at times a bit wooden. That’s why I recommend that all email communications created by Copilot not just be checked carefully for accuracy, but also edited to make each message sound like a human being composed it, not a chatbot.

Before sending any email message drafted with Copilot, whether it’s a new email or a response to received mail, Outlook flashes a warning: “Check the message. AI-generated content may be incorrect, so be sure to check the message before sending it.” Make sure to follow the advice. In my testing, Copilot didn’t make errors, but that may have only been luck.

Copilot also warns you if you send a message without a subject, which can be useful for people who draft so many emails in a day they forget at times to do that.

Email draft coaching

There’s another Copilot in Outlook feature that I found quite useful: having Copilot analyze a draft of an email you’re planning on sending and suggesting recommendations to improve it. To use it, select Coaching by Copilot from the drop-down menu that appears when you click the Copilot icon in the toolbar.

I wrote a rambling, somewhat incoherent, clearly offensive email full of typos critiquing someone’s work, and had Copilot offer its recommendations. It was absolutely on target and pulled no punches, finding serious problems with the tone and clarity of the writing, as well as how the recipient would likely feel after receiving it. It went well beyond generic advice and offered concrete suggestions for improving individual words and sentences.

For example, about the tone it wrote: “Be more respectful. The email is very informal and casual and might make the reader feel like their work is not taken seriously. The email also uses language that is vague, dismissive, and insulting, such as ‘pretty good,’ ‘kind of,’ ‘suck’ and ‘do lot’s better.’”

No, Copilot isn’t Miss Manners, but it’s good at helping improve email communications.

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No, Copilot isn’t Miss Manners, but it’s good at helping improve email communications.

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No, Copilot isn’t Miss Manners, but it’s good at helping improve email communications.

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Summarizing email threads

Outlook also does a good job of helping solve one of the most problematic and time-consuming of email tasks — reading through a threaded conversation made up of multiple emails, and identifying the gist of what occurred.

In my tests, I created a thread between two people, one whom asked the other for recommendations on how to revive the Home@Work business, which was starting to flag because fewer people were working remotely from home. Copilot succinctly summarized every important part of the conversation, including mentioning that a spreadsheet with projected new revenue figures was sent in one email.

Copilot does a solid job of summarizing email threads, and can even understand when parts of the thread are less important than others.

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Copilot does a solid job of summarizing email threads, and can even understand when parts of the thread are less important than others.

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Copilot does a solid job of summarizing email threads, and can even understand when parts of the thread are less important than others.

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Copilot was also able to separate the important topics from less important ones. Within the email thread, I had the two people discuss a concert by the guitar player and songwriter Richard Thompson, including a description of some of the finer points of Thompson’s technique. Copilot recognized that it was a side issue and included that information as a minor aside at the end of the summary. I also included typos in the emails to see whether Copilot would repeat them in its summary. It didn’t; it corrected them each time.

There’s one important thing that Copilot doesn’t do, though — look inside the attachments people send to one another and summarize the data therein. It’s a vital shortcoming, because frequently, more succinct detailed information is available in attachments than in the threads themselves. In this instance, each of the people sent revenue projections to each other. That’s important information that Copilot ignores.

Still, even without that, summarizing email threads is a useful and powerful time saver and productivity booster. For people who don’t need help drafting emails, it will be the most important Copilot feature.

Copilot in Outlook: The verdict

Used properly, Copilot can help you draft new emails and responses more quickly, be more precise in your use of language, and help you choose the right writing tone. It also does a good job of summarizing complex email threads. That being said, its emails generally have a stilted, somewhat artificial tone. You’d do well not to send them as is, but make them sound more natural and personalize them in some way.

Copilot for Microsoft 365: Getting big-picture information

One of Copilot for Microsoft 365’s more intriguing features is its potential to give you a big-picture view of your projects, and then let you drill down into any of them to get more granular information — for example, a specific spreadsheet that has revenue projections for the next five years for new lines of business.

It does this by looking through all your emails and files (including those shared with you by co-workers) based on your request, analyzing what it finds, and then giving you a succinct summary of it all. Based on that, you can ask for more detailed information or follow one of its suggested prompts that recommends data you might want to see.

You do this in the Copilot app itself, rather than starting in Word or another Microsoft 365 app. Make sure you’re signed into your business account in the Edge browser. (If you’re signed into your personal account rather than your business account, it will search the web, not your files and emails.) Then click Edge’s Copilot icon on the upper right of the screen and type in what you’d like it to do. (Note: Your organization may have set up this search differently, so you should check with your IT department when trying to do this.)

I tested out Copilot’s summarization powers with a simple prompt: “Tell me more about Work@Home.” It responded by giving me a clear and accurate description of the imaginary business I had created, and then noted, “There have been discussions on how to revive Work@Home in a post-COVID world,” and briefly and accurately summed summarized a memo I had written about how to do that.

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Copilot does a stellar job of giving you big-picture information and granular data by looking through all your documents and emails.

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So far, so good. It was an accurate summation. Next, I asked it to show me any emails that have details about new lines of business for reviving Work@Home. Again it was on target. It summarized the email and included a link to it. All I needed was to click the link to get to it.

I then asked for any presentations related to Work@Home, and once again it succeeded. It summarized the presentation, identified the presentation’s author and when it was last modified, and provided a link to it.

It wasn’t always perfect, though. I found that I had to offer as precise a description as possible when asking for documents, or it might not find them. But overall, the results were impressive.

Getting big-picture information: The verdict

Using Copilot to gather and summarize information from multiple documents and emails could eventually prove to be one of the most powerful uses of Copilot for Microsoft 365. In a typical workplace, you’ll be involved with multiple projects at a time, and can’t possibly know detailed information about all of them. An ability to quickly get updates on projects and find the specific information, email, or document could be a tremendous time saver and productivity booster.

Copilot for Microsoft 365 extras Is Copilot for Microsoft 365 right for your business?

Copilot for Microsoft 365 can be an impressive productivity tool, especially for those who often use Word and PowerPoint. In Word it can draft entire documents merely by your prompting it or based on existing documents. The documents are generally well-organized and well-thought-out, and are excellent for first drafts, although editing and rewrites will be required. It’s particularly powerful for those who have a hard time getting started on creative content such as marketing documents. However, it has a tendency to hallucinate, and all its work needs to be very carefully vetted as a result.

It’s helpful in PowerPoint in much the same way as it in Word. You can create first drafts of an entire presentation by merely pointing PowerPoint to a Word document. It can also create new slides based on your prompts. Once you have a presentation, however, it won’t perform tasks for you such as creating transitions. Also, if you ask Copilot to create a presentation from scratch, rather than from an existing document, you may end up with one filled with hallucinations and misinformation. In all cases, as with Word, carefully vet Copilot’s output.

It’s not nearly as impressive in Excel, at least in its first iteration. For those who don’t frequently use spreadsheets, it won’t offer much help — and it has limited capabilities even for spreadsheet jockeys. It does, however, do a fine job of mining spreadsheets for insights you might otherwise have missed, and new features being rolled out may fix its most serious shortcomings.

Copilot for Microsoft 365 will likely be a productivity booster for almost anyone using Outlook, by helping to draft new emails and to respond to existing ones. As with Word, you’ll need to check it for errors, and you should rewrite its sometimes stilted language.

In my tests, Copilot also proved to be surprisingly helpful in providing big-picture information by searching through emails and files. It was equally useful when looking for a specific file or piece of information.

As for the extras, such as transcribing Teams meetings and summarizing notes in OneNote, those are nice-to-haves, not must-haves.

Also note that Copilot currently supports only about 25 languages. Microsoft says more are planned.

Keep in mind that, like the company’s other subscription-based products, Copilot for Microsoft 365 frequently gets new features. In addition to the important improvements to Copilot in Excel already discussed, upcoming Copilot enhancements include prompt autocomplete and rewrite features, as well as a Catch Up feature that can update you about meetings and shared documents. And Microsoft recently announced that users will soon be able to have Designer create images for them in both Word and PowerPoint.

So should your business use Copilot for Microsoft 365? If it were free or included in a Microsoft 365 subscription, the decision would be a no-brainer. It clearly boosts productivity, and for some people will boost it quite a bit.

But it’s not free — far from it. It costs businesses $30 per user per month, and that needs to be paid on an annual basis, not monthly. There’s also no trial version, so there’s no way to test it out for a few months and see whether it’s worth the price.

That $30 per month can increase the monthly outlay by more than 50% for subscribers to the top Microsoft 365 enterprise plan — and by a whopping 600% for subscribers to the entry-level small-business plan. The Copilot add-on fee adds up quickly, even for large enterprises. For a business with Microsoft 365 subscriptions for 500 people, it means an additional $15,000 per month — and enterprises typically have well over 500 seats.

All that said, Copilot for Microsoft 365 includes enterprise-grade privacy and security protections, including Microsoft’s promise that your company’s data and your users’ prompts are not used to train the large language models used by Copilot. These protections are not offered by consumer genAI chatbots.

For most businesses, it probably makes sense to start small, offering subscriptions to targeted users or departments that might get the most out of Copilot — for example, people or groups who most need help in drafting documents and presentations. Based on the results, a company can roll it out to others who might get good mileage out of it.

As for going in whole hog and buying it for everyone who has a Microsoft 365 subscription in your business, that’s an expensive proposition and likely won’t come close to paying for itself in productivity increases, at least for now.

Should you decide to try it now or sometime in the future, there is one caveat that I feel compelled to repeat: Copilot sometimes makes up false information and presents it as fact. You’ll need to very carefully examine everything it does before using its output, and will need to balance that step against any productivity increases you expect.  

You should also consider launching a formal training program for anyone in your business who uses Copilot, targeted primarily at making sure people are aware of potential hallucinations and errors, and teaching best practices for creating documents so they won’t be rife with errors.

More on Copilot for Microsoft 365:

Kategorie: Hacking & Security

Ransomware crews investing in custom data stealing malware

The Register - Anti-Virus - 10 Červenec, 2024 - 12:00
BlackByte, LockBit among the criminals using bespoke tools

As ransomware crews increasingly shift beyond just encrypting victims' files and demanding a payment to unlock them, instead swiping sensitive info straight away, some of the more mature crime organizations are developing custom malware for their data theft.…

Kategorie: Viry a Červi

10 ways to boost your Windows laptop’s battery life

Computerworld.com [Hacking News] - 10 Červenec, 2024 - 12:00

We all dream of all-day battery life — the ability to use a laptop away from an outlet for an entire workday, or longer. But while everyone’s talking about the long battery life promised by new Qualcomm Snapdragon chips and upcoming Intel CPUs, you don’t have to buy something new to enjoy better battery life this minute.

This collection of tips will give you more time on battery, whether you’re running Windows 11 or Windows 10. These are good even if you have a modern laptop with the latest hardware, too — you’ll get better battery life if you keep them in mind.

Want more tips and tricks for making the most of your PC? Sign up for my free Windows Intelligence newsletter to get three things to try every Friday and free in-depth Windows Field Guides as a special welcome bonus.

Windows battery life tip #1: Start saving

If you’re going to be away from a power outlet for a while or your laptop’s battery seems to be draining too fast, you’ll want to activate Battery Saver or Energy Saver. In this mode, Windows makes a variety of tweaks to lower power consumption — for example, it limits some background tasks and lowers your screen brightness. By default, Windows will automatically activate this option around 30% battery to save power. However, you can turn on battery saver whenever you like — or make Windows always enable this setting when you’re on the go.

On Windows 11, you turn on Battery Saver by clicking the system tray icons at the right side of your taskbar and clicking the “Battery Saver” or “Energy Saver” button. (The name depends on which version of Windows 11 you have.) If the option is grayed out, that’s because your computer is plugged in — you can only activate this option when you’re unplugged.

To make Windows use this mode automatically, head to Settings > System > Power & battery and tweak the options under “Battery Saver” or “Energy Saver.” If you set to “Always” automatically turn on, Windows will always use this feature whenever your laptop is running on battery power.

For maximum battery life, set Battery saver to turn on whenever you unplug your laptop.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

To turn on Battery Saver in Windows 10, click the notification bubble icon at the right side of the taskbar, click “Expand” if you don’t see all the icons, and then click the “Battery Saver” icon. To use this mode automatically, head to Settings > System > Battery and select “Always” under “Turn Battery Saver on automatically.”

Windows battery life tip #2: Power up your power mode

For maximum battery life, be sure to select the right power mode. By default, Windows often uses “Balanced” power mode. You can select “Best power efficiency” to save some battery power at the cost of a little bit of performance.

To choose your power mode on Windows 11, go to Settings > System > Power & battery. Use the “Power mode” box to select “Best power efficiency” or at least “Balanced.” The “Best performance” setting will drain your battery faster.

On Windows 10, click the battery icon in your system tray and drag the slider to configure your power mode.

The “Best power efficiency” power mode is the best choice for maximum battery life.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

Windows battery life tip #3: Be bright about brightness

Your laptop’s display is one of the biggest energy hogs on your system. The brighter the display, the more power it uses. Try to set your brightness on the low side to prolong battery life.

To adjust screen brightness, you can often use function keys on your computer’s keyboard. On Windows 11, you can also click the system tray icons at the bottom right corner of your taskbar and use the brightness slider.

On Windows 10, click the notification bubble on the right side of your taskbar and use the brightness slider. If you don’t see it there, click “Expand.”

Windows battery life tip #4: Wake up to smarter sleep settings

Your laptop can automatically turn off its display and go to sleep when you’re not interacting with it. The more aggressive you make these settings, the more power you can save. For example, if you set your computer to sleep three minutes after you stop interacting with it, you’ll save more battery power than if you set it to sleep after 10 minutes.

To find these settings on Windows 11 or Windows 10, head to Settings > System > Power & battery. Under “Screen and sleep,” change the “On battery power, turn off my screen after” and “On battery power, put my device to sleep after” settings.

Ensure Windows is set to turn off your laptop’s display and put your device to sleep shortly after it becomes idle.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

Windows battery life tip #5: Bat down battery hogs

The above tweaks will help you stop Windows and your PC’s display from draining as much battery power. But applications are also a major factor.

