Microsoft is starting to roll out its new Office UI to all users this week. The visual update was originally announced earlier this year and went into testing over the summer. Now it’s starting to roll out to all Office 365 and Office 2021 users.
This new Office UI is designed to match the visual changes in Windows 11, and it includes a more rounded look to the Office ribbon bar, with some subtle tweaks to the buttons throughout Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. It’s a relatively simple refresh, and Office will now match the dark or light theme that you set inside Windows.
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23058116/microsoft_office_2021.jpg)
The new look can be toggled on or off using the Coming Soon megaphone icon in the top right-hand corner of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote. It should be available for all Windows 11 users right now, and Microsoft says 50 percent of current channel subscribers will have the visual update enabled automatically.
Most of the design changes are subtle, but Microsoft has teased more dramatic changes to its Office UI, which included moving toward more of a command bar instead of the traditional ribbon interface. We’re still expecting to see these 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.
