Microsoft looks to bring Office 365 and Windows 10 much closer together

Windows 10

Microsoft has plans to bring Office 365 and Windows 10 much closer together by introducing an 'Office Hub' to the operating system.

At least that's the current thinking at Redmond according to Windows Central, although this concept is still in the very early planning stages, so could well change going forward.

But it certainly makes sense to more tightly integrate Office 365, and this potential Office Hub would ensure you have quick and easy access to all your documents, spreadsheets, emails and so forth from within Windows. The idea is that the hub will also highlight things such as when colleagues are working on shared documents in OneDrive.

Where would such a hub live? The vague ideas at the moment – and we must stress again that these are early concepts – are to either place it in the Action Center, or tie it into Cortana's hamburger menu.

Possible timeframe

Ideas are being played with at Redmond right now, but it's unclear how far down the line this hub might be, and whether it's something we could expect to see in the next major Windows 10 update – that would be Redstone 2 which is due to land early next year.

We are betting that if it does come to fruition, such a feature will probably be further down the line than RS2. There are, after all, two major updates scheduled for next year, with RS3 due to pitch up in the summer of 2017 (RS1, incidentally, was the recent Anniversary Update).

Microsoft also has further plans to deepen Office integration into Windows search, allowing users to search for terms such as 'all emails from this week', and have the OS pull out all of said messages.

Via: Win Beta

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).

Latest in Pro
Branch office chairs next to a TechRadar-branded badge that reads Big Savings.
This office chair deal wins the Amazon Spring Sale for me and it's so good I don't expect it to last
Saily eSIM by Nord Security
"Much more than just an eSIM service" - I spoke to the CEO of Saily about the future of travel and its impact on secure eSIM technology
NetSuite EVP Evan Goldberg at SuiteConnect London 2025
"It's our job to deliver constant innovation” - NetSuite head on why it wants to be the operating system for your whole business
FlexiSpot office furniture next to a TechRadar-branded badge that reads Big Savings.
Upgrade your home office for under $500 in the Amazon Spring Sale: My top picks and biggest savings
Beelink EQi 12 mini PC
I’ve never seen a PC with an Intel Core i3 CPU, 24GB RAM, 500GB SSD and two Gb LAN ports sell for so cheap
cybersecurity
Chinese government hackers allegedly spent years undetected in foreign phone networks
Latest in News
DeepSeek
Deepseek’s new AI is smarter, faster, cheaper, and a real rival to OpenAI's models
Open AI
OpenAI unveiled image generation for 4o – here's everything you need to know about the ChatGPT upgrade
Apple WWDC 2025 announced
Apple just announced WWDC 2025 starts on June 9, and we'll all be watching the opening event
Hornet swings their weapon in mid air
Hollow Knight: Silksong gets new Steam metadata changes, convincing everyone and their mother that the game is finally releasing this year
OpenAI logo
OpenAI just launched a free ChatGPT bible that will help you master the AI chatbot and Sora
An aerial view of an Instavolt Superhub for charging electric vehicles
Forget gas stations – EV charging Superhubs are using solar power to solve the most annoying thing about electric motoring