Windows tracks which apps are using the most battery power, and you can check on which ones are the problem. To see which apps have been draining your battery on Windows 11, head to Settings > System > Power & battery. Expand the “Battery usage” section and look under “Battery usage per app.” On Windows 10, head to Settings > System > Battery and look under “Battery usage per app.”

The information here will tell you a lot. It’s normal to see applications you use the most using lots of battery — your web browser of choice may be on top of the list. But you may also see some surprises, and you canconsider switching to a different app if anything seems unusually battery hungry. (If you don’t use an application and see it’s draining battery power in the background, you might just want to uninstall it.)

The “Battery usage per app” list on your laptop will be very informative.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

Windows battery life tip #6: Do an energy audit

While the Settings app will show you which apps have been using the most power recently, the Task Manager can show you which apps are using the most energy right now.

To find this, open the Task Manager — either press Ctrl+Shift+Esc or right-click an empty spot on the taskbar and select “Task Manager.”

On the main processes list pane, right-click the heading bar and check “Power usage.” You’ll get a column showing which applications are using the most power right now, and you can click it to sort by power usage. You can also activate “Power usage trend” to get an idea of recent power usage, not just power usage at the current moment.

The “Power usage” column is hidden by default, but it’s helpful for spotting power-hungry apps.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

Windows battery life tip #7: Battle background drain

Applications that launch at startup and run in the background can waste battery power, too. I recommend looking at your system tray, clicking the little up arrow on your taskbar, and closing any applications you don’t use.

To stop them from launching at startup, use the Task Manager. First, open it by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc. Click over to the “Startup” tab. Look at this list and turn off applications you don’t use or need — you can right-click an app and select “Disable” to stop it from launching when you sign in. Or, if you’re not sure what an application does, right-click it and select “Search online” for more information.

If you don’t use the application at all, you can uninstall it completely.

It’s always a good idea to prune the startup apps list on your PC.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

Windows battery life tip #8: Go on an app diet

While it’s natural that the apps you use the most will use a good amount of battery power, the “Battery usage per app” list in the Windows Settings app offers clues that some of your applications are unusually heavy.

If an app seems particularly power-hungry, try switching to a different one. If you have a lot of browser extensions in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or whatever your web browser of choice is, you might want to turn some of them off.

You may also want to wait and run heavier tasks when you’re connected to an outlet. So, if you need to perform a huge download or install a lot of applications, do that while plugged in. 

Windows battery life tip #9: Shut down

Ideally, we could all just close our laptops when we’re not using them. They’d go to sleep and be ready when we open them back up. And you absolutely can use your laptop in this way. If you’re happy with your battery life, go right ahead.

But, if your battery life isn’t where you want it to be — and if you find yourself opening up your laptop and being surprised at how much it drained when not in use — you might want to fully shut down your laptop when you’re not using it. Just use the power options in the Start menu.

There are a few reasons sleep mode isn’t ideal for laptop battery life: Windows will wake up your sleeping laptop to perform updates and other tasks, and power-saving settings might sometimes not work quite right, leading to fast battery drain when your laptop should be sleeping and sipping power.

At the end of the day — or if you won’t be using your laptop for a while — consider shutting it down rather than just letting it sleep.

This isn’t a great tip all of the time. If you’re just stepping away and you’ll be back shortly, your laptop will use more power to shut down and then boot up than just using sleep mode. But if you’re throwing your laptop in a bag and don’t plan on using it until the next day, powering it off is ideal.

Windows battery life tip #10: Plan for long-term health

Battery life isn’t just about the software choices you make. It’s also about preserving the physical health of your battery. All batteries degrade over time — that’s just entropy. But how fast they degrade is up to you.

For example, heat is a battery’s worst enemy. You should avoid leaving your laptop in direct summer sunlight or very hot cars.

It’s also a good idea to charge your laptop frequently — it’s better to top it off more often than to always let it drain down to 0%.

However, you might preserve your battery power by only charging it to 80%. Some laptop manufacturers include utilities with options that will let you set them to charge to 80%, while many modern Windows laptops now include “Smart charging” features that do the same thing.

At the end of the day, this isn’t about perfection. Sometimes your laptop has to be outside on a hot day, and sometimes you’ll drain it to 0%. And, if your laptop doesn’t include an easy way to limit charging to 80%, there’s no point in driving yourself crazy by always trying to unplug at 80%.

But by keeping these best practices in mind, you’ll preserve your laptop’s battery health and get better battery life for a long time to come.

There’s more PC advice where this came from! Check out my free Windows Intelligence newsletter — I’ll send you three things to try every Friday. Plus, get free copies of Paul Thurrott’s Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (a $10 value) as a special welcome gift.

More Windows tips:

Kategorie: Hacking & Security

10 forgotten Android text selection shortcuts

Computerworld.com [Hacking News] - 10 Červenec, 2024 - 12:00

When you hang around Android long enough, you start to sense a persistent three-step pattern:

  1. A promising new system-level feature comes along with a splashy on-stage demo and availability announcement (ooh, exciting!)
  2. A handful of apps start to support the feature (ooh, intriguing!)
  3. Everyone forgets about the feature entirely and moves on (new shiny thing distraction — ooh, exciting!)

I’ve kept my person-peepers pressed to the Googley glass for something like 797 years now, and I’ve gotta tell ya: This happens far more often than you’d expect.

In fact, it just happened to me this week — with a newfound realization that I’d completely forgotten about a once-promising Android system feature.

Android Intelligence reader and The Intelligence Insider JRGreenboro brought this dusty old diamond back to the forefront of my man-lobes with a post in our wisdom-filled Intelligence Insider Community the other day. He noticed that when pressing and holding text to select it in different places on his phone, he saw helpful shortcuts to actions like creating a new calendar event around a selected date — without all the typical steps you’d have to take to pull off that process.

And thus, a forgotten Android feature made its way to the surface once more.

[Psst: Love shortcuts as much as I do? My free Android Shortcut Supercourse will teach you tons of time-saving tricks for your phone. Start now!]

Android text selection — beyond the basics

Before we get into the good stuff, a quick crumb of critical context: The system behind this phenomenon actually came around way back in 2016 — as part of the then-shiny-new Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) release. It’s an underlying mechanism within Android that lets developers tap into that simple-seeming text selection tool and add in their own custom options that then appear right alongside “cut,” “paste,” and other such commands.

And while the system never quite earned much in the way of mainstream attention or awareness, it’s been slowly chugging away and getting ever-more useful all this time.

Following that friendly reminder about its existence, I set out to unearth Android apps that tap into this possibility and offer up genuinely useful shortcuts tied to text selection. The list is relatively limited, and that may be at least in part due to the specific nature of this feature and the fact that it really would only make sense for a small set of text-connected actions.

But within that framework, some worthwhile shortcuts are absolutely out there and waiting to be embraced. And all you’ve gotta do is remember that they’re available.

Ready for an added jolt of Android-centric efficiency?

Android text selection shortcut #1: Events

First and foremost is the text selection shortcut that sparked this entire expedition — and that’s a swift ‘n’ simple way to create a new calendar event from anywhere on your device.

The easiest place to try it is in your browser — be it Chrome or any other Android browser you fancy. Just press and hold your finger onto any date on any web page in front of you (even this date right on this page, if you want: July 10, 2024).

And hey, how ’bout that? Right there, in the same menu where you usually see “copy,” “share,” and other such options, you should see a calendar-connected option to “Schedule.” You might have to tap a three-dot icon within that text selection menu to reveal it, but it’ll be there! And all it takes is a single tap on that command to create a new calendar event right then and there, with the selected date already filled in for you.

See that “Schedule” option? It’ll save you tons of time — once you realize it’s available.

JR Raphael, IDG

This works with the standard Google Calendar Android app as well as with Outlook and my own personal favorite Android calendar app, Business Calendar. As long as you’ve got at least one of those apps installed, the option should appear for you whenever you highlight a date anywhere on your device.

Android text selection shortcut #2: Places

The next time you encounter an address somewhere in your Android adventures — on a web page, in an email, wherever — press and hold your finger onto that address to highlight it.

Provided that you’ve got the Google Maps app installed on your device (and you almost certainly do), you’ll see a “Map” option appear within that tidy text selection pop-up.

Select a place, and boom: You can zap over to a map of it with just one more tap.

JR Raphael, IDG

You can then just tap that to hop right over to an interactive map of the address in question without any copying, pasting, or general futzing required.

Android text selection shortcut #3: Email

Need to send an email to someone whose address you’ve got in front of you? Highlight that sucker, then look for the “Email” option in that text selection menu that appears.

Highlighting an email address is all you’ve gotta do to fire up a new message.

JR Raphael, IDG

This works with both Gmail and Outlook, depending on which you’ve got installed on your device (and it may work with some other Android emails apps as well).

Android text selection shortcut #4: Calls

Got a phone number staring you down in an email — or maybe a document or a web page? Press and hold that bad boy to highlight it, and you’ll see a “Call” option show up in that purty text selection pop-up of yours.

Beam any number directly into your dialer with the easily overlooked “Call” command in Android’s text selection menu.

JR Raphael, IDG

This works with the universally compatible Google Phone app as well as the Samsung-made equivalent that comes installed on Galaxy devices by default. Either way, you’ve got just one more tap to transport those digits into your dialer and get your call going.

Android text selection shortcut #5: Texts

Just like with phone calls, you can surface a shortcut for sending a message simply by highlighting any valid number anywhere on your Android device.

A new text is never more than a press and a tap away.

JR Raphael, IDG

You can pull this one off with Google Messages as well as with Samsung’s Messages app.

Android text selection shortcut #6: Translations

¿Necesitas traducir? Grab the free Google Translate Android app. Even if you never actively open it, it’s worth keeping around for this purpose: With the app in place on your phone or tablet, any text you highlight anywhere on the device will always have “Translate” among its options within that innocuous-seeming text selection menu.

You might have to tap the three-dot icon within that menu to find it, but it’ll be there, all right:

With the Google Translate app installed, language shifting is always at your fingertips.

JR Raphael, IDG

And it’ll give you a one-tap path for translating anything into any other language, anytime.

Android text selection shortcut #7: Knowledge

Another app worth keeping around for this reason alone is the free Wikipedia Android app. With it on your device, you’ll have a handy “Search Wikipedia” option available for any word or phrase you highlight.

Wikipedia as a system-level shortcut? Bring it on, baby.

JR Raphael, IDG

And speaking of on-demand info…

Android text selection shortcut #8: Definitions

Google’s got its own native definition option within the Android text selection menu, but it pops up inconsistently and unpredictably. Installing the free Dictionary.com Android app will give you a permanently present word look-up power — anytime you select any word or phrase, anywhere.

Any definition, anytime — with the Android text selection dictionary shortcut.

JR Raphael, IDG

Android text selection shortcut #9: Notes

While most Android note apps are curiously missing any integration with Android’s text selection system — including the Google Keep Android app, even (!) — the Microsoft 365 (Office) app provides a convenient option for adding any text you highlight anywhere into your OneNote-connected (and also Windows-synced) Sticky Notes.

Bring text from anywhere on your device into your notes with Microsoft’s smart Android text selection shortcut.

JR Raphael, IDG

Strangely enough, the standalone OneNote app doesn’t offer this option. But if you’ve got the Microsoft 365 app installed, it’ll be there — and saving something from anywhere into your notes will never be more than a press and tap away.

Android text selection shortcut #10: Websites

Last but not least, whenever you next encounter a web address that isn’t already linked and tappable, don’t waste time with the old-fashioned copy-and-paste caper.

Instead, press and hold your finger to highlight the address and then look for the one-tap “Open” option connected to the Chrome Android app.

Off to the web we go — no copying or pasting involved.

JR Raphael, IDG

Ahh — getting where you need to be has never been easier.

Treat yourself to even more advanced shortcut knowledge with my free Android Shortcut Supercourse. You’ll learn tons of time-saving tricks for your phone!

Kategorie: Hacking & Security

‘Quiet firing’ layoffs risk fomenting a toxic environment

Computerworld.com [Hacking News] - 10 Červenec, 2024 - 12:00

So far this year, companies have laid off just under 100,000 employees, according to layoffs.fyi, which emphasizes losses at tech companies. Job cuts totaled more than 260,000 in 2023, so, while the trend appears to be down a little for 2024, layoffs continue. (For another up-to-date list of tech-specific layoffs, see TechCrunch.)

What’s changed since February, when I wrote about the economics of job cuts, is that some companies are using new tactics to avoid negative publicity, lawsuits, and paying out potentially costly layoff benefits:

  • Silent layoffs occur when a company offers severance on condition that the employee keep quiet about the details of his or her exit.
  • Quiet firing is when bosses intentionally or unintentionally make a role less appealing, thereby provoking workers to quit instead of forcing them out via layoffs that might entail severance packages.
  • Return to office mandates (RTO); many believe stringent RTO mandates are a form of quiet firing. They also duck the cost of severance benefits.
Silent layoffs

Silent layoffs (a.k.a. quiet layoffs) have been in the news lately. PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) is widely reported to have launched a round of silent layoffs in the UK last month. According to the Financial Times, “the affected staff [members were] told they must not inform colleagues why they are leaving and they should follow a ‘suggested wording’ if they want to send goodbye messages.” The move backfired on the Big Four accountancy firm. Any semblance of silence was lost to the negative publicity, which is worse than it would have been had PwC simply announced the layoffs publicly and taken its lumps.

In early 2023, silent layoffs became unlawful in the US when the National Labor Relations Board overturned a 2020 ruling that allowed employers to use confidentiality and non-disparagement language in their severance agreements. The move reinstates rights afforded by the National Labor Relations Act (1935) and blocks the use of nondisclosure and other agreements that seek to prevent employees from speaking out about the terms of their severance and unfair practices of employers.

Quiet firing

The prevalence of bosses subtly pressuring employees to quit their jobs, or “quiet firing” (also. known as quiet cutting) in the US is partly the result of the National Labor Relations Board’s 2023 action. There’s a catch for employees, too; the ruling disincentivizes companies to pay severance, and even if they do, employee resignation obviates any possible severance benefits. 

That companies resort to this toxic method of job cutting is especially cruel because it stresses out employees both professionally and financially. The flagrant disregard for employees’ well being in the name of avoiding bad publicity is a harsh reality. The fallout for companies using this tactic could be consequential.

