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Cortana To Serve As Office 16 Assistant

Cortana, Microsoft’s digital assistant, is being rolled out with Windows 10 for PC.

In the olden days there was Windows. The people saw that it was good, we lived in harmony with the operating system, and we made great profit from using Office for our spreadsheets, band posters and lost dog flyers. It was a simpler time, but we did have an enemy, a twisted piece of wire whose unsettling stare pierced into the very souls of the youth of the early 2000’s.

Clippit. We feared, and loathed him. He was our nemesis, our ball and chain, the unholy personification of everything we did not want to become. His smile mocked our every spelling error, celebrated every botched equation. You simply cannot understand how much we hated that guy. People get angry just thinking about him.

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Rant over. Clippit was annihilated from existence by Microsoft in Office 2007/2008. There was great rejoicing that day, however Windows users were left high and dry with regards to getting help with Office, although the greatly expanding world of the internet did help some of us with problems. Now however, we’ve heard that smart digital assistant Cortana is to work a second job providing Windows 10 Office users with assistance very soon.

Office 16 was originally slated to include a less intuitive digital assistant – a feature known as “Tell Me” which was to be used as the default help service in the new version, and currently is included with online versions of Office. Cortana will take that functionality to the next level, her systems are much more advanced, more intuitive, and capable of accepting more complex commands.

Leaked screenshot of the upcoming version of PowerPoint in Office 16.

What Microsoft is saying specifically is that there will be a companion app, available through their online store, which will be able to use Cortana’s systems to carry out commands. It could be that a new assistant for Office is created with its own distinct features but using Cortana’s tools, or it could be that a direct Office port of the assistant arrives.

Of course this means that potentially the companion app for Office assistance could arrive on iOS and Android, who both have app versions of the software, meaning Cortana, or a basic version, on non Windows platforms. Installed on an iPhone, one wonders what the results might be. “Hey Cortana, fight Siri”.

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Other confirmation of the digital assistant’s arrival on Office came from Microsoft’s Julie Larson-Green back in November, who said that Cortana would be coming to other operating systems and that Office integration is indeed on Microsoft’s list of plans for the assistant.

We should be getting confirmation of the full suite of capabilities of Office 16 when the program goes live later in the year. We’ll have full details on the app when it arrives.

Via: TechSpot

Via: Windows Central