About a week or so ago, Microsoft unveiled a visual refresh of the Office suite with a design language that looked and felt consistent with the upcoming Windows 11 operating system.
Synergy, and all that.
At the time, the company asked Office Insiders to start testing the new visual refresh using a “Coming Soon” toggle in the top right corner of the Office applications. But days passed, and the redesigned applications were nowhere to be seen.
They still aren’t.
The Office Insider team has since apologized for this, and promised that anticipated visual refresh will debut later this week in a new build that will be released for the Beta Channel Insiders.
Thank you for your patience regarding the visual refresh, #OfficeInsiders. We are working to resolve an issue and will make it available shortly.
— Microsoft 365 Insider (@Msft365Insider) July 3, 2021
Once it rolls out, you can treat yourself to a coherent user interface across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, and other Office applications. You know, things like new rounded corners, a neutral color palette, a customizable ribbon, and much more.
This new version of Office will also match your Windows theme, with the Dark mode being a spectacular highlight. In addition, the Quick Access Toolbar is also hidden by default to simplify the UI across the Office apps.
Insiders will still be able to turn the new design on and off using the “Coming Soon” toggle.
In case you missed it, Microsoft also released the first ARM64 build of Office for Windows 11 on ARM testers. This one was slightly delayed, but it brings a number of welcome performance improvements on Qualcomm powered devices.
