Microsoft has gone through a lot of rebranding recently, as SkyDrive is now OneDrive, and Office Web Apps are now known as Office Online. The reason for this rebranding? Well, there are separate reasons for both of them, but since we’re on the topic of Office Online, Microsoft says that users are confused with the term “web apps” and that’s why there was something less complicated and easy-to-understood term required, and so came the new term “Office Online.”
Now, with the recent rebranding, Microsoft has also made some minor changes to its Office Online suite. For example, instead of starting from scratch with Word, PowerPoint and Excel, you can use several ready-made templates. But now, let’s talk about one handy feature that Microsoft has added to Office Online, and that feature definitely makes life easy.
Use search bar to quickly perform actions on Office Online
This option is now available for Excel Online and Word Online, but soon coming to PowerPoint and OneNote Online. When you open Word and Excel Online, you’ll notice a small search bar. It reads “Tell me what you want to do.” As per this instruction, you need to simply type what action you want to perform.
For example, type “font” and then this search field will try to guess what action you want to accomplish, and offers some suggestions. Now you simply need to click on the required action that you want to perform.
So why use this feature instead of directly clicking on the buttons on the toolbar? Well, this method saves time and speeds up work. If you’re on the Home tab, and want to insert a picture, then instead of navigating to Insert > Picture, all you need to do is to type “picture” in the search bar. It surely is a more convenient way instead of locating the button on the toolbar. Go ahead, try it right now and save time.
