Office For Android, Sway, OneDrive Updates: MS Office NewsOffice For Android, Sway, OneDrive Updates: MS Office News

News surrounding Microsoft Office this week included a public preview of Office for Android and eDiscovery for Office 365.

Kelly Sheridan, Staff Editor, Dark Reading

May 24, 2015

3 Min Read
<p align="left">(Image: Microsoft)</p>

8 Microsoft Office Alternatives

8 Microsoft Office Alternatives


8 Microsoft Office Alternatives (Click image for larger view and slideshow.)

The past week has been a busy one in Redmond. Microsoft has moved full speed ahead with even more updates for Windows 10 and its Office suite, following close on the heels of its Build 10080 for Windows 10 Mobile.

Early in the week, Microsoft announced the public preview of its Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps on Android Phones. This news arrives a few months after Office was released in full on Android tablets.

The Office for Android phone apps are optimized for touchscreen and deliver a familiar Office layout that resembles Office for iOS, but is specifically formatted for Android. Design features include menu options located at the bottom of the screen for easier thumb navigation.

[What's in store for Windows 10 Mobile? Read: Windows 10 Mobile: 5 Questions We Want Answered]

Android customers can use the Office apps to open, create, edit, and save files to the cloud. They have their pick of storage platforms, which include OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, Dropbox, SharePoint, Box, and Google Drive. Microsoft noted that the current Office Mobile app for Android will continue to be available in the app store throughout the preview period.

Speaking of OneDrive, Microsoft also announced in the past week that OneDrive for Business has been updated with new data-loss-prevention capabilities for sync. The update addresses the need for businesses to ensure that users can only sync files to managed or domain-joined PCs, which prevents them from leaking data onto home and personal devices.

The new feature, targeted at OneDrive for Business Administrators, will allow IT to manage their sync function in order to limit data leakage. Administrators can build a list of domains from which they will allow sync client requests. If OneDrive for Business sync requests come from PCs that aren't domain-joined or on the list, they will be blocked.

Outlook.com got a facelift this week with an updated inbox and calendar, and also new ways to facilitate collaboration. Upcoming features include Clutter, for sorting and prioritizing email messages; new themes; updated Skype experience; easier OneDrive sharing capabilities; search suggestions; inline images for copying and pasting photos; link previews; and a new mobile Web experience.

This is the first in a series of updates that will upgrade Outlook.com to a new infrastructure based on Office 365. It's only available to a small group of customers right now, but will reach a broader audience through an opt-in program over the coming weeks.

Remember back at Ignite when we learned that Sway would eventually be available for business and education customers in Office 365? Microsoft in the past week started rolling out Sway to these groups, with added support for more languages. More updates on Sway include the ability to insert Wikipedia information on people and places, add personal and group images on Flickr, and structure Sway with a new Grid Card layout.

In what is likely the last Office update for the week, Office 365 has new eDiscovery capabilities powered with Equivio Zoom. Microsoft acquired text analytics startup Equivio back in January with the goal of improving the eDiscovery and information governance capabilities available in Office 365 at the time.

Equivio Zoom will help users analyze unstructured data, more efficiently review documents, and make decisions necessary to reduce data for eDiscovery. They can use the service for data stored within Exchange Online, OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, and Skype for Business. Microsoft noted in a blog post that Equivio Zoom will be available in preview starting in June, and eventually reach a larger audience before the end of 2015.

[Did you miss any of the information conference in Las Vegas last month? Don't worry: We have you covered. Check out what our speakers had to say and see tweets from the show. Let's keep the conversation going.]

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About the Author

Kelly Sheridan

Staff Editor, Dark Reading

Kelly Sheridan is the Staff Editor at Dark Reading, where she focuses on cybersecurity news and analysis. She is a business technology journalist who previously reported for information, where she covered Microsoft, and Insurance & Technology, where she covered financial services. Sheridan earned her BA in English at Villanova University. You can follow her on Twitter @kellymsheridan.

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