Return-to-office mandates and quiet firing

recent study from BambooHR (of just over 1,500 US full-time salaried employees) shows that 25% of top-level execs and C-suite respondents — and 18% of HR pros — admit they hoped for a voluntary employee exodus as a result of RTO mandates. Some 37% of managers, directors and executives said they enacted layoffs during the past year because their RTO mandate pushed fewer people to quit than expected. Nearly half of respondents who have experienced an RTO order report significant talent loss from the best and brightest in their organizations.

The report concludes that the current level of employee “dissatisfaction could lead to a further drain of talent, affecting not just morale but also stability and the [potential for innovation].”

What to do if you think you’re being quietly fired

If you suspect you might be a victim of quiet firing, Forbes details eight indicators that you’re being quietly let go. And Harvard Business Review lists 18 early warning signs, including not providing employee bonuses, reassigning important job responsibilities, and setting up unreasonable performance targets. Confidentially finding others at your company who believe they’re in the same boat can help validate your experience.

If you conclude that you’re likely in a quiet firing situation, accusations of “quiet firing” likely won’t be constructive. Talking to your boss dispassionately about suggested changes to address the issues you’ve noticed is a good first step. Be transparent and if the conversation goes well, wait for a while to see whether it bears fruit.

If it doesn’t, you have to ask yourself whether the company culture and opportunities for growth and advancement are worth the continued effort. Your remaining options may be limited. You can seek out other employees who may be able to advocate for you, suggests this Time article. Or speak to your manager’s boss about your role going forward.

At some point, you might want to put your energy into initiating a job search. Use the time you have to take positive steps while you’re able to deal with it. Your mental health and positive outlook are important to making this transition. Keep in mind that this experience does not reflect poorly on you.

When you reach the end of your rope, try negotiating with your company. Tell them you believe that you’re being induced to quit and ask them for severance, health insurance benefits, time while on salary to job hunt. It can’t hurt to ask. You might also want to get legal help with reviewing any negotiated outcome. 

It’s a sorry state of affairs when companies get caught up in using underhanded tactics to lay off employees. It’s a sign of a weak company that’s being managed poorly. Strong companies are transparent and above board with employees. If you wind up job hunting, look for a company that has the reputation of treating its employees fairly and honestly.

Kategorie: Hacking & Security

AI dokáže ze signálů v mozku poznat, na co se díváte

Živě.cz - 10 Červenec, 2024 - 11:45
Vědci z nizozemské Radboud univerzity v Nijmegenu dokázali zdánlivě jednoduchou věc. Vygenerovali přes AI několik různých obrázků, které ukázali makakovi se zavedenými sondami pro měření mozkové aktivity. Následně tyto signály opět použili na vygenerování dalších obrázků, které se velmi blížily ...
Kategorie: IT News

Ryzen mini-PC zabudované do klávesnice, včetně baterie a touchpadu

CD-R server - 10 Červenec, 2024 - 10:00
Klávesnici lze navíc přeložit, takže se zařízení ve vypnutém stavu vejde do 15 × 10 centimetrů. Připravuje ho čínský Linglong a vybavené je APU Hawk Point, Ryzen 7 8840U…
Kategorie: IT News

Nejlevnější router s Wi-Fi 6 koupíte za 637 Kč. Vyrábí jej TP-Link a slibuje velký dosah

Živě.cz - 10 Červenec, 2024 - 09:45
Wi-Fi router Mercusys MR60X obvykle stojí okolo devíti stovek, ale v Alze na něj tento týden mají pěknou slevu, kdy s kódem ALZADNY25 vyjde jen na 637 Kč. Jde tak o nejdostupnější router s podporou Wi-Fi 6, který můžete v Česku koupit. Mercusys je stejně jako Tapo nebo Deco jednou ze značek ...
Kategorie: IT News

Office 365: A guide to the updates

Computerworld.com [Hacking News] - 10 Červenec, 2024 - 09:42

Office 365 and Microsoft 365 subscribers get more frequent software updates than those who have purchased Office without a subscription, which means subscribers have access to the latest features, security patches, and bug fixes. But it can be hard to keep track of the changes in each update and know when they’re available. We’re doing this for you, so you don’t have to.

Following are summaries of the updates to Office 365/Microsoft 365 for Windows, with the latest releases shown first. We’ll add info about new updates as they’re rolled out.

Note: This story covers updates released to regular Office 365/Microsoft 365 for Windows subscribers. If you’re a member of Microsoft’s Office Insider preview program or want to get a sneak peek at upcoming features, see the Microsoft 365 Insider blog.

Version 2406 (Build 17726.20160)

Release date: July 9, 2024

This build fixes several bugs, including one in Word and Excel in which characters don’t appear correctly in Text Box Gallery. It also fixes a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2406 (Build 17726.20160).

Version 2406 (Build 17726.20126)

Release date: June 26, 2024

This build fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one in which Excel documents might be unexpectedly edited when a mandatory sensitivity label has not been applied, one that caused Outlook to exit unexpectedly shortly after launch for some users, and one in which pasting data from Word or Excel to an Outlook template as a link would cause an error message to appear.

Get more info about Version 2406 (Build 17726.20126).

Version 2405 (Build 17628.20164)

Release date: June 19, 2024

This build includes a variety of unspecified bug and performance fixes.

Get more info about Version 2405 (Build 17628.20164).

Version 2405 (Build 17628.20144)

Release date: June 11, 2024

This build fixes one bug, which prevented users from sending mail for a few hours after updating add-ins with on-send events. It also fixes a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2405 (Build 17628.20144).

Version 2405 (Build 17628.20110)

Release date: May 30, 2024

This build fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one in Excel in which an embedded workbook in .xls format might not have closed properly, one that that caused Outlook to close when using Copilot Summarize, one in Word in which content controls may have been removed when coauthoring, and one for the entire Office suite in which the Organization Chart Add-In for Microsoft programs was not loading properly.

Get more info about Version 2405 (Build 17628.20110).

Version 2404 (Build 17531.20152)

Release date: May 14, 2024

This build fixes a number of bugs, including one in Word where content controls might be removed when coauthoring, and one that caused Sovereign users to be unable to create ToDo tasks from Outlook.

It also fixes a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2404 (Build 17531.20152).

Version 2404 (Build 17531.20140)

Release date: May 7, 2024

This build fixes two bugs in Outlook, one in which it closed unexpectedly using the Scheduling Assistant when creating a new meeting or viewing an existing meeting, and another that caused add-in developers to hit timeouts when retrieving notifications from an Outlook client context.

Get more info about Version 2404 (Build 17531.20140) .

Version 2404 (Build 17531.20120)

Release date: April 29, 2024

This build reduces workbook size bloat from unnecessary cell formatting with a new “Check Performance” task pane. In addition, it fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one in Excel in which the default font could not be set; one in Outlook in which custom forms from MAPI form servers stopped responding; one in PowerPoint in which online videos did not play in some cases; one in which when opening certain Word documents would cause the error, “Word experienced an error trying to open the file”; and one in which the Office update installer appeared to be unresponsive.

Get more info about Version 2404 (Build 17531.20120) .

Version 2403 (Build 17425.20176)

Release date: April 9, 2024

This build fixes a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2403 (Build 17425.20176).

Version 2402 (Build 17328.20184)

Release date: March 12, 2024

This build fixes three bugs: one in which Access closed unexpectedly, one in which Excel closed unexpectedly when opening files with pivot tables and table design in macro-enabled files, and one in which Word closed unexpectedly when the undo function was used.

This build also fixes a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2402 (Build 17328.20184).

Version 2402 (Build 17328.20162)

Release date: March 4, 2024

This build fixes several bugs, including one that crashed Outlook when a link was clicked on, and another for the entire Office suite in which opened Office apps didn’t automatically start when a laptop was reopened, and an error message appeared after manual relaunch.

Get more info about Version 2402 (Build 17328.20162).

Version 2402 (Build 17328.20142)

Release date: February 28, 2024

This build fixes a variety of bugs, including one that caused Outlook to exit unexpectedly when expanding a conversation in the search results from a search of “All Mailboxes,” and another in which users were not able to create a bullet list with hyphens in PowerPoint.

Get more info about Version 2402 (Build 17328.20142).

Version 2401 (Build 17231.20236)

Release date: February 13, 2024

This build fixes several bugs, including one in which macros were being corrupted when saving Excel files and another that affected the entire Office suite in which add-ins would not load after Click trust for content add-in was selected.

This build also fixes a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2401 (Build 17231.20236).

Version 2401 (Build 17231.20194)

Release date: February 1, 2024

This build fixes a single bug in which expanded groups in the message list collapsed when users changed which column they were arranged by.

Get more info about Version 2401 (Build 17231.20194).

Version 2401 (Build 17231.20182)

Release date: January 30, 2024

This build fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one in which Excel would stop responding when saving changes, one in PowerPoint in which Notes and Slide layout would open with incorrect proportions when a file was opened from a protected view, and one in Word in which comment cards appeared too wide and cut off text when changing or switching the screen in use.

Get more info about Version 2401 (Build 17231.20182).

Version 2312 (Build 17126.20132)

Release date: January 9, 2024

This build fixes a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2312 (Build 17126.20132).

Version 2312 (Build 17126.20126)

Release date: January 4, 2023

This build introduces a new sensitivity toolbar in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that helps users understand the security policies that apply to their documents. It’s available when users are creating copies of their documents in File / Save As. In addition, Office now had a new default theme, which Microsoft says is “more modern and accessible.”

It also fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one in Excel in which Custom Menu text was truncated when right-clicking in a cell, one in PowerPoint in which restoring a previous version of a presentation was not working as expected when using Version History, and one in Word in which the content control end tag was marked at the end of the document automatically if the document was edited in Word Online and then opened in Word desktop.

Get more info about  Version 2312 (Build 17126.20126).

Version 2311 (Build 17029.20108)

Release date: December 12, 2023

This build fixes one bug in Outlook, in which the message list was blank when switching between the “Focused” and “Other” views.

It also fixes a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2311 (Build 17029.20108).

Version 2311 (Build 17029.20068)

Release date: November 29, 2023

This build automatically inserts image captioning for Excel’s images. When you insert an image into a spreadsheet, accessibility image captioning is automatically generated for you.

It also fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one in Excel in which list box controls would not respond to mouse clicks after scrolling using the mouse wheel, and one in Word in which the language of a presentation was not retained when saving or exporting the presentation to a PDF file.

Get more info about Version 2311 (Build 17029.20068).

Version 2310 (Build 16924.20150)

Release date: November 14, 2023

This build fixes several bugs, including one in which Outlook failed to comply with the default browser settings for some users, and another in which new lines were added to an Outlook signature when pressing Enter in the body of the email.

It also fixes a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2310 (Build 16924.20150).

Version 2310 (Build 16924.20124)

Release date: Oct. 31, 2023

This build fixes a bug that caused Outlook to exit unexpectedly when clicking the More link in the Search results list.

Get more info about Version 2310 (Build 16924.20124).

Version 2310 (Build 16924.20106)

Release date: Oct. 25, 2023

In this build, the Teams Meeting App works in Outlook, too. With it, you’ll be able to configure a meeting app while scheduling an invite in Outlook. The meeting app will be ready to use when you chat or join the meeting on Teams.

A wide variety of bugs have also been fixed, including one in Excel where certain Pivot Tables would load slowly; one in which OneNote would close unexpectedly when rapidly navigating from one .PDF file to another .PDF file between different sections, or when performing an undo operation on a .PDF printout insertion; and one in the entire Office suite that caused unexpected black borders to appear around screen captures added with the Insert Screenshot functionality.

Get more info about Version 2310 (Build 16924.20106).

Version 2309 (Build 16827.20166)

Release date: October 10, 2023

This build fixes two bugs, one in which users were missing their Outlook add-ins, and another in Word in which subheading numbering with a custom Style would disappear if the file was saved and reopened. It also fixes a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2309 (Build 16827.20166).

Version 2309 (Build 16827.20130)

Release date: September 28, 2023

This build introduces two new features, including the ability to disable specific types of automatic data conversions in Excel and support for the “Present in Teams” button to present local files in PowerPoint Live in Microsoft Teams.

Several bugs have also been fixed, including one in which the setting to control how Outlook opens previous items at start-up was missing from the Options window, and another in Word in which the Add-ins tab was not visible when using custom toolbar information.

Get more info about Version 2309 (Build 16827.20130).

Version 2308 (Build 16731.20234)

Release date: September 12, 2023

This build fixes several bugs, including one that caused Outlook to close unexpectedly when viewing an email, and another in PowerPoint in which the presenter view slide section zoomed in and out when zooming in the notes section.

It also fixes a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2308 (Build 16731.20234).

Version 2308 (Build 16731.20170)

Release date: August 28, 2023

This build introduces several new features, including adding AutoComplete functionality to the Data Validation dropdown list in Excel, designed to make data entry and validation more efficient. In Excel, Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) with 256-bit key length in Cipher Block Chaining mode (AES256-CBC) is now the default Microsoft Purview Information Protection encryption mechanism. (More details here.)

Several bugs in Outlook have also been fixed, including one that that caused Outlook to quit unexpectedly when users executed a search with the “All Mailboxes” scope, and another that caused Outlook to crash when non-HTTP links were clicked.

Get more info about Version 2308 (Build 16731.20170).

Version 2307 (Build 16626.20170)

Release date: August 8, 2023

This build fixes several bugs, including one in Excel in which certain macros used for updating charts caused Excel to close unexpectedly, and another in Outlook that caused Outlook to fail to show Top Search Results in some views. It also fixes a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2307 (Build 16626.20170).

Version 2307 (Build 16626.20134)

Release date: July 27, 2023

This build fixes an extended range of supported characters to prevent display issues in Office apps.

Get more info about Version 2307 (Build 16626.20134).

Version 2307 (Build 16626.20132)

Release date: July 26, 2023

This build includes several new features, including an improved way to recover from errors when collaborating in Word, and the ability to insert a live camera feed in all slides with one click in PowerPoint.

A number of bugs have also been fixed, including one in Excel, PowerPoint, and Word in which sensitivity labeling was unavailable for documents opened from SharePoint on-premises servers, and one in which Outlook would prompt you to save changes to a meeting when no changes were made.

Get more info about Version 2307 (Build 16626.20132).

