Among the new features are a roaming 'pencil case' (i.e. Tools like pens and highlighters) and customizable ribbons that extend across the suite.

Word receives accessibility improvements, a translation tool and a focus mode. The PowerPoint updates include morph transitions and 4K video export. Excel's upgrades include 2D maps, funnel charts and additional functions.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is updating Outlook with @mention support, a focused inbox, templates and read and delivery receipts, along with scheduled mail delivery. These features are all already available on Office 365 ProPlus, the cloud version of the suite, but not Office 2016 for Mac. The security features in the 2019 version mirror those in the 2016 suite, Microsoft says. As cloud software could be perceived as less secure than standard desktop apps, the business-focused trial of Office 2019 seems like a smart move. IT departments should also have an easier time deploying and managing Office 2019 for Mac than with previous versions of the suite.

Microsoft is releasing Office 2019 for Windows and Mac later this year. In the meantime, if you'd like to join the Mac preview (or the Windows preview that went live in April), you can do so.

Share this story. We've mentioned informally that Microsoft's plan has been to offer feature update to Windows 10 every six months or so, but now it's officially official. And will both have synchronized releases, with the intent being to make those releases every six months or so. The next such update is planned for September. Those releases will each be supported for 18 months.

This was already approximately the case, but now it's standard policy. This means that if you want your Windows 10 or Office ProPlus installation supported long-term, you'll have to update it from time to time. System Center Configuration Manager will also receive updates aligned with Windows and Office, so deployment and management should always be able to properly handle the latest iteration of the software. The company is also making a change to Office 365. From October 13, 2020, using Office 365 will require the use of either Office 365 ProPlus, or, for organizations that are using perpetual licenses, a version that's still in mainstream support. That is to say, the use of older Office versions that have dropped into extended support will no longer be possible. This is contrast to the situation today; Office 2010 is now in extended support, but is still supported as an Office 365 client, and it will continue to be supported until 2020.

Listing image by Image courtesy of Microsoft. They could use the Ubuntu approach and release an LTS version for Enterprises. Bureaucracy doesn't move as fast as technology. Maybe bureaucracy needs to change then. Sorry, but the rank-and-file workers not wanting to learn anything new at all, the C-level people holding the purse strings tighter than a nun's A$$ over needed upgrades and the vendors who consider five-year obsolete technology 'new and exciting' are holding back the technology in the enterprise world. It's going to have to stop at some point. Know what happened when the actual Byzantine bureaucracy couldn't adapt fast enough?

The Turks breached the walls of Constantinople with a 'new' technology that was 100 years old. (Story goes they were arguing how many angels would fit on the head of a pin while Turkish soldiers were in the streets.).

Judging by the first few comments, it sounds like enterprises will need to streamline some of their processes for approving upgrades to already-approved products. Good luck with that in the pharmaceutical industry. Every single change to the OS or software has to be validated against every single SOP that relies on it, to ensure there aren't any bugs or process changes. If a menu or toolbar even changes slightly, then the documentation has to be entirely re-done, for the new SOE. The idea being that if someone is given a set of instructions, then what they see on the page matches what they see on the screen, with zero variance. They could use the Ubuntu approach and release an LTS version for Enterprises.

Bureaucracy doesn't move as fast as technology. Maybe bureaucracy needs to change then. Sorry, but the rank-and-file workers not wanting to learn anything new at all, the C-level people holding the purse strings tighter than a nun's A$$ over needed upgrades and the vendors who consider five-year obsolete technology 'new and exciting' are holding back the technology in the enterprise world. It's going to have to stop at some point. Know what happened when the actual Byzantine bureaucracy couldn't adapt fast enough? The Turks breached the walls of Constantinople with a 'new' technology that was 100 years old. (Story goes they were arguing how many angels would fit on the head of a pin while Turkish soldiers were in the streets.) Hey, hey.

You know the rule. Why did Constantinople get the works? That's nobody's business but the Turks. In other words, if you have a date in Constantinople, she'll be waiting in Istanbul. (Yes, that's a cover, but it's probably the version most people here know, and I'm never one to shy away from TMBG links.). Judging by the first few comments, it sounds like enterprises will need to streamline some of their processes for approving upgrades to already-approved products.

Good luck with that in the pharmaceutical industry. Every single change to the OS or software has to be validated against every single SOP that relies on it, to ensure there aren't any bugs or process changes.

