Microsoft introduces Microsoft 365 for consumers

Microsoft have announced a rebranding and changes to Office 365 Person and Home subscriptions. The new Microsoft 365 subscription goes live 21^st April with two versions: Microsoft 365 Personal and Microsoft 365 Family for 6 people. As well as the rebranding there are grammar and style addins, PowerPoint tools, templates and new tools.

Microsoft Editor is a new AI powered service that works with Word and browsers via a browser extension for Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome.

Anyone can access the essential Editor capabilities, such as spelling and basic grammar across Word, Outlook.com, and the web. Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers have access to advanced grammar and style refinements to write with more clarity and conciseness

When you know what you want to say but can’t seem to find the “right” way to say it, just highlight a sentence and right-click for Rewrite Suggestions. Rewrite Suggestions in Word can offer ideas to help you rephrase sentences for more impact or clarity while staying true to your original meaning.

For the first time ever in Word, Editor’s similarity checker leverages plagiarism-checking capabilities to support writers in creating original content and, when necessary, insert relevant citations right into their document with just a click. This tool allows writers to focus less on the mechanics of writing and more on the content. And teachers love that similarity checker helps students learn how to appropriately cite content.

Additional style critiques including clarity, conciseness, formality, and inclusiveness assist Microsoft 365 subscribers to write with more confidence across documents, email, and the web. For example, the inclusive language critique can suggest refinements to help a writer avoid unintentional bias by suggesting a writer may want to try a term like “police officer” in place of “policeman.”

Powerpoint has new presentation tools. PowerPoint Coach uses AI to detect if you’re talking too fast or saying “umm”. There is new content that can be using in presentations and new premium templates.

There is a new tool for managing money in Excel which will be initially US only. There will also be a new data types in Excel for managing eg food, movies and places.

For Outlook on the web there are new tools for managing work and personal life:

Juggling work meetings with personal appointments can be a struggle, particularly if your work and personal calendars aren’t connected. Today, we announced new features in Outlook on the web that help you manage all your commitments, across your work and life, in one place. With these new features, you can link your personal calendar to your work calendar to show your real availability in your work account, while still maintaining privacy around the details of personal appointments and business meetings.

If you are a Skype users there is a new tool to help you to connect to your friends and family called Meet Now:

To help people get connected even faster, we recently introduced a new feature in Skype called Meet Now. Meet Now lets you easily create video meetings in as little as three clicks for free, no signups or downloads required.

It looks Teams will be getting new features to help connecting with your personal life:

o provide one app to help manage work and life and deepen your connection with those who matter most, today we previewed new features coming to Microsoft Teams for your personal life.

With these new features coming to Teams, you can connect, stay organized, and collaborate with family and friends. Create groups to plan trips with friends; organize a neighborhood gathering or your next book club meeting. You’ll be able to connect in a group chat, make video calls, collaborate over shared to-do lists and assign tasks to specific people, coordinate schedules, share photos and videos, all in one place. Teams gives to you the tools to seamlessly manage daily life; share grocery lists, organize across family calendars, store important information like Wi-Fi passwords and account info, and even see location updates when loved ones arrive home or at other locations like work or school.

These new features are coming in preview to the Microsoft Teams mobile app in the coming months.

There is a new Microsoft Family Safety app coming to iOS and Android which builds on the child account tools Microsoft already have. It enables you to manage screen time across Windows PCs, Xbox and Android.

The new services will be available April 21^st. More details on Microsoft’s blog post.