Version 2306 (Build 16529.20182)

Release date: July 11, 2023

This build fixes an alert to better communicate text support for picture-to-drawing object conversion in Excel and Word. It also fixes a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2306 (Build 16529.20182).

Version 2306 (Build 16529.20154)

Release date: June 26, 2023

This build includes several new features, including adding autocomplete capabilities to Excel’s Data Validation dropdown list, and giving Outlook pop-up messages that warn, justify, or block emails being sent based on sensitivity labels.

A number of bugs have also been fixed, including one in Outlook’s Me control that showed the wrong display name in Office apps, and one in Word in which doing a mail merge displayed the error “Microsoft Word is required to run the Mail Merge Wizard.”

Get more info about Version 2306 (Build 16529.20154).

Version 2305 (Build 16501.20210)

Release date: June 13, 2023

This build fixes a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2305 (Build 16501.20210).

Version 2305 (Build 16501.20196)

Release date: June 1, 2023

This build offers faster filtering when cells contain unique or duplicate rules in Excel, as well as a new accessibility ribbon tab in Outlook and PowerPoint for making emails and presentations more accessible.

It also fixes a variety of bugs, including one in Excel in which Conditional Formatting rules were not being preserved after closing and reopening a workbook, one in Outlook in which people were shown the error “We cannot render Actionable Messages right now” when reading some email messages, and one in Access in which refreshing an ODBC connection to an Access database caused the operation to stop working after refreshing the link several times.

Get more info about Version 2305 (Build 16501.20196).

Version 2304 (Build 16327.20248)

Release date: May 9, 2023

This build fixes several bugs, including one in Outlook that caused users of the Event-Based feature to be unable to utilize some of the new APIs included in Mailbox Requirement Set 1.13, and one in Project in which users were unable to connect Project Client from the desktop to a Project Web Access site in Project Server 2016.

It also fixes a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2304 (Build 16327.20248).

Version 2304 (Build 16327.20214)

Release date: April 25, 2023

This build offers several new features, including adding closed captions to audio objects in PowerPoint and web browser control for Edge in Access. (Access still supports Internet Explorer browser control.)

The build fixes a variety of bugs, including one in which an Excel file could not be previewed in File Explorer if the file’s extension included a capital letter such as XLSX or Xlsx, and one in which PowerPoint sometimes crashed when opening a file.

Get more info about Version 2304 (Build 16327.20214).

Version 2303 (Build 16227.20280)

Release date: April 11, 2023

This build fixes two bugs, one that causes Access to close unexpectedly when exporting from an SAS application to a Microsoft Office format, and another in Outlook that hat caused some users to see the wrong Data Loss Prevention policy annotations in a multi-account profile.

It also fixes a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2303 (Build 16227.20280).

Version 2303 (Build 16227.20258)

Release date: April 4, 2023

This build fixes two bugs in Outlook, one that caused the new labels to fail to appear for some users of the Label Inheritance feature, and another that caused the Suggested Replies feature to not be disabled when connected experiences are disabled.

Get more info about  Version 2303 (Build 16227.20258).

Version 2303 (Build 16227.20212)

Release date: March 28, 2023

This build offers a variety of new features, including the ability to assign a sublabel as the default when a parent label is selected in Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word. When using built-in sensitivity labels, admins can specify a sublabel to get applied automatically when a parent label is selected.

The build also disables the Azure Information Protection Add-in by default in Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word. The apps will now automatically disable the legacy Azure Information Protection add-in and use the built-in sensitivity labels to view and apply labels powered by Microsoft Purview Information Protection.

In addition, there is a new Sensitivity toolbar in Excel, PowerPoint, and Word that makes it easier to prevent data leaks. New sensitivity labels powered by Microsoft Purview Information Protection are now displayed alongside the filename in the app’s title bar, allowing you to easily recognize and adhere to your organization’s policies. The sensitivity toolbar is also available while saving new documents or renaming existing ones.

The build fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one that caused Outlook to close unexpectedly when using Loop Components in an email, and another in which the task pane add-in API for Microsoft Project was not returning the proper value for the Summary, Milestone, and Active properties. A bug for the entire Office suite was fixed as well, in which spaces were not inserted properly when inserting text with dictation.

Get more info about Version 2303 (Build 16227.20212).

Version 2302 (Build 16130.20332)

Release date: March 20, 2023

This build fixes two bugs, one in Outlook in which some settings did not roam between machines when switching to Focused Inbox, and another in Project in which the task pane add-in API for Microsoft Project was not returning the proper value for the Summary, Milestone, and Active properties.

Get more info about Version 2302 (Build 16130.20332).

Version 2302 (Build 16130.20306)

Release date: March 14, 2023

This build fixes a variety of bugs, including one in Outlook that caused users to see an inaccurate count of the number of new notifications present when opening the notification pane, and another in which the error message “The last time you opened filename, it caused serious error. Do you still want to open it?” may appear when creating Word documents through automation using templates.

It also fixes a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about  Version 2302 (Build 16130.20306).

Version 2302 (Build 16130.20218)

Release date: February 28, 2023

This build offers several new features, including one for Excel, Word, and PowerPoint in which user-defined permissions support domain name restrictions. Now, when you choose a sensitivity label configured for user-defined permissions, domain names can be used to restrict file access to all individuals from that domain.

Three bugs have also been fixed, including one in which when clicking on an email notification of @mention in a comment, the Excel app would close unexpectedly if the workbook was already open and was in a hidden window.

Get more info about Version 2302 (Build 16130.20218).

Version 2301 (Build 16026.20200)

Release date: February 14, 2023

This build fixes a variety of bugs, including one in Excel in which when clicking on an email notification of an @mention in a comment, the Excel app would close unexpectedly if the workbook was already open and was in a hidden window, and one for the entire Office suite that caused users to experience the application to close unexpectedly when clicking on some non-HTTP links.

It also fixes a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2301 (Build 16026.20200).

Version 2301 (Build 16026.20146)

Release date: January 26, 2022

This build makes several improvements in Excel’s pivot tables, including new data support for pivot tables connected to Power BI, as well as new alerts about pivot table compatibility issues and providing documentation and workarounds for them.

It also fixes two bugs, one in Excel in which when you inserted a People Graph add-in in RTL Excel, the application closed unexpectedly, and another in PowerPoint in which you could not add or copy/paste a new slide to the presentation.

Get more info about Version 2301 (Build 16026.20146).

Version 2212 (Build 15928.20216)

Release date: January 10, 2023

This build fixes a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2212 (Build 15928.20216).

Version 2212 (Build 15928.20198)

Release date: January 4, 2022

This build lets you code-sign your Microsoft Access database and VBA code. Signing a database will allow VBA code in the database to be run even if Trust Center settings specify that only digitally signed code should be enabled.

In addition, you can now create tasks and assign them to team members without leaving Word by adding a comment, @mentioning your team member, pressing Ctrl + Enter, and checking Assign.

It also fixes a number of bugs, including one in Excel in which when you right-clicked on a chart and selected Edit, the application closed unexpectedly.

Get more info about Version 2212 (Build 15928.20198).

Version 2211 (Build 15831.20208)

Release date: December 13, 2022

This build fixes a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2211 (Build 15831.20208).

Version 2211 (Build 15831.20190)

Release date: December 6, 2022

This build improves the spacing of the buttons in the Ribbon in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel when tablet posture is being used. It also adds the ability to insert images directly in cells in Excel, and to save media to a file in PowerPoint with closed captions included.

The build also fixes a variety of bugs, including one in Excel in which when toggling the visibility of the Ribbon with sheet tabs hidden, the application would close unexpectedly, and one in Word in which changing the reading speed for Read Aloud would cause Word to stop working.

Get more info about Version 2211 (Build 15831.20190).

Version 2210 (Build 15726.20202)

Release date: November 8, 2022

This build fixes two bugs: One in Word in which when using Admin Managed Plugin and the Group Policy “Block all unmanaged add-ins,” the registry key name was case-sensitive, and one in OneNote that affected scrolling with touch.

It also fixes a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2210 (Build 15726.20202).

Version 2210 (Build 15726.20174)

Release date: October 27, 2022

This build lets you link charts to Dynamic array calculations in Excel, which can produce results of variable length. When the array recalculates, the chart will automatically update to capture all data instead of being limited to a specific number of data points. The build also lets you create e-signature approvals containing signature fields within Teams.

It fixes a number of bugs, including one in Outlook that caused emails to get stuck in the outbox for some profiles with multiple Exchange accounts configured, and another in PowerPoint that caused problems when updating links when the linked file was already open.

Get more info about  Version 2210 (Build 15726.20174).

Version 2209 (Build 15629.20208)

Release date: October 11, 2022

This build fixes a number of bugs, including one in Excel in which some content could have stopped working and not appear correctly after zooming with a touchpad, and another in Outlook that caused emails to get stuck in the outbox for some profiles with multiple Exchange accounts configured.

It also fixes a number of security holes in Word and the entire Office suite. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2209 (Build 15629.20208).

Version 2209 (Build 15629.20156)

Release date: September 26, 2022

This build adds several new features to Teams, including allowing meeting organizers to assign seats to participants in Together Mode, and the ability for people to see up to 49 videos (7×7) on their screen by default without any explicit action.

It also fixes a number of bugs, including one Outlook that caused users to experience a close unexpectedly when switching views in the calendar module, and another that crashed Outlook shortly after a boot.

Get more info about Version 2209 (Build 15629.20156).

Version 2208 (Build 15601.20148)

Release date: September 13, 2022

This build fixes a number of bugs, including one in Outlook that that caused the Customization Quick Access Toolbar file (.exportedUI) to not import when the simplified Ribbon is in use, and one in the entire Office suite that caused issues in Color Picker text selection scenarios with Shapes and SmartArt.

It also fixes a number of security holes in PowerPoint and Visio. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about  Version 2208 (Build 15601.20148).

Version 2208 (Build 15601.20088)

Release date: August 31, 2022

This build introduces a variety of new features, including protecting PDFs created using Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, taking voice notes in OneNote, the addition of fourteen new text and array functions in Excel, and the ability to join Teams meeting by meeting ID and passcode from Teams rooms on Windows.

It also fixes a variety of bugs, including one in Access that caused memory leaks when iterating over DAO record sets in VBA code in Excel, one in Word in which you could not copy rows of a table from older versions in Version History to the current version, and one in which Outlook sometimes closed unexpectedly when right-clicking on an app in the new app bar.

Get more info about Version 2208 (Build 15601.20088).

Version 2207 (Build 15427.20210)

Release date: August 9, 2022

This build fixes a bug in Outlook, which would sometimes crash after being opened.

It also fixes a number of security holes in Excel, Outlook, and the entire Office suite. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2207 (Build 15427.20210).

Version 2207 (Build 15427.20194)

Release date: August 3, 2022

This build optimizes Excel recalculation on devices with constrained resources. On resource-constrained devices (two cores or less and eight gigabytes of RAM or less), Excel now by default makes recalculation more optimal by running calculations on a single thread.

In addition, Outlook gets a suggested replies feature that offers you three possible replies to simple messages. Word makes voice dictation easier.

A number of bugs were also fixed, including one in Excel in which cell references in charts were displaying incorrectly, and one in Word in which “paste as link” might not update automatically.

Get more info about Version 2207 (Build 15427.20194).

Version 2206 (Build 15330.20246)

Release date: July 18, 2022

This build fixes one bug in Access, in which when opening an ACCDE/MDE file, users may receive an error message with the text “Requested type library or wizard is not a VBA project.” Go here for more details.

Get more info about Version 2206 (Build 15330.20264).

Version 2206 (Build 15330.20246)

Release date: July 12, 2022

This build fixes one bug, in which Excel closed unexpectedly when interacting with fonts.

It also fixes a Windows Graphics Component Information Disclosure Vulnerability and a Microsoft Office Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability, both for the entire Office suite. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2206 (Build 15330.20246).

Version 2206 (Build 15330.20230)

Release date: July 6, 2022

This build fixes a variety of bugs, including one in which Excel crashed when showing a live preview of a chart, one that caused OneNote to crash, one in Outlook in which users could not add room mailboxes to the calendar, and one in Word in which nested fields in headers displayed incorrectly while scrolling.

Get more info about Version 2206 (Build 15330.20230).

Version 2206 (Build 15330.20196)

Release date: June 29, 2022

This build introduces new Excel features such as the ability to quickly copy data from the status bar, including information from aggregations like “Sum,” “Average,” and “Count.” It also lets you find data more quickly in Excel by speeding up the AutoFilter function. In PowerPoint, you can now anchor comments to specific ranges of text.

The build also fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one in Excel in which shared workbooks in .xls format improperly merged changes, one in Outlook in which users were not able to add room mailboxes to the calendar, and one in Word in which nested fields in headers displayed incorrectly while scrolling.

Get more info about Version 2206 (Build 15330.20196).

Version 2205 (Build 15225.20288)

Release date: June 14, 2022

This build fixes several bugs, including one in Word in which while coauthoring, some replies to comments weren’t shown until the next time a document was opened, and one in Outlook that caused users to see multiple copies of a shared calendar rendered in certain circumstances.

It also fixes a remote code execution vulnerability security for the entire Office suite. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2205 (Build 15225.20288).

Version 2205 (Build 15225.20204)

Release date: May 24, 2022

This build offers new automatic groupings in Teams as suggestions to use in channel posts. For example, you can @TeamOwners in a channel posting and all Team Owners will be notified. It also fixes several bugs, including one in Excel in which the letter “j” was not being properly inserted, one in Outlook that caused users to see the error “Cannot perform the requested operation…” when attempting to expand a local contact group, and one in which the entire Office suite crashed when rendering code.

Get more info about Version 2205 (Build 15225.20204).

Version 2204 (Build 15128.20248)

Release date: May 17, 2022

This build fixes several bugs, including one in Outlook that caused users to see the error “Cannot perform the requested operation…” when attempting to expand a local contact group; one in Word in which the Office “Insert Screenshot” showed blank/incomplete screenshots for Office Apps; and one in the entire Office suite in which font download requests for endpoints that don’t support font service were being issued.

Get more info about Version 2204 (Build 15128.20248).

