This new Office feature will address your poor document colors

This new Office feature will address your poor document colors: We have all experienced yellow text on white PowerPoint slides, purple headings on dark Word documents, or other examples of documents that are difficult to read. A new assistant feature is coming to Microsoft Office applications to prevent people from struggling with color choices.

Microsoft announced a new feature in a blog post called the Productivity Assistant in Microsoft 365, aimed at addressing usability issues in your documents. The company states, “The Productivity Assistant introduces three key improvements: better defaults to prevent issues before they occur, real-time and context-aware remediation when issues arise, and clear, simple guidance embedded within your workflow.”

The main function of the Productivity Assistant now is to help people choose better colors for their documents. For example, most people have difficulty reading yellow text on a white background, and individuals with visual impairments or other issues may not be able to see the text at all. There is a new toggle switch for “High Contrast Only” in the color picker, which helps you select easily readable colors, including theme-based options.

This new Office feature will address your poor document colors

The Productivity Assistant can also identify issues in existing documents, such as spelling errors. If an issue is detected in your document, you will see a small icon resembling the old AIM symbol, and clicking on that icon will display suggestions for changes to the document. By the end of 2023, a dedicated Productivity Assistant pane will be launched with a design similar to Microsoft Editor, featuring “plain-language explanations to help you easily address the entire gamut of productivity issues.”

The Productivity Assistant will begin rolling out to core Microsoft 365 apps “in the coming weeks,” although initially, it may be limited to Word on Windows. Microsoft hopes that this feature will eventually replace the less advanced Accessibility Checker that was introduced in Office 2016.