What about improvements to Outlook and Excel?

The simple answer is yes, but nothing ground breaking. Microsoft seem to have decided to add new applications rather than shoehorn improvements into existing ones. This might be a smart play as they will be able to review the take up of the new apps and for those that get traction spend more time developing and improving.

For Excel the major enhancement is an improvement to the number of graph types available to users and better integration with Power BI. The graphs type supported include Waterfall, Box and Whisker, Treemap and Sunburst. It is also possible to create forecast graphs that predict the range of possible outcomes using historical data.

It will be interesting to understand the mathematical theory behind this and whether different options are available. Analytics users will also find that the Power Query add on is now integrated into standard Excel and allows users to analyse data from multiple sources, including SQL databases and Hadoop files.

MIcrosoft Office 2016 : Excel new Sunburst chart (Source Microsoft)
Microsoft Office 2016 : Excel new Sunburst chart

For Outlook users there is  a faster search and the collaboration tools mean that files are often shared from One Drive rather than sent, improving the collaboration functionality. There are also features that improve the ability for outlook to tidy up inboxes, removing low priority emails, though how that works in reality will be interesting.

(Next : Something new : Sway app for Windows 10)

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