Microsoft, the American tech conglomerate, has started to roll out a new Office User Interface (UI) to its users this week. The visual update was announced and went into testing earlier this year.
According to reports, it’s now starting to roll out to all Office 365 and Office 2021 users. This new Office UI is designed to reflect the visual changes in Windows 11, and it includes a more rounded Office ribbon bar, as well as some minor modifications to the buttons in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
It’s a relatively simple update, and Office will now match the dark or light theme that users set inside Windows. The new look can be switched on or off using the Coming Soon megaphone icon in the top right-hand corner of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote.
Microsoft estimates that the visual upgrade will be enabled automatically for 50 percent of existing channel subscribers. The majority of the design changes are subtle, but Microsoft has hinted at more significant changes to its Office UI like the ribbon interface which will be replaced with a toolbar that can be undocked to float nearby actions a user taking in documents.
Reports also noted that these changes might also appear in the Web and mobile versions of Office first, and Microsoft did say last year that its bigger Office UI changes could take a year or two to roll out.
Microsoft stated that it is also working in adding support for the Mica transparency, an effect seen in the Windows 11 start menu, the Settings app, and other parts of the OS that use transparency.
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