As briefly mentioned shown off during the Windows 10 October event, the Windows 10 Creators Update is set to introduce some new digital inking enhancements in Microsoft's Office apps. In a new blog post, Microsoft further detailed some of these enhancements, including how they work hand-in-hand with the company's Surface products.
Two of the biggest inking enhancements are coming in the form of the Ink Editor and Ink Replay integration with the new Surface Dial. From Microsoft:
- Ink Editor - Originally shown by the Windows team at //build, we are now launching Ink Editor. This makes your pen a more powerful document editing tool than ever. Strike through words to delete them, circle text to select it and automatically snap highlighter ink to text. And this is just the beginning. We're planning to add even more Ink Editor capabilities and extend the feature to other Office apps in the future.
- Ink Replay control with Surface Dial - In August, we introduced Ink Replay, which lets you rewind and replay ink you see in your document. Today, we announced tight integration with Surface Dial and Windows 10, making ink playback as natural to control as a spin of the device. This helps you effortlessly set the pace at which you review step-by-step instructions, reveal lesson ideas and more.
Drawing perfectly straight lines and maintaining alignment is also about to get a little easier, as Microsoft is set to add a digital ruler tool to PowerPoint, with other Office apps coming later. And since 3D is such a big focus of the Crators Update, Office apps will support using and manipulating 3D models in your documents as well.
Office is also getting some extra tweaks for the Surface Studio, including a new large-screen page view in Word. using this view, you can easily flip through pages and zoom in or out to view the contents of any large, multi-page document.
Lastly, Office apps will soon support scalable vector graphics (SVGs). That means you'll be able to make your documents look even better with vector-based SVG files that won't pixelate when scaled up.
Is there any one feature you're most looking forward to coming to Office? Let us know in the comments! And as a reminder, Microsoft is set to hold a dedicated Office event on November 2, so we'll likely hear much more on changes coming to the productivity suite soon.
