DECEMBER 2019 PCWorld 17Microsoft’s 10 biggest Ignite
reveals include the new Edge, and
more ways to tie Office to the web
Outlook gains a number of new features, too. BY MARK HACHMANM
icrosoft plans to announce a
boatload of new capabilities
to Office, search, and Edge at
its Ignite conference,
including rollout plans for its Chromium-
based Edge browser, a tool to read your email
aloud in the Outlook app, corporate insights
driven by Microsoft Search, and more. But
subtle improvements like natural-language
queries in Excel may prove more significant.Microsoft has arguably struggled to align
search and the web with its traditional Office
silos of spreadsheets, presentations, and
documents. Now, executives say they’ve
cracked the problem.
Microsoft hasn’t lost its idealistic view of
the Internet, dating back to Internet Explorer’s
“beauty of the Web” campaign (go.pcworld.
com/btwb). But today, the web provides
more opportunities and more challenges toIMAGE: MICROSOFT