August Insider Slow update for Mac Office 2016 brings Outlook enhancements, PowerPoint background animations, and more

Mark Coppock

If you’re an avid user of Microsoft’s Office productivity suite, then you might very well be a member of the Office Insider program. Similar to Windows Insider builds, Office previews offer the latest features and bug fixes to Office Insider participants to help flesh out issues before the updates are rolled out to all Office 365 users.

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Outlook 2016 for Mac can now offer information on travel and deliveries via the August Update to the Office Insider Slow channel.

Today, Mac Office Insiders who have signed up as Slow participants received their latest update, version 15.25. Here’s everything that’s new in today’s update:

  • Stay on top of travel and deliveries: In Outlook, view simplified summary cards in your travel confirmation and package delivery emails, and in your calendar. For more information, see Stay on top of your travel and deliveries with Outlook. (Feature requires an Office 365 subscription and a new or upgraded Outlook.com account.)
  • Get someone’s attention: Add the @ symbol followed by a person’s name to the body of an email or calendar item, and Outlook will automatically add their email address to the To line and highlight their name in the body of the message. If someone flags you in this way, the @ symbol will show up in Outlook, and you can filter to quickly find all emails where you are mentioned. For more details, see @Mentions for Outlook Mac is now available. (Feature requires an Office 365 subscription.)
  • Accessibility Checker: In Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, find and fix accessibility issues with your document, spreadsheet, or presentation using the new Accessibility Checker on the Review tab.
  • Suggest a feature: In Outlook, propose an idea for a new feature, or vote on someone else’s suggestion by clicking Help > Suggest a Feature.
  • Animate your background: In PowerPoint, make your slides more dynamic with an animated background image. After you insert an image, click Picture > Animate as Background, and then click the interesting parts of your picture. (Feature requires an Office 365 subscription.)
  • No warnings When Saving as CSV: You asked for it! We will no longer show a warning about feature loss when saving a worksheet as a CSV file. (Feature requires an Office 365 subscription.)
  • Stylus Setting: In OneNote, choose what happens when your stylus is detected: automatically switch to drawing or keep using it as a mouse.
  • 64-bit version of Office 2016 for Mac: We’ve polished up our 64-bit version of Office 2016 for Mac, based on early Insider feedback. Thank you!

If you’re a Fast participant, then you’ll have already had access to these updates and should be looking forward to your own update soon. If you’re a Mac Office Insider who’s opted for the slower channel, then open up the Office updater and give these new changes a try. If you’re not an Office Insider yet, here’s how you can get signed up.