Version 2204 (Build 15128.20224)

Release date: May 10, 2022

This build fixes several bugs, including one that caused Excel to consume excessive memory, one in Word in which in which a document scrolled to the end after deleting a paragraph mark, and an issue with rendering in Excel and Project when using certain older versions of Windows 11.

It also offers a security update for Excel and one for the entire Office suite. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2204 (Build 15128.20224).

Version 2204 (Build 15128.20178)

Release date: April 26, 2022

This build reduces unwanted fragmenting of conditional formatting rules in Excel, and also improves Power BI dataset request access from Excel.

It also fixes several bugs, including one in Access that that prevented Outlook event-based add-ins from functioning properly, one that caused Outlook to close unexpectedly during launch when connected to a OneDrive for Business endpoint with no service URL, and one for the entire Office suite in which the font drop-down would not accurately reflect what font was selected in a shape.

Get more info about Version 2204 (Build 15128.20178).

Version 2203 (Build 15028.20228)

Release date: April 20, 2022

This build fixes three bugs, one in Access that prevented Outlook Event-Based Add-Ins from functioning properly, one in Outlook that caused EU users to see information missing from person cards, and another in Outlook that caused users to experience a “stop responding” when responding to certain contacts.

(Get more info about Version 2203 (Build 15028.20228).

Version 2203 (Build 15028.20204)

Release date: April 12, 2022

This build fixes several bugs, including one in Outlook in which the “Move to Other” functionality stopped working properly, and another for the entire Office suite in which the font drop-down would not accurately reflect what font was selected in a shape.

It also offers security updates for Excel. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2203 (Build 15028.20204).

Version 2203 (Build 15028.20160)

Release date: March 30, 2022

This build introduces one new feature, a navigation pane for Excel that lets you see the layout of your workbook at a glance and navigate through its elements quickly. The build also fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one in Excel in which using custom command bars could cause Excel to crash, one in Outlook that caused the “Index out of date” message to display too often, one in Word that caused a performance issue when opening Word documents with thousands of track changes, and one for the entire Office suite that caused contact cards to display improperly

Get more info about Version 2203 (Build 15028.20160).

Version 2202 (Build 14931.20132)

Release date: March 8, 2022

This build fixes several bugs, including one in Outlook that caused users to experience performance issues when switching folders due to a corrupt view setting. It also offers security updates for Visio and Word. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about  Version 2202 (Build 14931.20132).

Version 2202 (Build 14931.20120)

Release date: February 28, 2022

This build offers a wide variety of new features, including one in Excel that disables Excel 4.0 (XML) macros by default to improve security; one in Word that lets you proofread selected text with Editor; one in Outlook that lets you visualize and explore your company’s internal structure, work teams, and individual roles; and one on PowerPoint that lets you pre-record video with animation. It also has many new Teams features, including enabling Teams app developers to test their monetized apps within Teams clients, and the addition of a new compact view in Chat.

Many bugs were also fixed, including one in Outlook in which the folder hierarchy did not synchronize all folders for very large primary mailboxes with more than 100,00 folders, and another in Word in which SVG images that contain external content weren’t showing up.

Get more info about Version 2202 (Build 14931.20120).

Version 2201 (Build 14827.20198)

Release date: February 16, 2022

This build fixes a single bug in Access that caused errors while running an application.

Get more info about Version 2201 (Build 14827.20198).

Version 2201 (Build 14827.20192)

Release date: February 8, 2022

This build fixes several bugs, including one in which people could not save their files in Project. It also offers security updates for Excel, Visio, and the entire Office suite. For details, see the Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2201 (Build 14827.20192).

Version 2201 (Build 14827.20158)

Release date: January 26, 2022

This build includes a variety of feature updates, including easier scrolling through Excel spreadsheets that are large or that have very wide cells, new Cortana features for Teams, and an improved address book search in Outlook.

A number of bugs were fixed, including one in Outlook that caused applications to become unresponsive after loading a contact card, one in Word in which “Repeat style” applies Normal instead of repeating the style, and another in Access that caused the Insights add-in to stop working intermittently.

Get more info about Version 2201 (Build 14827.20158).

Version 2112 (Build 14729.20260)

Release date: January 12, 2022

This build includes a variety of bugs and performance fixes.

Get more info about Version 2112 (Build 14729.20260).

Version 2112 (Build 14729.20248)

Release date: January 11, 2022

This build fixes a bug in Excel in which shapes and form controls could not call VBA macros. It also offers security updates for two Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerabilities. For details, see “Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.”

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2112 (Build 14729.20248).

Version 2112 (Build 14729.20194)

Release date: January 4, 2022

This build offers a variety of new features, including the ability to track only your own changes in Word when collaborating, an improved way to search Outlook’s calendar, and several new features in Teams, including one that lets you “raise your hand” virtually to let people know you want to contribute without interrupting the conversation.

It also fixes a variety of bugs, including one in Access that that caused an application to close unexpectedly when connection to an Access or Jet database using multiple threads, and one in Outlook that caused users to see garbled text in some fields when exporting contacts to a CSV.

Get more info about Version 2112 (Build 14729.20194).

Version 2111 (Build 14701.20262)

Release date: December 16, 2021

This build fixes two bugs, one in Access that prevented multiple users from opening a database on a network file share, and for the entire Office suite related to refreshing elements that may contain text.

Get more info about Version 2111 (Build 14701.20262).

Version 2111 (Build 14701.20248)

Release date: December 14, 2021

This build fixes a variety of bugs, including one in Excel in which opening an XLSM file in the SpreedsheetCompare tool sometimes caused the tool to stop responding, and one in which the teaching callouts (tips) about the new look of Office did not appear in Outlook.

It also offers security updates for Excel and the entire Office suite. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2111 (Build 14701.20248).

Version 2111 (Build 14701.20226)

Release date: December 3, 2021

This build fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one in Excel in which newly created PivotTables could lose custom settings if the data source range was changed; another in PowerPoint and Word in which some pop-up UI elements could not be clicked, such as the Join Meeting pop-up in Outlook or the Welcome Back pop-up in PowerPoint; and another in Project in which some projects would close unexpectedly when loading customized reports.

Get more info about Version 2111 (Build 14701.20226).

Version 2110 (Build 14527.20312)

Release date: December 1, 2021

This build fixes several bugs, including one that wouldn’t allow people to insert their signatures into new emails, replies, or forwards after a restart of Outlook, and another in which the theme picker in Word’s File > Options menu for x64 users didn’t work.

Get more info about Version 2110 (Build 14527.20312).

Version 2110 (Build 14527.20276)

Release date: November 9, 2021

This build fixes a variety of bugs, including one in Excel in which when opening linked tables to Dynamics, numbers may appear as small squares when the data is displayed, and one in Project in which when tasks are rescheduled, manually scheduled tasks may be scheduled earlier than they should be. It also offers security updates for Excel, Word, and the entire Office suite. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2110 (Build 14527.20276).

Version 2110 (Build 14527.20234)

Release date: October 28, 2021

This build fixes several small bugs, including one in Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word in which each app stopped responding when drawing an image.

Get more info about Version 2110 (Build 14527.20234).

Version 2110 (Build 14527.20226)

Release date: October 25, 2021

This build includes a wide variety of new features, including several dozen in Teams, ranging from making Live Transcript available for web users of Teams meetings, a new Question & Answer application for Teams webinars & meetings, and allowing people to join meetings in other clouds anonymously from the Teams desktop app.

Several Office bugs were also fixed, including one in Excel in which a query update caused Excel to stop responding, and one in Outlook that caused a sync failure to occur when generating a preview.

Get more info about Version 2110 (Build 14527.20226).

Version 2109 (Build 14430.20306)

Release date: October 14, 2021

This build offers a variety of unnamed bug fixes and performance fixes.

Get more info about Version 2109 (Build 14430.20306).

Version 2109 (Build 14430.20298)

Release date: October 12, 2021

This build offers security updates for Excel, Visio, Word, and the entire Office suite. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2109 (Build 14430.20298).

Version 2109 (Build 14430.20270)

Release date: October 6, 2021

This build fixes a bug in Outlook that caused some users to experience a stop responding when attempting to retrieve AutoDiscover settings.

Get more info about Version 2109 (Build 14430.20270).

Version 2109 (Build 14430.20234)

Release date: September 28, 2021

This build introduces more than a dozen new Teams features, including one in which you can now define a default number of days to keep Teams meeting recordings saved to OneDrive and SharePoint before they are automatically deleted, and the introduction of the Network Planner for government clouds to help you determine and organize network requirements for connecting Microsoft Teams users across an organization.

It also fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint in which some users could not export documents to PDF or XPS formats, and another in Word in which the insert online video button was disabled.

Get more info about Version 2109 (Build 14430.20234).

Version 2108 (Build 14326.20404)

Release date: September 14, 2021

This build fixes a single small bug and includes security updates. The bug fixed is one that caused a loss of HTML formatting when a draft of an email was saved to disk.

The security updates are for Access, Excel, Visio, Word, and the entire Office suite. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2108 (Build 14326.20404).

Version 2108 (Build 14326.20348)

Release date: September 7, 2021

This build fixes several bugs, including one in Excel in which not all columns appeared when linking to or importing from a Dynamics table, one in Outlook that that caused Room Finder to fail to load, and one in Word in which the print preview was not loading when using Print.

Get more info about Version 2108 (Build 14326.20348).

Version 2108 (Build 14326.20238)

Release date: August 25, 2021

This build introduces many new features for Microsoft Teams, including the ability for meeting participants to transfer calls between desktop and mobile, a “top hits” section added to the top of search autosuggestions, and live captions being made available to users accessing Teams meetings via the web.

The build also fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one in which connecting to a data source from within the PowerPivot window in Excel was not working, one that crashed Outlook while email was being composed, one in Word in which the Insert Online Video button was disabled, and one for the entire Office suite in which some documents failed to load after using some web add-ins.

Get more info about Version 2108 (Build 14326.20238).

Version 2107 (Build 14228.20250)

Release date: August 10, 2021

This build fixes a variety of small bugs and includes security updates. Among the bugs fixed are one in Excel that caused some linked Dynamics tables to stop responding and one in multiple Office apps in which document exports to PDF or XPS formats stopped responding due to recent updates.

The security updates are for Word and the entire Office suite. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2107 (Build 14228.20250).

Version 2107 (Build 14228.20226)

Release date: August 3, 2021

This build fixes two bugs in Outlook. One caused emails resent by a different user to appear to have been sent by the original sender in organizations that enable Send From Alias. The other caused users to see duplicate time entries in the end meeting time drop-down when the start of the meeting and the end of the meeting were on different dates.

Get more info about Version 2107 (Build 14228.20226).

Version 2107 (Build 14228.20204)

Release date: July 26, 2021

This build offers several minor new features and fixes a variety of bugs. Among the new features are one in which you can use the Immersive Reader in Outlook to create custom text spacing, page colors, column width, and line focus, and another in PowerPoint adds Flipgrid video support.

Among the bugs fixed are one Word in which comment cards next to the Word canvas were the incorrect size, and one in which Outlook crashed for some people when performing searches.

Get more info about Version 2107 (Build 14228.20204).

Version 2106 (Build 14131.20332)

Release date: July 20, 2021

This build fixes several small bugs in Outlook, including one that caused some users to experience an unexpected close when Outlook was collecting diagnostic information, and another that caused Cloud Settings users to experience an unexpected close when an incompletely configured account was present in the profile.

Get more info about Version 2106 (Build 14131.20332).

Version 2106 (Build 14131.20320)

Release date: July 13, 2021

This build fixes a variety of small bugs and includes security updates. Among the bugs fixed are one in Outlook that caused some systems to crash while retrieving service-powered search suggestions, and one for the entire Office suite related to instability during DirectX device loss and recovery situations.

The security updates are for Excel, Word, and the entire Office suite. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2106 (Build 14131.20320).

Version 2106 (Build 14131.20278)

Release date: June 29, 2021

This build introduces several new minor features for Outlook, including one that includes the most relevant files related to your search when you type in the Search box, and another alerts you if any suspicious sign-in activity is detected and tells you when and where you last signed into your account.

It also fixes a variety of small bugs, including one in Outlook that disabled translation options for some people, and one in PowerPoint in which people couldn’t to enter credentials into a Windows Security dialog to open a file, because a PowerPoint dialog box obstructed it.

Get more info about Version 2106 (Build 14131.20278).

Version 2105 (Build 14026.20308)

Release date: June 18, 2021

This build fixes several small bugs, including one in Outlook that caused users to experience an unexpected property change prompt when closing a message they had replied to or forwarded, and other for the entire Office suite in which Office crashed when reopening certain files.

Get more info about Version 2105 (Build 14026.20308).

Version 2105 (Build 14026.20270)

Release date: June 8, 2021

This build fixes a variety of small bugs and includes security updates. Among the bugs fixed are one in Excel in which extra entries appeared in the Excel Add-in list for some users, one in Outlook that caused it to close when interacting with Outlook Mail or Calendar Views, and one for the entire Office suite that caused a performance regression on opening SyncBacked files.

The security updates are for Access, Excel, Outlook, and the entire Office suite. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2105 (Build 14026.20270).

Version 2105 (Build 14026.20246)

Release date: May 24, 2021

This build includes nearly two dozen new features in Teams: anonymous users can join a Live Event so that they can present during the event, webinars can be scheduled and delivered for up to 1,000 people at a time, and users can create group chats that include people external to their organization who use Teams.

Word, Excel and PowerPoint now allow documents encrypted with sensitivity labels to be AutoSaved and co-authored with others in real time. (Unencrypted documents have this feature already.)

There are also a wide variety of resolved issues, including fixing a bug in Word in which the Editor Pane didn’t open, and one in PowerPoint in which the Reuse Slides option was not available for some users.

Get more info about Version 2105 (Build 14026.20246).

Version 2104 (Build 13929.20386)

Release date: May 18, 2021

This build fixes two issues with Outlook, one that caused the people picker in Outlook to expand upward rather than downward for users with a perpetual license, and another that caused the feedback option to fail to appear for users of the Office Perpetual 2021 preview.

Get more info about Version 2104 (Build 13929.20386).

Version 2104 (Build 13929.20372)

Release date: May 11, 2021

This build fixes a variety of small bugs and includes security updates. Among the bugs fixed are one in which a major version build rollback could result in crashes when opening files in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, and one that caused Word to unexpectedly close when the user logged off or restarted their computer.

