Computer

This is how Word, Excel and PowerPoint are going to change very soon

little has changed Office since its last redesign, introduced in 2007. In addition to introducing the new Ribbon menus, which groups, within a kind of tabs, all the tools to make it easier for users to find what they need without digging through dozens of menus or toolbars, all Office programs had a colorful appearance independent of the operating system. However, this appearance is already in need of a major facelift, especially after the great leap that Windows 11 has taken. And this is going to arrive with Mica.

Mica is an important part of the new design of Windows 11. Thanks to it, it is possible to provide programs with an opaque and dynamic material for system windows. It is not the first time that we have heard about Mica in Office, although the truth is that Microsoft has not provided much information about it. This was going to be the appearance that the new Office 2021 was going to include by default but that, for various reasons, had to be delayed. Now, it looks like Mica is finally ready, and Microsoft has started rolling it out to some users, albeit on a trial basis.

So we can see it in the capture published by the Reddit user Win11 Observer. This user claims that, overnight, his Word has been updated and has started to show this new look. But the change has only affected Word, as Excel and the other programs in the suite still use the classic look and feel based on Windows 10 and earlier.

Word with Mica

Thanks to the new Mica effect, Office programs will be able to automatically adapt to the general appearance of the operating system. In this way, depending on the colors of the background and the theme that we use, Word, Excel and the other Office programs will be able to automatically adapt to that appearance.

How to activate Mica in Word

At the moment, it seems that Microsoft is enabling this new appearance to very small groups of users to avoid possible problems. Therefore, if we haven’t had any luck yet, all we can do is wait for our turn and the new Mica lands on our computer.

To make sure that it is applied as soon as it is available, what we have to do is open the program options, and in the theme section, choose the option to use system settings.

word change theme

Mica will be available both for users who have purchased an individual Office license, as well as for those who are subscribed to Microsoft 365. The latter, in addition, will be able to receive it earlier, especially if they sign up for the Insider program to test the betas. Of course, in order to use Mica we must have Windows 11 installed on the computer. If we are still using Windows 10, we will not be able to use this new interface.

Clarification: The taskbar that appears in the screenshot has nothing to do with Mica’s design. This toolbar can be activated by all of us with a simple change in the configuration, regardless of the operating system and the version of Office that we use.

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