Two weeks ago we shared our plans to introduce new, Universal Office apps for Windows 10 including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote, that can be installed on PCs, tablets and phones. Today, we’re excited to announce that Word, Excel and PowerPoint are now available for technical preview on PCs, laptops and tablets running the Windows 10 Technical Preview! In the coming weeks, we’ll open up our preview for the same apps on phones and tablets running Windows 10.
It’s three years too late, but we’re finally – finally – getting proper, non-preview, non-beta, fully functional and grown-up Metro applications.
About the only Office app I use now days is Outlook. Would be cool if I could sync mail/calendar/contacts/rules across devices, using a regular IMAP account.
That last part is key – I don’t want to have to sign up for an account on a mail server run by some giant corporation. Mainly because I have my own domain with 50+ email addresses/aliases set up already.
Searching for the apps in the Store (beta) doesn’t find them. I had to track down the links which were removed from the original blog post, and use Internet Explorer to click the links to take me to the correct location within the Microsoft Store (Beta) app.
Here the links I used:
For Word:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/apps/word-preview/9wzdncrfjb9s
Excel:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/apps/excel-preview/9wzdncrfjbh…
and PowerPoint:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/apps/powerpoint-preview/9wzdnc…
Modern UI. Metro was never an official name and was obviously dropped.
Which will cause Microsoft trouble the next time they introduce a new UI. I mean, what comes after “Modern UI”?
They’re knuckleheads to the third degree.
Well, “postmodern UI”, obviously.
I would prefer “retro” and have a UI that allows me to work efficiently again.
Modern UI 360.
Postmodern UI.
(Sorry, should have read further in comments).
Edited 2015-02-05 12:07 UTC
Postmortem ui
It’s interesting that the new Office apps, and the other new Win10-specific Modern apps like the updated Control Panel and Store seem to have dropped the Win8-style ‘charms’ and ‘app bars’ metaphors where you had to swipe in from the top/bottom or side to find various options.
This is probably a good thing.
I notice ‘Modern’ apps built for Win8/8.1 that rely on the swipe from top/bottom behavior …. seem a little awkward in touch mode on Win10 in the current build (9926). Swiping seems to bring up the title bar (from top) or taskbar (from bottom) and doesn’t bring up the app commands. (You can get at them from a menu on the title bar, which is not shown on the “new” Modern style apps at all…)
(Also, I *really like* the new app-switching on swipe-from-left, it’s much more intuitive than the Windows 8/8.1 method.)
I have a HTPC that I built in 08 i ran win7 for years I actually like windows media center I have a bluetooth keyboard/remote about the size of a cellphone. I just updated it to win 8.1 , I would love to use modern ui but it is not remote friendly, the aps such as fxnow,netflix, abcnow suck with the remote. it would also be nice to have wmc guide tile and live tv tile…oh well maybe win10 update they’ll think about it