The security updates are for Access, Excel, Word, and the entire Office suite. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2104 (Build 13929.20372).

Version 2104 (Build 13929.20296)

Release date: April 29, 2021

This build offers a variety of feature updates, including the addition of new linked data types in Excel, improved collaboration and a dark mode in Word, a set of ready-made graphics in Visio, and the ability to create an out-of-office message in Teams.

There are also a variety of bug fixes, including for one in Excel in which some automation add-ins for Excel couldn’t load, another in Excel that caused users to see signatures disappear unexpectedly, one in Project in which users were unable to remove projects from the resource pool, and one in Word in which some texts weren’t visible when using the dark mode theme in reading mode.

Get more info about Version 2104 (Build 13929.20296).

Version 2103 (Build 13901.20400)

Release date: April 13, 2021

This build fixes several small bugs throughout Office and includes security updates. Among the bugs fixed are ones in Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word that caused a resource contention issue when drawing an image.

The security updates are for Excel, Outlook, Word, and the entire Office suite. For details, see Microsoft’s Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2103 (Build 13901.20400).

Version 2103 (Build 13901.20336)

Release date: April 2, 2021

This build fixes a bug in Outlook in which a component of Outlook used by MAPI-enabled applications on computers with ARM processors caused searches to fail or put extra load on the computer as background apps restarted repeatedly.

 Get more info about Version 2103 (Build 13901.20336).

Version 2103 (Build 13901.20312)

Release date: March 30, 2021

This build offers several new features, including getting meeting suggestions when you search for someone in Outlook; being able to send a copy of email messages or conversations, including attachments, from Outlook into Teams chats and channels; and drafting documents with your voice in Word.

In addition, a number of bugs were resolved, including fixing an issue that crashed Outlook when it was syncing folder hierarchy changes, and fixing a bug in Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word in which disabled commands in the Office Ribbon would only have the icon grayed out but not the text in Dark Gray Office Theme.

Get more info about Version 2103 (Build 13901.20312).

Version 2102 (Build 13801.20360)

Release date: March 18, 2021

This build fixes several bugs, including one in Outlook that caused users of the Cloud Settings feature to see customized settings overridden by default setting after configuring Outlook on a new device, and one in Word in which typing at the end of a hidden paragraph cased Word to hang.

Get more info about Version 2102 (Build 13801.20360).

Version 2102 (Build 13801.20294)

Release date: March 9, 2021

This build fixes several small bugs with Outlook and includes security updates. Among the bugs fixed are one that in which newly added calendars didn’t appear in the navigation pane until after Outlook had been restarted, and one in Word in which Narrator skipped over paragraphs.

The security updates are for Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, and the entire Office suite. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2102 (Build 13801.20294).

Version 2102 (Build 13801.20266)

Release date: March 1, 2021

This build introduces a number of new features. In Excel, you can now unhide multiple sheets at a time, and you can also resize Conditional Formatting dialogs. Outlook gets an updated Contacts view list. Teams lets you send “reactions” to others during meetings. In addition, you can add a channel to a calendar tab. Excel, PowerPoint, and Word now require that users apply sensitivity labels to documents if their organization’s policy requires it.

The build also fixes a number of issues. In Excel, an issue was fixed that prevented users from exporting an Excel workbook to PDF. In Outlook, an issue was fixed that caused users to see duplicate calendar groups appearing after creating a new group. In Word, an issue was fixed in resolving conflicts while in coauthoring.

Get more info about Version 2102 (Build 13801.20266).

Version 2101 (Build 13628.20448)

Release date: February 16, 2021

This build fixes several bugs, including one in which Outlook sometimes closed unexpectedly when users were doing a search, and another in Outlook that caused mails to be sent as digitally signed after the user unchecked that option.

It also fixes two bugs for the entire Office suite, including one related to media controller event notifications and another related to media player engine timing.

Get more info about Version 2101 (Build 13628.20448).

Version 2101 (Build 13628.20380)

Release date: February 9, 2021

This build fixes several issues with Outlook and includes security updates for Excel. Among the Outlook bugs fixed are one that caused Cloud Settings users to experience a hang when updating settings, and another that caused issues with displaying the correct default signature in OWA.

The security updates fixed three Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerabilities. For details, see the release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2101 (Build 13628.20380).

Version 2101 (Build 13628.20274)

Release date: January 26, 2021

This build offers a variety of new features, including allowing government customers to apply sensitivity labels to documents and emails in Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word. It also automatically sends audit data about that sensitivity labeling to Microsoft 365 administrators. Additionally, in Outlook, you can now delete conversations based on message owners.

There are also a variety of bug fixes, including for a bug in which Excel would fail to launch or close unexpectedly if certain Windows Security exploit protection settings (SimExec, CallerCheck) were in use, another in which Outlook closed unexpectedly in certain search scenarios, and another in Project in which borders weren’t showing up for tasks in the Team Planner view.

Get more info about Version 2101 (Build 13628.20274).

Version 2012 (Build 13530.20440)

Release date: January 21, 2021

This build fixes a handful of bugs, including one in Outlook that caused users that have Shared or Delegated Mailboxes with large hierarchies in their profile to encounter hangs, and other that caused Outlook to close unexpectedly in certain search scenarios.

Get more info about Version 2012 (Build 13530.20440).

Version 2012 (Build 13530.20376)

Release date: January 12, 2021

This build fixes two bugs, one in which Excel would fail to launch or close unexpectedly if certain Windows Security exploit protection settings (SimExec, CallerCheck) were in use, and another in Outlook that that caused an edited signature to fail to save after prompting the user to do so.

There are also a variety of security fixes for Excel, Word, and the entire Office suite.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2012 (Build 13530.20376).

Version 2012 (Build 13530.20316)

Release date: January 5, 2021

This build lets you change your Outlook settings in the cloud, such as for Automatic Replies, Focused Inbox, and Privacy, and have them available on all of your PCs. PowerPoint gets a new feature called Presenter Coach that helps you helps you prepare to give more effective presentations.

There are also a variety of bug fixes, including for a bug in Outlook that that caused some people to encounter a hang while loading their calendar, and another in PowerPoint in which fonts didn’t properly display inside equations.

Get more info about Version 2012 (Build 13530.20316).

Version 2011 (Build 13426.20404)

Release date: December 21, 2020

This minor build fixes three issues, one in which Excel would incorrectly show in the message bar that a new version of a file is available and force the user to save their changes in a copy of the workbook or discard their changes; another in which Excel left macros disabled without prompting when opening an Excel Add-in file containing Excel 4.0 macros; and one for the entire Office suite, in which a file would be opened as NOT SyncBacked when the URL from cache and the URL from OneDrive did not match.

Get more info about Version 2011 (Build 13426.20404).

Version 2011 (Build 13426.20332)

Release date: December 8, 2020

This minor fixes a single issue for the entire Office suite in which SaveRequestManagerCam was causing the application to close instead of returning an error.

It also has security updates for Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint. Get details here.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2011 (Build 13426.20332).

Version 2011 (Build 13426.20308)

Release date: December 2, 2020

This minor build fixes several minor issues, including one in Outlook that caused the original attendees of some meetings to receive a cancellation when another attendee forwards the meeting, and another in which installing a newer version of Office over certain older versions caused impaired functionality, such as being unable to use Power Query.

Get more info about Version 2011 (Build 13426.20308).

Version 2011 (Build 13426.20294)

Release date: November 30, 2020

This build fixes two minor issues, one that caused problems when copying and pasting an equation from Word to PowerPoint, and another in Word in which document styles were being replaced with other styles from the template.

Get more info about Version 2011 (Build 13426.20294).

Version 2011 (Build 13426.20274)

Release date: November 23, 2020

This build offers a variety of minor new features, including the ability to paste SVG files from Office into third-party apps, and being able to switch Office themes automatically to match your Windows 10 theme settings. There are also several bug fixes, including fixing an issue in Outlook that caused the To field to be blank when sending a status report on a task, and one in PowerPoint in which some corrupt PowerPoint files were not opening correctly, even after a document repair operation.

Get more info about Version 2011 (Build 13426.20274).

Version 2010 (Build 13328.20408)

Release date: November 17, 2020

This build fixes a handful of minor bugs in Office, including one that broke the MailItem.BeforeAttachmentAdd event in Outlook, and one that affected the entire Office suite in which Save As would fail in certain scenarios.

Get more info about Version 2010 (Build 13328.20408).

Version 2010 (Build 13328.20356)

Release date: November 10, 2020

This build fixes two minor bugs and includes security updates. It fixes an Outlook issue in which users couldn’t grant Editor permission to their delegates, and an issue with the entire Office suite in which files that were transitioned from synced to server-only couldn’t be saved.

There are also security updates for Excel, Word and the entire Office suite. For details, see the release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2010 (Build 13328.20356).

Version 2010 (Build 13328.20292)

Release date: October 27, 2020

This build offers several  new features, including the ability to insert iPhone photos directly into Office apps. You can now also create data types with Power Query from any power source. Outlook can now check your grammar as you type. In Teams, you can pin any message in a channel onto the channel info pane.  

There are also a wide variety of bug fixes, including for a bug in Outlook that that caused Cloud Settings not to be turned on by default, one in which Project could crash when opening files where resource contours were specified in a certain manner, and one for the entire Office suite in which when printing to an inkjet printer, the printer reports “Toner Low” or “No Toner” even though inkjet printers don’t use toner.

Get more info about Version 2010 (Build 13328.20292).

Version 2009 (Build 13231.20418)

Release date: October 21, 2020

This build fixes several minor bugs, including one that closed Outlook unexpectedly when selecting a search result, and one in PowerPoint in which the forms content add-in didn’t render after insertion until the user clicked to another slide to make it show.

Get more info about Version 2009 (Build 13231.20418).

Version 2009 (Build 13231.20390)

Release date: October 13, 2020

This build fixes one minor bug and includes several security fixes. It fixes an issue in which Project may have crashed on opening files where resource contours were specified in a certain manner.

It has security fixes for Access, Excel, Outlook, Word, and the entire Office suite. For details, see the release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2009 (Build 13231.20390).

Version 2009 (Build 13231.20368)

Release date: October 8, 2020

This build fixes several minor bugs and has a security fix. It fixes an issue that caused Outlook to unexpectedly start in an offline state, and one for the entire Office suite in which when printing to an inkjet printer, the printer reports “Toner Low” or “No Toner” even though inkjet printers don’t use toner.

It also fixed a security issue in PowerPoint that disabled IRM protections when opening a PowerPoint file in Protected View.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2009 (Build 13231.20368).

Version 2009 (Build 13231.20262)

Release date: September 28, 2020

This build offers several minor new features and fixes a number of bugs. In Excel, you can now save shapes as pictures and can create named variables in new or pre-existing formulas. Outlook has a new profile card with an improved organization view, which matches the card style of Outlook on the web.

Among the bugs fixed are an issue with the Style Gallery dialog in Word, one in PowerPoint that caused slow coauthoring on files containing large numbers of the E2o data object, and one for the entire Office suite in which the Export to Animated GIF feature was not working.

Get more info about Version 2009 (Build 13231.20262). Version 2008 (Build 13127.20508)

Release date: September 22, 2020

This build fixes several small bugs, including one in which Excel could crash when using the Quick Analysis after freezing the top row of the sheet, and another in Outlook that caused users to be unable to close shared calendars by clicking on the “X” in the corner.

Get more info about Version 2008 (Build 13127.20508).

Version 2008 (Build 13127.20408)

Release date: September 9, 2020

This build fixes several small bugs, including one in which Excel could crash in certain circumstances when using the Format Painter, and another in Word in which a user might lose content when resizing a shape.

Get more info about Version 2008 (Build 13127.20408).

Version 2008 (Build 13127.20296)

Release date: August 31, 2020

This build offers a variety of new features and includes several bug fixes. You can now pin folders from the Save dialog in Excel, Word and PowerPoint. Across the entire Office suite, you can switch among multiple panes using a tab on the right side of an app. (The tab only appears if you have two or more panes open.) In Teams, you can use a variety of Cortana voice skills, such as for meetings or collaboration. In Outlook, when you include a link in an email, the file name automatically replaces the URL.

Among the bugs fixed are one that caused crashes when replying to or composing new email in Outlook, and another in Project in which project finish dates weren’t getting updated for projects connected to SharePoint tasks lists.

Get more info about Version 2008 (Build 13127.20296).

Version 2007 (Build 13029.20460)

Release date: August 25, 2020

This build includes a variety of minor bug fixes, including for one in Excel that occurred when trying to save a file that contained a formula with the LET() function, another in Outlook that caused issues when navigating in compact views, and another for the entire Office suite in which a crash could occur when a document was closed while the Share pane was open.

Get more info about Version 2007 (Build 13029.20460).

Version 2007 (Build 13029.20344)

Release date: August 11, 2020

This build includes 13 security updates, including for Remote Code Execution Vulnerabilities for Excel, Access, and the entire Office suite, as well as Information Disclosure Vulnerabilities for Excel, Word, Outlook and the entire Office suite. For details, see the Release notes for Microsoft Office Security Updates.

This build also fixes several small bugs, including one that caused Outlook to fail to retrieve search suggestions, and another that caused devices to occasionally crash when retrieving personal information from Outlook.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2007 (Build 13029.20344).

Version 2007 (Build 13029.20308)

Release date: July 30, 2020

This build offers a variety of new features and squashes several bugs. You can now create pivot tables from datasets in Power BI within Excel, and also connect to, import, and refresh data from a PDF in Excel.

In Outlook you can create polls with Quick Poll and quickly reopen items from previous sessions. PowerPoint and Word now let you auto-apply or recommend sensitivity labels. Teams gets a variety of changes, including simplified notification settings and turning off previews for your chat notifications.

Among the issues fixed are one that caused and error or hang in Excel when loading a workbook with multiple sheets in page break preview and another in Project in which the task selected in the assign resources dialog wasn’t the same as the task selected in the task board view. A bug was fixed for the entire Office suite that caused a runtime message to show even though the transition to the full product is complete.

Get more info about Version 2007 (Build 13029.20308).

Version 2006 (Build 13001.20498)

Release date: July 28, 2020

This build fixes several minor issues, including one in Word and Outlook that caused problems when copying and pasting SVG images, and a timing issue for the entire Office suite that caused crashes when closing office files.

