Microsoft's annual Ignite conference kicked off today in Orlando, bringing with it a number of product announcements primarily directed at IT and enterprise customers. However, there are a few updates that are also of interest to Android Police readers, including a new Excel app feature that turns a picture of a data table into a spreadsheet. The Redmond, Washington-based tech giant also announced a search tool that spans across most of its products and some Microsoft Teams updates. 

Below, find a quick rundown of the Android news from Ignite.

"Insert Data from Picture" is a new feature coming to public preview on the Android Excel app. It lets you take a picture of a hand-drawn or printed data table and converts it to an Excel spreadsheet automatically. Android users are pretty pleased. Excel is also getting some other nifty AI-enhanced capabilities, including new data types — geography and stocks — that allow users to more easily build visuals like maps.

Microsoft Search will unify search across Windows, Office, Edge and Bing. The search bar will be in relatively the same place in its various products, whether on desktop, mobile, or web, and users will see personalized results and suggestions. It's now available in Bing.com, Office.com, the SharePoint mobile app, and the Outlook mobile app. In 2019, the functionality is coming to Office and Windows.

For anyone who uses Microsoft Teams at work — you can now blur the background of a video meeting (providing a useful, if somewhat shameful, way for the lazy among us to avoid cleaning our rooms), and record meetings with a searchable, timecoded transcript.

That's all the Microsoft news that's fit to print on an Android site for now, though there may be more tidbits coming out over the next few days until the conference ends on the 28th. Those that are interested can keep posted on the Ignite Twitter account.

Source: Microsoft 1, 2, 3