Microsoft OneNote now helps you solve math equations

Microsoft today announced updates to several of its Office products, and the most interesting one is coming to the OneNote note-taking app. If you’re an Office 365 customer using Windows 10, OneNote will now show a new Math button that, when you tap it after writing out a math equation with ink and circling it with the lasso tool, will bring out a right drawer containing steps for solving the equation.

“This intelligent assistance makes OneNote your math coach and pairs nicely with Editor, the recently announced intelligent writing assistant in Word. Together, they make Office an even better partner to help you achieve more in your learning journey,” Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for Microsoft’s Office team, wrote in a blog post.

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Microsoft is looking to make OneNote the most obvious note-taking app for people to choose. The company recently brought its OneNote Importer for Evernote to the Mac. But smarter features like the Ink math assistant should help too.

An Ink replay feature is also becoming available, initially for OneNote on Windows 10 for Office 365 subscribers. The feature lets users watch inking as it was performed, step by step, over and over again. Next up that feature will be coming to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, Koenigsbauer wrote.

OneNote on Windows 10 is also getting a little more glitzy for Office 365 subscribers — now rainbow, galaxy, gold, and silver colors are available for inking.

For commercial customers using Outlook on the web, you can now access a drawer showing contact information and other relevant information when you click on a person’s name, courtesy of the Microsoft Graph. This is coming next to SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business, Koenigsbauer wrote.

And Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Onenote for Windows 10 tablets and phones now support a feature called Windows Information Protection, which lets users mark content as personal or for work. That way, admins can revoke access to only work content when they need to. The feature is coming to Windows on desktop next.