Microsoft has released an update to the various Office for Windows 10 apps today as they prepare the preview apps for wider distribution. Word, Excel and PowerPoint all have received updated this morning, mostly focused on bug fixes and performance improvements. If you are running the Office for Windows 10 preview app then you should go to the Windows Store beta in Windows 10 and get the updates.
The updates come with it widely expected that the next release of Windows 10 for Phone this week to contain the preview apps. The last update to the Technical Preview not only did not have the new Office for Windows 10 apps but it actually killed off the existing Office hub for Windows Phone. Hopefully that gets sorted this week.
Microsoft has made it clear that the Office for Windows 10 apps will be universal apps, designed to work on all Windows 10 devices: Phone, PC and Tablet. It is also part of the broader strategy the company has to entice developers to build apps for Windows 10, having to only code the core of their apps once for them to work across the board. Microsoft is leading the way with the Office for Windows 10 preview but also with the Photos app.
Excel from Office for Windows 10
The new Office for Windows 10 apps, unlike Office 2013, is designed from the ground up to be touch driven. Indeed the previews today look strikingly similar to the Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps that are currently available on Android. As I posted a couple of weeks ago, if you want to see where these apps are potentially going, take a look at what is going on with them on Android.
In order to run the Office for Windows 10 Preview you will have to be running Windows 10 on your PC or tablet. They are currently not available on Windows Phone (although that should change this week) or Windows 8.1.
