Microsoft releases new Windows 10 preview for PCs with Office 365 search in Cortana, better battery life for connected standby

Microsoft today announced the release of a new Windows 10 preview build for people in the fast ring of the Windows Insider Program. Build 14332, which follows build 14328 from last week, comes with several feature improvements and bug fixes, and it also marks the beginning of the previously announced “Bug Bash” to uncover new software issues.

Perhaps the most relevant change for Windows 10 users is that Cortana, the operating system’s personal digital assistant, will now be able to search through content stored in Microsoft’s Office 365 cloud services. That includes emails, files, contacts, and calendar events.

“To get started, just add your Office 365 work or school account in the Connected Accounts section of Cortana’s Notebook,” Gabe Aul, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Engineering Systems Team, wrote in a blog post. “When you search, choose the appropriate filter (email, contacts, calendar, or documents) at the top to see relevant Office 365 search results.” (Microsoft says it’s having some technical issues with this feature at the moment, so you might have to wait a bit before it works.)

And for devices that support the Connected Standby feature of Windows — including the Surface Pro 4 — it’s now possible to eke out more battery life.

“We’ve integrated the same underlying technology that Battery Saver uses to quiet down some of the less-valuable activity that occurs during Connected Standby while still keeping your PC connected to the Internet and allowing key connectivity scenarios to work. As a result, if you’re using a Surface or other Connected Standby PC, many of you will notice improved and more consistent standby battery life,” Aul wrote. (To determine if your computer supports Connected Standby, open Command Prompt and run powercfg /a; if the first thing you see is “Standby (S0 Low Power Idle) Network Connected,” then the feature is there. See Aul’s blog post for specific instructions in the event that you encounter problems.)

More technical users should appreciate that the Command Prompt itself has been enhanced.

Additions include “improved windows scaling on PCs with High-DPI displays, better font selection and rendering for international characters, several cursor rendering and hiding improvements, improved background color painting, as well as improved scrolling for nano & EMACS editors,” Aul wrote.

Meanwhile, Bash, a longtime feature of Linux that recently arrived on Windows 10 in preview builds, has also been spruced up.

“For example, you may have seen apt-get fail to find its servers and download apps. This release fixes these issues and users should no longer need to modify their resolv.conf file by hand,” Aul wrote. “We also fixed an issue when calling mv between the /mnt and non-/mnt drives — files and directories will now move correctly between the two points. For more information about the Bash updates in this build, check out our release notes.”

And, as usual, there are plenty of bug fixes. Straight from the blog post:

• We fixed the issue causing some PCs to bluescreen (bug check) when entering Connected Standby after updating to the latest build from the Development Branch.
• We fixed the issue where some large downloads may appear to get stuck at 99% completion in Microsoft Edge.
• We fixed an issue which made it look like you couldn’t drag and drop to reorder your favorites on the Favorites Bar.
• We fixed the issue causing Groove Music to crash on launch at the splash screen.
• We fixed an issue where adding a song to Groove Music’s Now Playing list might cause the current song to stop playing and start over.
• We fixed the issue where PCs are unable to go back to a previous Insider Preview build via “Go back to an earlier build” under Settings > Update & security > Recovery if they have BitLocker/Device Encryption enabled.
• We’ve made improvements to the share UI for Cortana Reminders. The experience is much more polished now.
• We improved reliability of the Chinese IME.
• Going forward (from this build), apps for which you’ve selected “Show windows from this app on all desktops” will be remembered after you update to a new build.
• We fixed an issue where the taskbar’s overflow tray for notification area (systray) icons was not being padded correctly for certain multi-monitor setups.
• We fixed an issue where the Game Bar would not appear if the DPI had been changed from 150% to 100%.
• We fixed an issue where notifications with more content sometimes could not be expanded in the Action Center.
• We fixed an issue where tiles on the Start menu might flash at the wrong size after exiting tablet mode.
• We fixed an issue where the battery icon in the notification area might display incorrectly after a DPI change.
• We fixed an issue where clicking on the “X” button on a window in Task View removed the thumbnail, but the title and X button would still be shown.
• When an app is displayed in the Start menu with the name “@{}”), there will now be an option to uninstall it.
• We fixed an issue where re-directed folder Libraries would appear as duplicate folder entries in the File Explorer navigation pane.
• We fixed an issue for multi-monitor users, where launching a desktop (Win32) app from Start would result in the full screen video being played on the other monitor getting minimized.
• We fixed an issue where the Settings app would crash if you tried to pin a settings page to Start.
• We fixed an issue where opening Windows Defender from the Settings app would fail.
• We fixed an issue resulting in blurry and/or overlapped text in Start’s All apps list.
• We fixed an issue where the touch keyboard might not come up in the password field after you switched users on the Lock screen.
• We fixed an issue where Windows Spotlight wouldn’t remember if you had already said you liked that image the last time you locked your PC.

And yes, there are known issues in this build as well. Aul lists them out:

• We’re adding a built-in network speed test under Settings > Network & Internet > Status however it doesn’t work just yet. The UI is there but we still have some backend work to get it turned on and working.
• Feedback Hub is not localized and the UI will be in English (U.S.) only, even with language packs installed.
• Feedback Hub takes about 20-30 minutes after updating to this build to download and hydrate itself. If Feedback Hub is not fully hydrated, if you receive a mini-survey notification it will take you nowhere in the app, search in Feedback Hub won’t show results, and if you click to go to Feedback Hub from another app or setting, Feedback will not open.
• The Desktop App Converter Preview (Project Centennial) will fail to run on the Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14332. If you are a developer utilizing the converter tool to convert your desktop app to UWP, we suggest skipping this build until we can fix this issue.
• All Tencent online games no longer work in current builds from the Development Branch.
• The updated UAC UI breaks the ALT + Y keyboard shortcut to choose “yes”.
• You may receive 0x8004C029 errors when attempting to play Groove Music Pass (DRM) content in Groove Music.
• Playing music in the Groove Music within 2 minutes after logging into your PC will result in 0xc10100ae playback errors.
• If you wait more than 2 minutes after logging in to play music in Groove Music you will avoid this issue.
• You may see square boxes in certain apps when using some of the new emoji – we’re still getting things set up, this will be resolved in a future build.
• We are continuing to make changes to our extension datastore schema in Microsoft Edge. As a result, after updating to this build any extensions installed will be removed. You can reinstall these extensions to get them back.
• If you are using a non-English keyboard, you can’t accept Bash prompts.
• We are investigating an issue where if you’re running Insider Preview builds in certain languages, the All apps list on Start appears empty. A workaround for this is to use search to launch apps.

The new preview build, 14332, is also available for Windows 10 Mobile, with both bug fixes and issues. Check Aul’s full post to see them all.

To get the new build on both PC and mobile, you’ll need to be a Windows 10 Insider. You can sign up for the free program here.

Altogether, Windows 10 has been installed on more than 270 million devices, Microsoft said last month.