A new update for Microsoft Word arriving next month brings a long overdue feature. Predictive typing or the “Text prediction” feature will automatically suggest new words as you type a sentence. While this may be new to Microsoft Word, it’s not a revolutionary feature, and it should be a bit similar to what Google offers on its office suite of apps and Gmail.
Microsoft announced text predictions for Microsoft Word last year, which uses a machine learning model to come up with suggestions based on what the user types. This essentially means that it will improve its suggestions for predicting what you plan to type based on your previous documents over time. This feature should help users type more efficiently and accurately by reducing spelling and grammar errors. Notably, the feature was introduced to users of the Office Insiders program in September 2020. Now it looks like Microsoft is finally ready to roll out the feature to all users next month, as a recent entry in the roadmap confirms. of Microsoft 365, as shown Neowin.
Once the feature is deployed, users should see grayed-out work predictions that can be quickly acknowledged by pressing the Tab key or dismissed using the Esc key. There will be an option to turn off word predictions completely if you don’t find it useful or if you find it distracting. Microsoft also notes that any data collected to train the machine learning model will “not leave tenant boundaries” and will only be accessible by other humans if the user allows it as part of the feedback function.
Last week, Microsoft announced it would launch Office 2021 for personal users and Office Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) for commercial use later this year. Office 2021 will be an update to Office 2019 and will be available at a one-time cost without requiring a Microsoft 365 subscription. A commercial preview of Office LTSC will be available in April. The company has confirmed that Office LTSC will be supported for at least 5 years. It should also bring accessibility improvements, a new dark mode, dynamic tables, XLOOKUP in Excel, and other smaller changes in all popular applications including Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint. These features are also expected to be adopted by Office 2021.
