- Microsoft announced it has launched new Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions. Plus Microsoft announced dozens of new features.
Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Modern Life, Search & Devices Yusuf Mehdi announced that the company has launched new consumer-friendly versions of the Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions. These subscriptions include a consumer version of the Teams app, a new security app, and the company’s flagship productivity software: Word, Outlook, Excel, and PowerPoint.
“We are delighted to announce that on April 21st, Office 365 will become Microsoft 365, the subscription for your life to help you make the most of your time, connect, and protect the ones you love, and to develop and grow. An evolution of Office 365, Microsoft 365 builds on the foundation of Office infusing new artificial intelligence (AI), rich content and templates, and cloud-powered experiences to empower you to become a better writer, presenter, designer, manager of your finances, and deepen your connection to the people in your life,” wrote Mehdi in a blog post. “These experiences start rolling out today and will reach the over 38 million Office 365 subscribers over the next few months.”
Microsoft also unveiled two new Microsoft 365 experiences that will roll out in preview in the coming months. This includes a new Microsoft Family Safety app designed for keeping families safe across the digital and physical worlds and new features in Microsoft Teams that bring you closer to friends and family.
And Microsoft also announced that the new Microsoft Edge browser has new features for protecting you on the web with Password Monitor and to simplify research with Collections.
Plus Microsoft introduced a new tool called Microsoft Editor. Microsoft Editor is an AI-based service available in over 20 languages, which is now accessible across Word and Outlook.com along with a standalone browser extension for Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome.
Here is how it works:
Microsoft announced it has added new AI-powered features in Presenter Coach for PowerPoint. Presenter Coach uses AI to detect if you are talking too fast or saying “umm” too much.” Plus it can detect if you are just reading the text from your slides. The new features — exclusive for Microsoft 365 subscribers — include monotone pitch and speech refinement. Monotone pitch detects the tone of voice and provides feedback in real-time for adding variation where needed. And speech refinement provides grammar suggestions for better phrasing speeches.
PowerPoint Designer also allows now auto-generates slide layouts that you can choose from.
“To supercharge your creativity, we’re providing Microsoft 365 subscribers with exclusive access to over 8,000 beautiful images and 175 looping videos from Getty Images, plus 300 new fonts and 2,800 new icons to create high-impact and visually appealing documents. And you can use all this new content in Word and Excel too,” explained Mehdi.
“To kickstart your school, work, or family project and save time, Microsoft 365 subscribers also get exclusive access to 200+ new premium templates across Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Find great templates to help you design the perfect resume, wedding invitation, newsletter, birth announcement, and so much more. There are even templates for printing coloring books and reward charts to keep kids engaged at home,” he added.
Microsoft has partnered with Plaid to help you manage your finances with Money in Excel. This feature allows you to connect your bank and credit card accounts to Money in Excel so that you can import transactions and account balances automatically to create personalized workbooks. The insights gleaned from these tools could help you improve spending habits by detecting price changes for recurring payments, bank fees, overdraft charges, etc.
Microsoft Excel has new ways to interact with data. With new data types, you can make sense of your data as Excel offers deeper meaning for over 100 topics such as food, movies, places, chemistry, etc. You can save time by converting plain text and numbers into a data type. And Excel will surface rich visual and interactive data cards and images that provide a better representation of the data.
“How does it work? Say you want to start keeping better track of your nutrition. Simply enter a food like “avocado” and by converting it to a Food data type, Excel will help you access its nutritional information. Or maybe your family is considering adopting a dog. You can evaluate different types of breeds using the Animal data type, which provides you with images, facts, and their temperaments, so you can easily create a table to compare them. With data types, all information can be easily updated, so you always have the latest and relevant data,” stated Mehdi “Anyone can access the Stocks and Geography data types in Excel for the web. And Microsoft 365 subscribers have exclusive access to the over 100 new data types powered by Wolfram Alpha.”
Skype saw a major increase in usage as 40 million people are now using it per day, up 70% month-over-month. And Skype is seeing a 220% increase in Skype-to-Skype calling minutes month-over-month. There is a new feature that has been added to Skype called Meet Now. This feature lets you easily create video meetings in as little as three clicks for free without signups or downloads required.
And now over 44 million people use Microsoft Teams every day. Microsoft is adding new features for Teams making it easier to connect and stay organized. Microsoft is now previewing new features in Teams including real-time noise suppression, a raise hand tool, integration with RealWear head-mounted devices, the ability to pop out chats in a separate window, and offline and low-bandwidth support.
The Microsoft Family Safety app is a new mobile experience coming to iOS and Android for Microsoft 365 subscribers. Microsoft Family Safety empowers families to help protect loved ones by giving them tools and insights for starting a conversation promoting healthier habits online and in the real world. And the new Microsoft Family Safety app is the only app that manages screen time across Windows PCs, Android, and Xbox.
Microsoft Family Safety has features like location sharing and notifications when a family member arrives or departs a location like home, school, or work. This helps give you the peace of mind that your family is where they need to be. For inexperienced drivers in the household, you can use driving reports to help build better habits while driving. Plus you can help protect your kids as they explore and play games online and on their devices.
And the Microsoft Family Safety app helps you understand how your kids are spending their time across Xbox, Windows 10 PCs, and Android phones. You can also set limits to help promote healthy digital habits. And you can help steer them away from content that not age-appropriate. Microsoft has started a limited preview of the app across iOS and Android, which will be available in the coming months.
Microsoft’s new Office features have already started rolling out to current Office 365 customers now. And Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions will be available worldwide on April 21st.
The Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions include everything in Office 365, like premium desktop Office apps, 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage per person, 60 Skype minutes for calling mobile phones and landlines, advanced security features, ongoing technical support, and all the new features and benefits announced. The Microsoft 365 Personal plan costs $6.99 a month. And a family plan of up to six people can use Microsoft 365 Family for $9.99 a month.