Get more info about Version 2006 (Build 13001.20498).

Version 2006 (Build 13001.20384)

Release date: July 14, 2020

This build squashed a number of bugs and includes security updates. Among the issues resolved are one in Access that caused a problem when inserting linked SQL tables that include an identity (e.g., autonumber) field, and one in Excel that could cause a crash when trying to create a data connection if you have signed out from your account.

Among the security updates are ones that fixed a Remote Code Execution Vulnerabilities in Excel, Outlook, Project, Word and the entire Office suite, among others. For details and a complete list, see the Microsoft 365 Apps Security Updates release notes.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2006 (Build 13001.20384).

Version 2006 (Build 13001.20266)

Release date: June 30, 2020

This build offers a variety of new Office feature and squashes a number of bugs. Excel now supports OneDrive/SharePoint files with names and paths of up to 400 characters. Among other changes, PowerPoint has improved streaming video performance, Teams gets a simplified way to manage channel notification settings, and Outlook offers an option to disable @ mention suggestions when you’re composing mail in Outlook.

Among the issues resolved are one that which caused CustomUI XML for a custom ribbon tab to be removed when saving to SharePoint/OneDrive, one that caused users of the Shared Calendar improvements to see calendar failures in Outlook, and another that wouldn’t allow projects to be opened in the Project desktop client from Project Web App if the URL ended in .com.

Get more info about Version 2006 (Build 13001.20266).

Version 2005 (Build 12827.20470)

Release date: June 24, 2020

This build fixes a variety of issues throughout Office 365/Microsoft 365. In Excel, a bug that caused CustomUI XML for a custom ribbon tab to be removed when saving to SharePoint/OneDrive was fixed. Among the several Outlook problems resolved are one that caused users to see Outlook continuously prompt them to run the Inbox Repair tool. Word resolved an issue that may have caused a crash when dragging some content from the app. In PowerPoint an issue that caused the suggestion pane to crash was fixed.

Get more info about Version 2005 (Build 12827.20470).

Version 2005 (Build 12827.20336)

Release date: June 9, 2020

This build fixes a number of issues and has several security updates. In Excel, a bug was fixed in which Excel could crash when PivotTables were inserted into a chart sheet. In Project, an issue was fixed in which the ProjectBeforeTaskChange event didn’t fire when there was a change to the project summary task.

This build includes security fixes for two Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerabilities, a Microsoft Outlook Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability, a Microsoft Project Information Disclosure Vulnerability, and a Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability. For details, see these release notes.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2005 (Build 12827.20336).

Version 2005 (Build 12827.20268)

Release date: June 2, 2020

This build offers multiple feature updates and fixes a number of issues. In Excel, when you type a data value that resembles a stock or a geographic location, Excel offers to convert it to the right data type, either Stocks or Geography. Outlook’s Calendar has gotten a makeover that makes it easier to scan. PowerPoint lets you use Surface Earbuds to control your presentation. Teams has many new features, including one that allows participants to raise a virtual hand in meetings, and another that lets them customize meeting video backgrounds. Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word can now use animated GIFs.

Among the resolved issues are one in which Excel could become unresponsive after using Ctrl+Shift+Arrow keys to scroll when the Excel window is shared through Teams, one in Outlook that caused users to experience a crash when submitting feedback from an Admin Notification, and one throughout the Office suite in which in Visual Basic for Applications in Microsoft Office, certain VBA projects that contained references to code libraries with DBCS characters in the library name or library path would be viewed by the Office application as corrupt on load.

Get more info about Version 2005 (Build 12827.20268).

Version 2004 (Build 12730.20352)

Release date: May 21, 2020

This minor build fixes several bugs, including one in Excel in which the external link stopped working after the file was reopened if the file path was too long, one in Outlook that that caused users to experience crashes when submitting feedback from an Admin Notification, and one that affected the entire Office suite, in which Visual Basic for Applications projects with references that were expected to be found by searching locations specified in the PATH environment variable would not be found properly at runtime, leading to VBA runtime errors.

Get more info about Version 2004 (Build 12730.20352).

Version 2004 (Build 12730.20270)

Release date: May 12, 2020

This build fixes an Outlook issue that caused users to experience a crash when displaying toast notifications. It also includes a security fix for a Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability. For details about the security fix, see these release notes.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2004 (Build 12730.20270).

Version 2004 (Build 12730.20250)

Release date: May 4, 2020

This minor update fixes an issue in Visual Basic for Applications throughout Microsoft Office in which certain VBA projects that contain references to code libraries with DBCS characters in the library name or library path were viewed by the Office application as corrupt on loading.

Get more info about Version 2004 (Build 12730.20250).

Version 2004 (Build 12730.20236)

Release date: April 29, 2020

This update includes a variety of minor updates and bug fixes. Excel no longer supports external data connections that use the Facebook connector, Outlook now lets you join meetings without leaving your Inbox, and Access offers several new improvements to help be more productive working in Query Designer, SQL view, and the Relationships window. Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word now have access to thousands of royalty-free stock images, icons, and stickers.

Among the bugs fixed are one that caused cause Excel to crash in some cases after copying a sheet containing a PivotTable, another that caused some users to experience a hang while exiting Outlook, and one that affected the entire Office suite, preventing users from restricting access and protecting files with a password simultaneously.

Get more info about Version 2004 (Build 12730.20236).

Version 2003 (Build 12624.20466)

Release date: April 15, 2020

This update includes “various bug and performance fixes,” which Microsoft has not detailed.

Get more info about Version 2003 (Build 12624.20466).

Version 2003 (Build 12624.20442)

Release date: April 14, 2020

This release includes a variety of security updates and several small bug fixes. Among the security vulnerabilities fixed are a Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability, a Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability and a Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability for the entire suite. Get more details in the Release Notes for Office 365 Security Updates

Among the bugs fixed are an issue that caused users to occasionally experience a crash when using the “X” button on their mouse in Word and Outlook, and Application.Evaluate (VBA) not working for user-defined functions in some cases in Excel.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2003 (Build 12624.20442).

Version 2003 (Build 12624.20382)

Release date: March 31, 2020

This update improves OneNote’s sync and server stability and fixes an issue in Project in which users were unable to enter time-phased Baseline Work when the setting to protect actual work is on.

Get more info about Version 2003 (Build 12624.20382).

Version 2003 (Build 12624.20320)

Release date: March 25, 2020

This update introduces several new features and fixes a number of bugs. In Outlook, you can now drag email to a group, and also more easily log into Wi-Fi networks. Co-authoring in Word has been sped up so that collaborators see changes more quickly. And throughout the Office suite, you can now apply sensitivity labels to prompt you for custom permissions.

Among the bugs fixed are one in which Excel crashed in certain cases when reopening a workbook embedded in Word or PowerPoint, and another in which copying a shape in PowerPoint slide might fail.

Get more info about Version 2003 (Build 12624.20320).

Version 2002 (Build 12527.20278)

Release date: March 10, 2020

This update has a single bug fix and addresses several security issues in Word. It fixes an issue in Project in which the OnUndoOrRedo event doesn’t fire without first running the OpenUndoTransaction method. It also plugs four Remote Code Execution Vulnerabilities in Word. Find more details in the security release notes.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 2002 (Build 12527.20278).

Version 2002 (Build 12527.20242)

Release date: March 1, 2020

This update has only a single, minor change: an Outlook bug that that wouldn’t allow third-party applications to send email has been fixed.

Get more info about Version 2002 (Build 12527.20242).

Version 2002 (Build 12527.20194)

Release date: February 25, 2020

This update includes a few minor new features and fixes several bugs. In Excel and Word, you can now save objects as such as charts, shapes, ink, icons and pictures as an SVG (scalable vector graphics file). Click here for details. In Excel, you can also get at-a-glance analysis of the data in your columns, identify error and empty values, and see distribution histograms using the Query Editor.

In Excel, an issue was fixed in which CUBEVALUE functions would sometimes return an incorrect result. Among several Outlook bug fixes are one that that caused commas in the location field of a meeting to turn into semicolons, and another that could cause a crash when viewing the same item in multiple windows.

Get more info about Version 2002 (Build 12527.20194).

Version 2001 (Build 12430.20288)

Release date: February 19, 2020

This update includes “various bugs and performance fixes,” which Microsoft has not detailed.

Get more info about Version 2001 (Build 12430.20288).

Version 2001 (Build 12430.20184)

Release date: January 30, 2020

This update includes new features for Excel, Outlook and Word, along with bug fixes. In Excel, you can now respond to comments and mentions from within email without opening the workbook. Excel also gets a new XLOOKUP function that lets you search in a table by range or row. A new group naming policy in Outlook lets IT admins standardize and manage the names of groups created by users in an organization. Word now lets you save shapes as pictures and use the Lasso tool on the Draw tab to help select objects drawn with ink.

A bug has been fixed in Access that can cause Access to fail to identify an Identity Column in a linked SQL Server table, which can cause rows to be reported as deleted incorrectly. Also fixed was a bug in Excel and Outlook that caused users to experience crashes when renaming a signature.

Get more info about Version 2001 (Build 12430.20184).

Version 1912 (Build 12325.20344)

Release date: January 22, 2020

This very minor update resolves a single issue in which Microsoft Access failed to identify an Identity Column in a linked SQL Server table, which could have caused rows to be reported as deleted incorrectly.

Get more info about Version 1912 (Build 12325.20344).

Version 1912 (Build 12325.20298)

Release date: January 14, 2020

This security update addresses security issues in Excel and the entire Office suite. It plugs holes in three Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerabilities, and one in a Microsoft Office Memory Corruption Vulnerability. Find more details in the security release notes.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 1912 (Build 12325.20298).

Version 1912 (Build 12325.20288)

Release date: January 8, 2020

This update includes a new feature that can create looping GIFs in PowerPoint, and new accessibility features for Outlook and PowerPoint. In PowerPoint, the new Accessibility Checker helps you arrange objects on your slides with screen readers in mind. And Outlook now displays an alert reminding you to make your content accessible when sending mail to a user who prefers accessible content.

There are also a variety of minor bug fixes, including fixing an issue in Outlook that caused users to experience hangs in Outlook when retrieving Cloud Settings, and an issue in Word in which the building blocks organizer had displayed an invalid alert: “You have modified styles, building blocks.”

Get more info about Version 1912 (Build 12325.20288).

Version 1911 (Build 12228.20364)

Release date: December 10, 2019

This update offers a few minor bug fixes and several security updates. It fixes the right-click menu for Excel’s Pivot Charts to enable the “Show Detail” option and also fixes an issue in Outlook that allowed web add-ins to access Digital Rights Managed messages.

Among the security updates are those that fix an Excel Information Disclosure Vulnerability, a Word Denial of Service Vulnerability and a PowerPoint Remote Code Execution Vulnerability. For details, see the security update release notes.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 1911 (Build 12228.20364).

Version 1911 (Build 12228.20332)

Release date: December 3, 2019

This update offers a few minor features and fixes a variety of bugs. Six new functions have been added in Excel: FILTER, SORT, SORTBY, UNIQUE, SEQUENCE and RANDARRAY. Excel also now has a data visualizer add-on that can create flow charts in Visio. Word’s co-authoring capabilities have been improved, making it more likely changes will be seen by others in real time.

Among the bugs fixed are one that caused crashes when users searched for recent files in Excel while no workbook was open, and another in which Office updates unexpectedly downloaded files from the Office CDN instead of the intended source, such as a local or network share or Configuration Manager-provided location.

Get more info about Version 1911 (Build 12228.20332).

Version 1910 (Build 12130.20410)

Release date: November 22, 2019

Microsoft isn’t saying much about this update except that it includes “various [unnamed] bugs and performance fixes.”

Get more info about Version 1910 (Build 12130.20410).

Version 1910 (Build 12130.20390)

Release date: November 18, 2019

This update includes unnamed bug and performance fixes in Microsoft’s description. It also fixes two issues with Outlook, one that caused users to see the location field in meetings change unexpectedly, and another that caused users to see an empty message box with an “OK” button when trying to contact support from the Account Creation context.

Get more info about Version 1910 (Build 12130.20390).

Version 1910 (Build 12130.20344)

Release date: November 12, 2019

This security update comprises two fixes for Excel, including Remote Code Execution Vulnerability CVE-2019-1448 and Information Disclosure Vulnerability CVE-2019-1446, and two for the entire Office suite, including ClickToRun Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability CVE-2019-1449 and Information Disclosure Vulnerability CVE-2019-1402.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 1910 (Build 12130.20344).

Version 1910 (Build 12130.20272)

Release date: October 30, 2019

This update introduces a wide variety of minor new features, including one for Excel, Word and PowerPoint that checks PDFs you create for accessibility issues and offers fixes, and another for Excel, Word, Outlook and PowerPoint that applies sensitivity labels to your documents and emails to keep them compliant with your organization’s information protection policies. Word also gets coauthoring improvements.

Get more info about Version 1910 (Build 12130.20272).

Version 1909 (Build 12026.20344)

Release date: October 22, 2019

This very minor non-security update fixes a bug in Microsoft Project, in which users could get several messages when opening a read-only project. And in order to protect Office users’ security, Microsoft Office updates are now being signed using the SHA-2 algorithm exclusively.

Get more info about Version 1909 (Build 12026.20344).

Version 1909 (Build 12026.20334)

Release date: October 14, 2019

This very minor non-security update fixes a single bug that affects the entire Office suite. The bug didn’t allow people to save Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents when they tried to create a new file and bring up the “Save as Model Dialog” option after clicking on the Save icon or pressing Ctrl + S.

Get more info about Version 1909 (Build 12026.20334).

NOTE: On Oct. 15, 2019, Microsoft released an unnamed update that temporarily disables the Cloud Save dialog to address the saving issue addressed on Oct. 14. Microsoft says the feature will be re-enabled soon.

Version 1909 (Build 12026.20320)

Release date: October 8, 2019

This build includes a security update and a number of minor bug fixes. In Outlook, several bugs were squashed, including one that wouldn’t allow people to open some instances of recurring calendar items, and another that caused Outlook to crash when a profile was being created. PowerPoint had an issue fixed that caused data loss when coauthoring and offline editing.  For the entire Office suite, several issues were fixed, including one that crashed Office when files were opened. In addition, Microsoft Updates are now signed using the SHA-2 algorithm exclusively in order to improve security.

