Exploring the new user interface

- Before we dive in to many of the new features and functions in Office 2016, let's begin with looking at some of the changes that have occurred with the user interface. You can see here, I'm in Microsoft Word. If we go through some of the other apps, for example, OneNote, you'll notice the color code across the top instead of the white that we're used to seeing. We see purple here. If we flip over to Outlook, we see this light blue. If we go over to PowerPoint, we see the orange color across the top.

And if we go to Access, we see that in red. Of course, when we flip back to Microsoft Word, we see that blue coloring across the top. This is a theme known as Colorful, and it is the default theme for each of the apps. So, if we go to the File tab and give it a click, next select Account, you're going to see the Office theme set to Colorful right here, and when we click this drop down, we see another change, something called Dark Gray, the dark gray now is even darker than it was before, which was a medium gray.

And if you want to go back to the way things were, you can select White, choosing white, and then clicking the Back arrow, shows you probably what you're most accustomed to seeing if you've left the default in earlier versions of Microsoft Word. Now, this was a minor complaint for many users that there was just too much white space. And that's why we see the new default as the Colorful theme. Let's go back to File, select Account, and change the Office theme back to Colorful.

Now when we go back, we see the default color for Word which is the dark blue, and all of the other colors in the apps are going to match what you're accustomed to seeing in the online apps as well. Another thing you'll notice across the top looking at the tabs for the ribbon, is they're no longer labeled in all caps. And that's a minor adjustment, but it's just a little bit easier to look at. So we only see a capital letter at the beginning of each of these. Another thing you're going to notice when you go to the File tab, known as Backstage View, give it a click, is some new options for getting around.

For example, you're going to see Browse is right here in this pane, allowing us to click Browse and browse like we're accustomed to browsing in earlier versions. So it opens up our Open window, where we can go browsing through our PC, any networks we're connected to, including online and your OneDrive account. I'm going to click Cancel. So, it's just easier access to it from here instead of going to This PC and having to browse from there. Click the Back button again.

Another new thing you've probably noticed across the top on the ribbon, after the last tab, is the Tell Me What You Want To Do option. And the Tell Me What You Want To Do option is brand new here in Word. If we flip over to PowerPoint, you're going to see it up here as well. And if we flip over to Outlook, you'll notice it's there now too. And we'll go over to OneNote and notice, no, it doesn't exist there. At least not yet.

So, we'll go back to Microsoft Word, and in the next movie, we'll talk more about what this Tell Me What You Want To Do option does.