If a menu or toolbar even changes slightly, then the documentation has to be entirely re-done, for the new SOE. The idea being that if someone is given a set of instructions, then what they see on the page matches what they see on the screen, with zero variance.

That definitely sounds like a 'your company' issue and not a 'pharmaceutical industry' issue. It hasn't been that long since I worked for a pharmaceutical manufacturer, but that's not even remotely close to being how things worked at the company I worked for in that field. Judging by the first few comments, it sounds like enterprises will need to streamline some of their processes for approving upgrades to already-approved products. Good luck with that in the pharmaceutical industry. Every single change to the OS or software has to be validated against every single SOP that relies on it, to ensure there aren't any bugs or process changes.

If a menu or toolbar even changes slightly, then the documentation has to be entirely re-done, for the new SOE. The idea being that if someone is given a set of instructions, then what they see on the page matches what they see on the screen, with zero variance.

As slow as that process is, I would LOVE if my team would be open to doing this. It would save us so many trivial headaches regarding confused users trying to navigate a five year old KB article that still uses screencaps from Vista.

Judging by the first few comments, it sounds like enterprises will need to streamline some of their processes for approving upgrades to already-approved products. Good luck with that in the pharmaceutical industry. Every single change to the OS or software has to be validated against every single SOP that relies on it, to ensure there aren't any bugs or process changes. If a menu or toolbar even changes slightly, then the documentation has to be entirely re-done, for the new SOE.

The idea being that if someone is given a set of instructions, then what they see on the page matches what they see on the screen, with zero variance. That definitely sounds like a 'your company' issue and not a 'pharmaceutical industry' issue. It hasn't been that long since I worked for a pharmaceutical manufacturer, but that's not even remotely close to being how things worked at the company I worked for in that field. It depends how computers are being used within the manufacturing and formulation process. If you have a fixed production line pumping out the same product over and over, then there would probably be less need for audit and validation of computer systems. If you're a small-run contract manufacturer (as was the case when I was in the industry), then it's a different situation entirely. In the case of the company I worked for, they not only needed to meet the audit requirements for the regulators of many different global markets, but they also needed to pass audits from the companies they were producing the product for.

I doubt the internal audit team invented the stringent computer systems audits just for fun. Last edited by on Thu Apr 20, 2017 6:53 pm. There are a lot of people raising legitimate points about how long it takes enterprises to certify and deploy upgrades. But the fact of the matter is that in today's security environment you must be on a relatively modern upgrade train.

IT/Audit/Compliance departments are starting to figure this out and respond. It's painful, and it's requiring them to rethink procedures but it's happening. My company's one example. Most of our laptops ran windows XP until 2011-2012 when we upgraded to windows 7, which we stuck on until now. We're starting the windows 10 migration now and we're planning on staying much closer to the latest release going forward.

There are a lot of people raising legitimate points about how long it takes enterprises to certify and deploy upgrades. But the fact of the matter is that in today's security environment you must be on a relatively modern upgrade train. IT/Audit/Compliance departments are starting to figure this out and respond. It's painful, and it's requiring them to rethink procedures but it's happening. My company's one example. Most of our laptops ran windows XP until 2011-2012 when we upgraded to windows 7, which we stuck on until now.

We're starting the windows 10 migration now and we're planning on staying much closer to the latest release going forward. I don't see how stuff like enhanced pen support or 'game mode' is relevant to security.

Patches are necessary and mostly not an issue. Other crap is liable to break something (for instance in my experience every time Mac updates OSX it breaks two of the three most recent versions of Citrix) or you'll make a change to the UI that confuses the vice president of middle management or something. What is the policy on dealing with updates that break things? For example, I have one laptop that absolutely refuses to work properly with the Creators Update. I've installed the update four times now, two as upgrades to the Anniversary Update, and two from scratch onto an empty hard drive. CU installs a bad Broadcom 440x NIC driver and it makes the computer worthless. No Internet access at all (wired or wireless), 100% CPU utilization all of the time, can't remove or disable the NIC in Device Manager, can't roll back to the previous version, and can't even shutdown or restart - it's a mess.

I have to restore a drive image with the Anniversary Update or reinstall manually. I've got two days of my time in this thing already. Under Microsoft's current model I don't really have much of a choice but to accept updates, even if they completely break things. There's got to be a better way. The official line from Microsoft is that I should disable the NIC in the BIOS, but this particular laptop doesn't have that option. If Microsoft wouldn't cram their Enterprise product with stupid shit (Xbox app and auto preinstall candy crush?

