Finally, it will also be possible in Word paste unformatted text via a simple keyboard shortcut, i.e. the usual CTRL-SHIFT-V which is used in many other editors and more generally applications that contain one (including web browsers, primarily Chrome). This was announced by Jennifer “Jen” Gentleman of Microsoft itself, who said that the distribution has started in the Beta channels of the application for both Mac and PC. Let’s hope it doesn’t go too far for the switch to the stable channel.
📋 Copy and paste text without any unwanted formatting!
With the new Paste Text Only shortcut available in Word for Windows and Word for Mac, you can save time and effort by no longer having to remove source formatting manually. Out now: https://t.co/PhgzXeEAxC #MicrosoftWord
— Microsoft 365 Insider (@Msft365Insider) March 9, 2023
To clarify, Word has long let you remove formatting from text, but it has to be a separate operation. In fact, the dedicated tool is very versatile, and even allows you to adapt the formatting of the new text to that of the text present in the rest of the document. If you want, for the geeks, it is in theory possible to create a macro that allows you to obtain exactly the same result (and even associate it with the same shortcut), but a native solution, moreover compliant with already widespread standards, has the potential for adoption decidedly greater.
That’s not the only new feature coming to Microsoft’s productivity suite. At its annual Ability Summit, the company announced it will soon be launching a new accessibility assistant for the whole 365 family, which will report in real time if the user has created potentially problematic content for certain types of people.
The assistant will manifest itself as a little man icon for potential problems. For example, it could signal if the text color is hard to read, and suggest similar colors but with higher contrast. There is already an “Accessibility Checker” in 365, but it’s not real-time and is substantially less advanced. It is currently unclear when it will be released. Microsoft also announced support for 13 new African languages for its Translate, while LinkedIn will automatically generate captions for your images contained in a post or article using AI (specifically: Azure Cognitive Services). On the “hardware” side, Microsoft will expand the availability of the grips and various 3D printed accessories already available for the Microsoft Business Pen and Microsoft Classroom Pen 2 to the Surface Pen.
