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Microsoft Editor gets an upgrade in Word, Outlook

Feature deep dive
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Hi! I’m Shruthi, a Program Manager on the Word team working on Microsoft Editor – a writing assistant that provides spelling, grammar, and other intelligent writing suggestions.

If you have ever interacted with a squiggle or an underline in Word / Outlook (as shown in the image below), you have already enjoyed the benefits of Microsoft Editor!

Spellcheck in Word

Microsoft Editor

Microsoft Editor is designed to help us write confidently and communicate our messages effectively in our own voice. We are constantly innovating and improving this space to ensure it is easy to work with and meets our users’ expectations. With that, I’m pleased to announce a new change in the way we can review spelling, grammar, and other intelligent suggestions going forward in Word and Outlook for Windows.

What change did we make?

We are introducing:

  • A click-to-review suggestion model that allows you to see spelling, grammar, and other optional stylistic suggestions (like ways to make your writing for formal or concise, being more inclusive, etc) by clicking the flagged words. If you have used Editor in Word or Outlook on the web, you may already be familiar with this!
  • A simple and dedicated card to see the suggestions.

How it works

Check out the video below and note that you can now review Editor suggestions in a new card:

  • Using a simple click (instead of a right click).
  • Pressing ALT+DOWN on your keyboard.

Why did we make this change?

Our reason for updating the experience can be summarized in 3 words: strive for simplicity.

  • A clean and simplified card surface to minimize cognitive overload when reviewing suggestions.
  • A dedicated experience for intelligent suggestions.
  • A primary click-to-open invocation model.

Try it out!

We are actively building this experience and would love your feedback! We acknowledge that change can sometimes be hard, especially for features that we use every day. But we are innovating here to make the current experience even better. So, if you have a document that you’d like to proofread, click the flags to check out the new experience, and be sure to let us know what you think.

Please note that for now, we continue to offer the legacy right-click review experience as well, as we refine the new experience.

Known Issues

Accessibility features are not yet complete. Specifically, we are actively working on addressing issues with the keyboard focus order when going from one suggestion to the other with the new card.

Availability

Windows Word and Outlook clients running Beta Channel Version 2010 Build 13228.2000 or later. 

We typically release features over some time to ensure that things are working smoothly. This is true for Insiders as well. We highlight features that you may not have because they’re slowly releasing to larger numbers of Insiders. Sometimes we remove elements to further improve them based on your feedback. Though this is rare, we also reserve the option to pull a feature entirely out of the product, even if you, as Insiders, have had the opportunity to try them.

Feedback

Now is a great time to help us improve this new interaction experience for Editor. We are actively building it and are on a lookout for any feedback to help improve it. You can leave a comment on this post, or you can also submit feedback in Word by clicking File > Feedback. We closely monitor these feedback channels, so do what works best for you.

Learn what other information you should include in your feedback to ensure it’s actionable and reaches the right people. We are excited to hear from you!  Sign up for the Office Insider newsletter, and you’ll get the latest information about Insider features in your inbox once a month.