Microsoft Adds Touch Bar Support To Office For MacBook Pro

Microsoft Office is adding support for Apple’s Touch Bar on the new MacBook Pro.

Microsoft Office is adding support for Apple’s Touch Bar on the new MacBook Pro. The company announced the news on its Office blog and said it will be making preview builds available soon. This means that if you’re a beta tester, you may find your Outlook or Word software has been updated with some new features in the coming days.

“We are excited to announce that we are working on Touch Bar support for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote for Mac,” Microsoft wrote in a blog post. “We know our Office Insiders have been asking about this since we opened up our first preview build of Office 2016 for Mac back in March 2016.”

Microsoft announced the news on its Office blog.

Microsoft Office is adding support for Apple’s Touch Bar on the new MacBook Pro. The company announced the news on its Office blog, and said that it’s handing out invites to Outlook and Word beta testers, who will soon get access to a preview build of Office with Touch Bar support. These users will be able to use the bar to navigate through their inbox and respond quickly to emails, or change fonts or apply formatting in Word documents.

Microsoft also says that Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote are “coming soon” for both Mac and Windows 10 PCs — though there’s no word yet on whether this means they’ll be getting touch-enabled displays like those on Dell’s new XPS 15. Microsoft says it’ll begin rolling out updates with this support in late January 2017.

The company is handing out invites to Outlook and Word beta testers, who will soon get access to a preview build of Office with Touch Bar support.

Microsoft has started sending out invites to a new beta for its Office suite, which will add Touch Bar support for the Outlook and Word apps. If you’re lucky enough to get an invite, you’ll be able to test out a new preview build of Microsoft Office that has Touch Bar functions built in. The update will make it easier to perform common tasks like formatting text or responding to emails without needing a keyboard shortcut.

Of course, if you don’t want to wait until Microsoft rolls out general support for the Touch Bar on Windows 10 (or if you don’t want to buy one of Apple’s pricey new laptops), third-party developers have created their own solutions. Olarila makes it easy (and free) to install macOS Sierra on your Mac, while HyperSwitch can help you quickly switch between open apps in Windows 10.

Microsoft has already been testing Touch Bar support for months now, but it looks like it’s about ready to let customers test the new features out for themselves.

It seems that Microsoft is happy with the progress that its developers have made, because it just announced on Twitter that next week’s Office beta update will introduce support for the Touch Bar. The new functionality is only going to be available to a limited number of customers, though; Microsoft has said that it’ll be “rolling out to a small group of Insiders in an upcoming beta build” next week.

However, if you’re using a MacBook Pro without a Touch Bar, you’ll still most likely miss out on these new features.

However, if you’re using a MacBook Pro without a Touch Bar, you’ll still most likely miss out on these new features. Apple has been very careful to keep the Touch Bar as an exclusive feature of their latest models. For example, Microsoft Office’s Touch Bar features are only available to those with a Macbook Pro with a Touch Bar, running 10.12 Sierra or higher and having the latest updates installed from Microsoft AutoUpdate. While this means that many people won’t be able to access these new options, it does mean that those who do will have access to some of the latest and greatest technology available today!

Microsoft Office beta testers will soon get this cool feature from Apple’s new Macbook Pro

If you want to try Apple’s Touch Bar feature on the new MacBook Pro, but don’t feel like making the $1,799 investment just yet, Microsoft has your back.

Microsoft is testing a new version of its Office suite that adds support for Apple’s Touch Bar feature to Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The update will be available in the first half of 2017 to beta testers who are signed up with Microsoft’s Office Insider program.

The Touch Bar is a small touchscreen that replaces the top row of keys on the new MacBook Pro keyboard. It offers shortcuts for many common actions within apps and changes based on what you’re doing in an app at any given time (similar to how Android presents shortcuts in its notification bar).

Bottom Line

Support for the MacBook Pro Touch Bar will make it easier than ever to quickly cycle through recent emails and respond to messages using a keyboard that’s always available — even if you’re using your laptop somewhere away from your desktop PC. It’ll also be helpful in Word, where users can change fonts and quickly apply formatting to text without having to move their fingers back and forth between the keyboard and the trackpad. Not bad for what was initially a show-stopping mistake on Microsoft’s part.