In Enterprise?) I think businesses could update faster. It's taken me significant time building our offices 1607 image (which I just finished today, starting a week ago). I have had to gut all sorts of worthless appx items, fight with the automatic Windows update trying to go to creators edition due to some backwards GPO policies (turning telemetry off (level 0) disables my control of updates and other stuff? Are you kidding me?). Can't set a default PDF viewer until users have logged on, edge tries so hard to always be the default browser even when im switching in the official capacity.

Windows 10 takes 2 steps forwards and 1.7 steps back for Enterprise. There are so many more times that I've been like 'why do I have to deal with this shit' - edge can't have default search provider set ( in 1607), the photos app immediately tries to get you to sign into an MS account which we can't limit to our domain. Why can't I easily enable photo viewer, why is Cortana not removed from the start menu list if I disable it?

There's so many things that weren't a problem in 7 (and even 8) that are now problems in 10. Last edited by on Thu Apr 20, 2017 7:21 pm. I don't see how stuff like enhanced pen support or 'game mode' is relevant to security. Patches are necessary and mostly not an issue. Other crap is liable to break something (for instance in my experience every time Mac updates OSX it breaks two of the three most recent versions of Citrix) or you'll make a change to the UI that confuses the vice president of middle management or something. They don't, but the creators update has security feature work in it as well. One example is improvements to the edge sandbox: Now you could say Microsoft should maintain forks of their operating system that just includes security feature work and bug fixes, but no other user facing features.

I'd argue that's not feasible in a world where you're shipping a new OS version every 6-12 months. If you went down that path you'd be back porting security features onto 5-6 versions of your operating system just to support the last 3 years of releases. On top of that some security work by its very nature breaks backwards compatibility, so there would inevitably be people that would want the bug fixes and not the new security features. The number of forks you would have to support goes up exponentially. Long story short if you want new security features you need to take the new user facing stuff with it.

What is the policy on dealing with updates that break things? For example, I have one laptop that absolutely refuses to work properly with the Creators Update. I've installed the update four times now, two as upgrades to the Anniversary Update, and two from scratch onto an empty hard drive.

CU installs a bad Broadcom 440x NIC driver and it makes the computer worthless. No Internet access at all (wired or wireless), 100% CPU utilization all of the time, can't remove or disable the NIC in Device Manager, can't roll back to the previous version, and can't even shutdown or restart - it's a mess. I have to restore a drive image with the Anniversary Update or reinstall manually. I've got two days of my time in this thing already. Under Microsoft's current model I don't really have much of a choice but to accept updates, even if they completely break things. There's got to be a better way. The official line from Microsoft is that I should disable the NIC in the BIOS, but this particular laptop doesn't have that option.

Have you submitted bug requests for any of those? Virtually all of them sound like straight-up bugs that Microsoft should at least be notified of instead of people bitching about on forums. Downvote me into oblivion all you want, but getting bugs reported helps everybody.

If Microsoft wouldn't cram their Enterprise product with stupid shit (Xbox app and auto preinstall candy crush? In Enterprise?) I think businesses could update faster. It's taken me significant time building our offices 1607 image (which I just finished today, starting a week ago). I have had to gut all sorts of worthless appx items, fight with the automatic Windows update trying to go to creators edition due to some backwards GPO policies (turning telemetry off (level 0) disables my control of updates and other stuff? Are you kidding me?).

Can't set a default PDF viewer until users have logged on, edge tries so hard to always be the default browser even when im switching in the official capacity. Windows 10 takes 2 steps forwards and 1.7 steps back for Enterprise. There are so many more times that I've been like 'why do I have to deal with this shit' - edge can't have default search provider set ( in 1607), the photos app immediately tries to get you to sign into an MS account which we can't limit to our domain. Why can't I easily enable photo viewer, why is Cortana not removed from the start menu list if I disable it? There's so many things that weren't a problem in 7 (and even 8) that are now problems in 10.

You aren't building your image properly if these are the problems you have. It doesn't sound like you're doing this in audit mode if apps are downloading. Setting a custom start menu removes the ad tiles, which means extra apps like Candy Crush won't download. Use the PowerShell cmdlets Import-StartMenu and Export-StartMenu. You can use a file to set your preferred defaults for your image. Don't forget to remove the appx apps you don't want with dism as well as Remove-Appxpackage.

