Microsoft is simplifying search by merging the feature across multiple platforms and apps

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Microsoft has announced it’s streamlining its search functionality across Windows 10, Office, Bing, and Edge with its Microsoft Search functionality. The move means the search box will now live in a “consistent, prominent place,” according to the company.

In announcing Microsoft Search, the company has highlighted some critical steps that it will take over the next few months to make a more cohesive experience.

Among these is offering Search across all Microsoft properties from Outlook to PowerPoint, Excel to Sway, OneNote to Microsoft Teams, and Office.com to SharePoint. It also plans on providing personalized results as soon as you click in the search box, such as people you share with the most and documents you were working on recently. No query is required to get suggestions.

More than just search

Microsoft Search will also offer application-specific commands. For example, begin typing “acc” in Word and you’ll get a list of suggested actions such as Accept Revision or Accessibility Checker. You no longer need to hunt through toolbars to look for a command.

The results will also include results from across your organization. For example, within Word, you can find not only other Word documents but also a presentation you were working on. You can navigate straight to that presentation, or you can choose to incorporate slides from that file directly into your document.

That same organizational search experience will extend to other areas, such as Bing.com (when signed in with your Office 365 account), Edge, or Windows. Search wherever you want to and get the same experience. There’s also unified administration of your organizational search results, including admin-curated results such as bookmarks.

With Google increasingly being criticized over privacy, it’s nice seeing Microsoft continuing to improve its search product. Perhaps the changes will make it more popular.

Are you excited about seeing Microsoft Search? Let us know below. 

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