Microsoft Schedules Office 2019 Release For 2018

While many people are yet to cozy up to Office 2016, Microsoft has already unveiled plans for releasing the next generation Office suite in year 2018. In an announcement made by Microsoft on the official Office blog, Microsoft gave the schedule and overview for the next perpetual release of the suite, i.e. Office 2019.

Release Date

In the official announcement, Microsoft announced that Office 2019 will be released in the second half of year 2018. Furthermore, it was confirmed that the suite will retain its famous apps family including; Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook, as well as related products such as; Exchange, SharePoint, and Skype for Business.

Office 2019 Preview

Like previous years, Microsoft will start with a preview of its latest Office version a year before the retail version becomes available. This means that users will be able to download and install the free preview for Office 2019 by the second half of year 2018.

New Features

Office 2019 includes a wide range of new capabilities such as new and improved inking features which account for pressure sensitivity, ink replay, tilt effects, as well as additional formulas and charts for Excel with more enhanced data analysis options, and the inclusion of some of the finest PowerPoint features that are yet to become mainstream such as Morph and Zoom. We can only hope that Microsoft also makes PowerPoint Designer also available for non Office 365 users.

The server side such as SharePoint, Exchange and Skype for Business will see more enhanced IT management, voice, security and usability features.

It seems that Microsoft has realized that not everyone is ready for their cloud based approach. Hence, there is a lot of talk about allowing users to retain content offline. This might mean that we might see Microsoft backtracking from its previous approach of trying to push the cloud based Office 365 as the only option for users to be able to purchase and use the Office suite.