And do this in audit mode, then sysprep to seal your image! Creators Update would be my third Win10 image I'm making. Took me an hour to do. There are a lot of people raising legitimate points about how long it takes enterprises to certify and deploy upgrades. But the fact of the matter is that in today's security environment you must be on a relatively modern upgrade train. IT/Audit/Compliance departments are starting to figure this out and respond. It's painful, and it's requiring them to rethink procedures but it's happening.

This is really the problem with a lot of validation and upgrade approval processes in companies (manufacturing companies in particular). The policies assume that a stable platform is a safe platform. Validation is only required when something changes, so therefore, there is an incentive not to change. Yet the threat environment is always changing, and a stable target is a vulnerable target.

The risk of having vulnerable, out-of-date hardware doesn't factor into policies. The validation team will usually see a sysadmin rushing to apply upgrades (including security patches) as being hasty and out to circumvent the change control process. The same validation teams that would cry in outrage if a piece of machinery misses its scheduled maintenance don't see the need for preventative maintenance of software components just as critical to the product's quality. This mindset is gradually changing, but it's taking a long time to do so.

The policies assume that a stable platform is a safe platform. That's not the thought process at all. A stable platform is incredibly important in and of itself.

If a new security patch brings down critical software the potential costs are tremendous. That's why companies of any significant size turn off auto update and only allow patches into the ecosystem after bug reports come out and they've been tested internally. You cannot, for example, sell fine china with the philosophy of 'move fast and break things' no matter how fashionable it may be. The policies assume that a stable platform is a safe platform.

That's not the thought process at all. A stable platform is incredibly important in and of itself. If a new security patch brings down critical software the potential costs are tremendous.

That's why companies of any significant size turn off auto update and only allow patches into the ecosystem after bug reports come out and they've been tested internally. You cannot, for example, sell fine china with the philosophy of 'move fast and break things' no matter how fashionable it may be. I understand the logic, but it inherently assumes that things don't break unless you change them. In today's threat environment, that is a flawed assumption. In the end, either the environment needs to be totally locked down (e.g. By air-gapping the machines that are in any way involved in production), or some sort of compromise needs to be made between security and platform stability.

The ideal situation is a platform that has a stable function set, but sees security patches (i.e. The Ubuntu LTS model). Last edited by on Thu Apr 20, 2017 8:43 pm. The policies assume that a stable platform is a safe platform. That's not the thought process at all.

A stable platform is incredibly important in and of itself. If a new security patch brings down critical software the potential costs are tremendous. That's why companies of any significant size turn off auto update and only allow patches into the ecosystem after bug reports come out and they've been tested internally.

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You cannot, for example, sell fine china with the philosophy of 'move fast and break things' no matter how fashionable it may be. I understand the logic, but it inherently assumes that things don't break unless you change them. In today's threat environment, that is a flawed assumption. In the end, either the environment needs to be totally locked down (e.g. By air-gapping the machines that are in any way involved in production), or some sort of compromise needs to be made between security and platform stability. Or you could do the black magic that Red Hat practices by separating security fixes from feature updates. To be fair LTSB does this too, but only for Enterprise.

Basically Windows 10 Pro turned out to not be so Pro after all. What is the policy on dealing with updates that break things? For example, I have one laptop that absolutely refuses to work properly with the Creators Update. I've installed the update four times now, two as upgrades to the Anniversary Update, and two from scratch onto an empty hard drive. CU installs a bad Broadcom 440x NIC driver and it makes the computer worthless.

No Internet access at all (wired or wireless), 100% CPU utilization all of the time, can't remove or disable the NIC in Device Manager, can't roll back to the previous version, and can't even shutdown or restart - it's a mess. I have to restore a drive image with the Anniversary Update or reinstall manually. I've got two days of my time in this thing already. Under Microsoft's current model I don't really have much of a choice but to accept updates, even if they completely break things.

There's got to be a better way. The official line from Microsoft is that I should disable the NIC in the BIOS, but this particular laptop doesn't have that option. Are you forcing the upgrade to Creator's Update by running the Media Creation Tool from the Microsoft website, or is the upgrade being triggered by Windows Update? Generally, the upgrade doesn't come through Windows Update until MS has a corpus of data from previous upgrades that indicates it will install successfully on your machine. If you're forcing the upgrade, I'd simply roll back to Anniversary Update and wait for the upgrade to hit from Windows Update.