There are also fixes for two Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerabilities, detailed in CVE-2019-1327 and CVE-2019-1331.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 1909 (Build 12026.20320).

Version 1909 (Build 12026.20264)

Release date: September 30, 2019

This build offers a variety of new features and fixes several bugs. In Outlook, it’s now easier and faster to update shared calendars. In addition, when you search through your mail, the most relevant email messages are now grouped at the top of the results.

PowerPoint lets you save illustrations as SVG files, and you can now animate an ink drawing so that it replays either forward or backward during the presentation. In Excel, Word, and PowerPoint you can now more easily share files by using the “recently used” list without having to open the file.

Get more info about Version 1909 (Build 12026.20264).

Version 1908 (Build 11929.20300)

Release date: September 10, 2019

This build offers several minor bug fixes and a security update. In Outlook, a bug was fixed that caused some users to encounter authentication errors when trying to retrieve their cloud settings. In PowerPoint, an issue was fixed that prevented some animations from starting. For the entire Office suite, an issue was fixed that caused large tree views to fail.

There are also security fixes for Excel and the entire Office suite, including a Microsoft Excel Information Disclosure Vulnerability, a Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability, a Jet Database Engine Remote Code Execution Vulnerability affecting the entire suite, and a Microsoft Office Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability affecting the entire suite.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 1908 (Build 11929.20300).

Version 1908 (Build 11929.20254)

Release date: August 26, 2019

This build offers a several new minor features throughout Office. You now have more control over text boxes and borders in Excel, Word and PowerPoint, and you can also more easily insert and manage icons in those applications as well as in Outlook. The entire Office suite also gets new icons. In addition, there are a variety of bug fixes.

Get more info about Version 1908 (Build 11929.20254).

Version 1907 (Build 11901.20218)

Release date: August 13, 2019

This build offers two minor bug fixes and a variety of security updates for Outlook, Word and the entire Office suite. Among the security issues fixed are remote code execution vulnerabilities in Outlook and Word and a Jet database engine remote code execution vulnerability in the entire Office suite. (See the security release notes for details.)

The non-security changes include fixing an issue in Outlook in which users having their mailbox upgraded from basic to modern authentication were ending up with the wrong account associated with their Outlook profile.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 1907 (Build 11901.20218).

Version 1907 (Build 11901.20176)

Release date: July 29, 2019

This build offers a variety of new features for Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word. It’s now easier to code using Power Query in Excel, with enhancements including autocomplete and syntax coloring. In Outlook, when you type a person’s name in the Search box, the most relevant email messages will now be included alongside your search suggestions. PowerPoint lets you save a video to Microsoft Stream, which lets you insert a streaming video instead of the entire file into a presentation to reduce file sizes. Word now has two different sized erasers so you can fix small inking imperfections.

In addition, Excel, PowerPoint and Word make it easier to create map charts, and also let you decide whether links to Office documents should open in the appropriate app or instead in a browser.

Get more info about Version 1907 (Build 11901.20176).

Version 1906 (Build 11727.20244)

Release date: July 9, 2019

This build has security updates for Excel, Outlook, Skype for Business and the entire Office suite. For details, see these release notes. In addition, there is a fix to an Outlook bug that caused the current folder search to intermittently fail.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 1906 (Build 11727.20244).

Version 1906 (Build 11727.20230)

Release date: June 27, 2019

This extremely minor build has only a single change: It fixes an issue that caused a subset of POP3 users to see all of their emails formatted as plain text, regardless of their settings. Users who want to see their messages formatted with HTML can now do so.

Get more info about Version 1906 (Build 11727.20230).

Version 1906 (Build 11727.20210)

Release date: June 24, 2019

This build offers a variety of new features for several Office applications, primarily Outlook. Outlook gets a simplified Ribbon that tames its frequently complex interface. (The simplified Ribbon has been available in a preview for quite some time, but now is officially launched.) In addition, you can now synchronize more than 500 folders when syncing shared mailboxes. The previous limit was 500. The quick action menu can also be customized.

You can now insert 3D animated graphics into Excel. In Word, multiple people can co-author documents in the open, XML-based.docm format. And in Skype, you can crop video in a meeting on a 4K monitor when the “Crop and Center my video in meetings” setting is turned on.

There are also a number of undocumented bugs and performance fixes, according to Microsoft.

Get more info about Version 1906 (Build 11727.20210).

Version 1905 (Build 11629.20246)

Release date: June 11, 2019

This build addresses two security holes in Word, remote code execution vulnerabilities CVE-2019-1034 and CVE-2019-1035.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 1905 (Build 11629.20246).

Version 1905 (Build 11629.20214)

Release date: June 4, 2019

This build fixes a single, minor issue, one in which some add-ins caused unexpected errors to appear around shapes in PowerPoint charts.

Get more info about Version 1905 (Build 11629.20214).

Version 1905 (Build 11629.20196)

Release date: May 29, 2019

This build introduces minor new features to multiple Office applications. In Word, PowerPoint and Excel, if you @mention people in document comments, they will automatically receive an email notification that they’ve been mentioned, so they can check out the comments. Across all Office applications except Outlook, a new account manager is available; it displays all Office 365 work and personal accounts in a single location, making it easier to switch among them.

In addition, in PowerPoint, presenters’ words are automatically shown on screen as captions and can be translated into subtitles in the language of your choice. In Outlook, it’s now easier to add Outlook.com and Gmail accounts that use two-factor authentication.

Get more info about Version 1905 (Build 11629.20196).

Version 1904 (Build 11601.20204)

Release date: May 14, 2019

This build includes security fixes for a Microsoft Word Remote Code Execution Vulnerability, a Microsoft Office Access Connectivity Engine Remote Code Execution Vulnerability and a Microsoft Office Access Connectivity Engine Remote Code Execution Vulnerability. Go to the release notes for Office 365 ProPlus Security Updates for more details.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 1904 (Build 11601.20204).

Version 1904 (Build 11601.20178)

Release date: May 8, 2019

This build includes “various bugs and performances fixes,” in Microsoft’s words, that Microsoft hasn’t provided any details on.

Get more info about Version 1904 (Build 11601.20178).

Version 1904 (Build 11601.20144)

Release date: April 29, 2019

This build includes a few minor updates. The most notable is the ability to find files by typing into the Search box on the File > Home page in Excel, PowerPoint and Word. The entire Office 365 suite sports a new set of icons, and the suite also gets an updated set of privacy controls, covering things such as the types of diagnostic data sent to Microsoft. Administrators, not Office users, have control over setting them. Here’s an overview of the new settings.

Get more info about Version 1904 (Build 11601.20144).

Version 1903 (Build 11425.20244)

Release date: April 23, 2019

This build includes “various bugs and performances fixes,” in Microsoft’s words, that Microsoft hasn’t provided any details on.

Get more info about  Version 1903 (Build 11425.20244).

Version 1903 (Build 11425.20228)

Release date: April 17, 2019

This build includes “various bugs and performances fixes,” in Microsoft’s words, that Microsoft hasn’t provided any details on.

Get more info about Version 1903 (Build 11425.20228).

Version 1903 (Build 11425.20218)

Release date: April 16, 2019

This build includes “various bugs and performances fixes,” in Microsoft’s words, that Microsoft hasn’t provided any details on.

Get more info about Version 1903 (Build 11425.20218).

Version 1903 (Build 11425.20204)

Release date: April 9, 2019

This build includes security updates for Excel and the entire office suite. Among the holes fixed are the Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability, the Microsoft Graphics Components Remote Code Execution Vulnerability, and the Microsoft Office Access Connectivity Engine Remote Code Execution Vulnerability. For details, go to the security update’s release notes.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied soon. Over the next few days, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about Version 1903 (Build 11425.20202).

Version 1903 (Build 11425.20202)

Release date: April 1, 2019

This build includes minor updates for Excel, PowerPoint and Word. All three of them now have an accessibility checker which examines documents to see how accessible they are, and offers suggestions if they’re not. Go to Review > Check Accessibility to try it out. In addition, PowerPoint gives you more control over how its Morph feature works.

Get more info about  Version 1903 (Build 11425.20202).

Version 1902 (Build 11328.20158)

Release date: March 12, 2019

This build includes very minor bug and performance fixes — so minor that Microsoft has not detailed what they are.

Get more info about Version 1902 (Build 11328.20158).

Version 1902 (Build 11328.20146)

Release date: March 4, 2019

This build adds a variety of features to several Office applications. It’s now easier in PowerPoint to insert videos from YouTube and Vimeo. You can also hand-draw math expressions in PowerPoint and have them turned into standard characters.

Outlook lets you set meetings to end five to ten minutes early by default, so that people can easily attend back-to-back meetings. Outlook can now also read mail aloud. Excel lets you use @mentions in comments to let co-workers know when you’re looking for their input. And a new Ideas button in Excel lets you look for patterns in your data and uses them to create personalized suggestions for how to use the data.

Access now clearly lets you see the active tab, easily drag tabs to rearrange them, and close database objects with a click.

Get more info about Version 1902 (Build 11328.20146).

Version 1901 (Build 11231.20130)

Release date: January 31, 2019

This minor build includes small changes to Excel, Outlook, Visio and the entire Office suite. A reply box has been added to Excel, making it easier to make comments during collaboration. Outlook now lets you use animated GIFs in your emails. Visio gets a series of Azure stencils so you can design a cloud app or plan a cloud architecture. And the entire Office suite now allows Office add-ins to insert graphics in SVG format.

Get more info about Version 1901 (Build 11231.20130).

Version 1812 (Build 11126.20266)

Release date: January 14, 2019

This minor build addresses performance issues.

Get more info about Version 1812 (Build 11126.20266).

Version 1812 (Build 11126.20196)

Release date: January 8, 2019

This build includes both security fixes and a minor bug fix. The bug was an issue in Project in which you couldn’t uncheck the Critical, Late and Slack bar styles for the Gantt chart after you had checked one of them.

Security patches include closing an information disclosure vulnerability in Outlook, fixing a remote execution vulnerability and an information disclosure vulnerability in Word, and closing a remote code execution vulnerability for the entire Office suite.

What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied soon. Over the next few days, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.

Get more info about non-security changes in Version 1812 (Build 11126.20196) and security fixes in Version 1812 (Build 11126.20196).

Version 1812 (Build 11126.20188)

Release date: January 3, 2019

This build offers minor improvements to several Office applications. In Word, you can now use a feature called line focus that lets you move through a document with one, three, or five lines in view at a time. A new feature also lets you create a web page from a Word document by going to File > Transform > Transform to Web Page.

PowerPoint now lets you convert your ink to standard shapes and text, then get smart slide-design ideas from PowerPoint Designer. Outlook has new options for encrypting messages. And Word, Excel and PowerPoint all now let you keep track of accessibility issues in your documents without having to keep the accessibility checker open all the time.

Get more info about Version 1812 (Build 11126.20188).

Kategorie: Hacking & Security

Big Tech's eventual response to my LLM-crasher bug report was dire

The Register - Anti-Virus - 10 Červenec, 2024 - 09:25
Fixes have been made, it appears, but disclosure or discussion is invisible

Column  Found a bug? It turns out that reporting it with a story in The Register works remarkably well ... mostly. After publication of my "Kryptonite" article about a prompt that crashes many AI chatbots, I began to get a steady stream of emails from readers – many times the total of all reader emails I'd received in the previous decade.…

Kategorie: Viry a Červi

HuiOne Guarantee: The $11 Billion Cybercrime Hub of Southeast Asia

The Hacker News - 10 Červenec, 2024 - 09:20
Cryptocurrency analysts have shed light on an online marketplace called HuiOne Guarantee that's widely used by cybercriminals in Southeast Asia, particularly those linked to pig butchering scams. "Merchants on the platform offer technology, data, and money laundering services, and have engaged in transactions totaling at least $11 billion," Elliptic said in a report shared with The Hacker News.
Kategorie: Hacking & Security

HuiOne Guarantee: The $11 Billion Cybercrime Hub of Southeast Asia

The Hacker News - 10 Červenec, 2024 - 09:20
Cryptocurrency analysts have shed light on an online marketplace called HuiOne Guarantee that's widely used by cybercriminals in Southeast Asia, particularly those linked to pig butchering scams. "Merchants on the platform offer technology, data, and money laundering services, and have engaged in transactions totaling at least $11 billion," Elliptic said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Newsroomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/[email protected]
Kategorie: Hacking & Security

Schovejte obličej či SPZ. Návod na rychlou, jednoduchou, bezpečnou a bezplatnou anonymizaci

Živě.cz - 10 Červenec, 2024 - 08:45
Povedená a kompletně bezplatná aplikace se postará o velmi rychlé skrytí citlivých částí fotografie bez obav o soukromí. Použití je jednoduché a data z aplikace nejsou nikam odesílána.
Kategorie: IT News

Schovejte obličej či SPZ. Návod na rychlou, jednoduchou, bezpečnou a bezplatnou anonymizaci

Zive.cz - bezpečnost - 10 Červenec, 2024 - 08:45
Povedená a kompletně bezplatná aplikace se postará o velmi rychlé skrytí citlivých částí fotografie bez obav o soukromí. Použití je jednoduché a data z aplikace nejsou nikam odesílána.
Kategorie: Hacking & Security

ViperSoftX variant spotted abusing .NET runtime to disguise data theft

The Register - Anti-Virus - 10 Červenec, 2024 - 08:26
Freeware AutoIt also used to hide entire PowerShell environments in scripts

A rapidly-changing infostealer malware known as ViperSoftX has evolved to become more dangerous, according to security researchers at threat detection vendor Trellix.…

Kategorie: Viry a Červi

Letošní červen opět přepisoval rekordy. Stal se v pořadí třináctým nejteplejším měsícem v řadě

Živě.cz - 10 Červenec, 2024 - 07:45
Služba Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) publikovala na svých stránkách pravidelnou měsíční zprávu o stavu klimatu. Většina poznatků vychází ze souboru dat, který využívá miliardy měření ze satelitů, lodí, letadel a meteorologických stanic po celém světě. Aktuální výsledky bohužel nejsou ...
Kategorie: IT News
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