Office Sway Preview Now Generally Available

About three months after it announced the Sway preview, Microsoft has made it generally available to anyone who wants to check out the newest member of the Office family. It was previously available only via a limited, invite-only preview.

According to Microsoft, over one million people have visited Sway.com and over 175,000 people have requested invites to try Sway since it announced the service back in early October. (The initial announcement was ill-timed to happen right on top of the Windows 10 announcement, and I've been unintentionally slacking on this thing ever since.)

For those 10 weeks, Sway has only been available to people who were invited into the program. But as of today, anyone can visit Sway.com, sign in with a Microsoft account, and start making their own ... sways.

Today's release includes a few improvements (in addition to the Bing Image Search and Suggested Searches features that were added earlier this month). These include:

Undo and redo. The most frequently asked-for feature by far, Microsoft says.

Bullets and numbering. No, Sway isn't a PowerPoint replacement per se, but let's face it, sometimes you just need to present information in a list. And now you can, thanks to new Bullets and Numbers items in the Sway text toolbar.

Text editing. In its initial preview release, Sway didn't provide any way to edit paragraphs of text on the canvas (though you could do so for heading and captions). Well, now you can.

Simpler section reordering. You can now drag and drop sections to reorder them.

PDF import. You can now import text and photos from PDF files.

Color picker improvements. While Sway will automatically create a color palette for your sway based on the content you import, sometimes you may want to fine tune it. And now you can change the mood in a variety of ways, by choosing a palette from a specific image or from pre-made color schemes.

Sway for iPhone now available in Australia. You may know that Sway is available on the web and also in mobile app form only on iPhone for the time being. The availability of that app has been extended to Australia.

This doesn't mean Sway has moved past some pre-release phase, however. It's still in preview, and Microsoft is still very much interested in hearing how users would like to see the product improved. So be sure to check out the Sway UserVoice site to register any complaints or feedback of any kind.