Announcements · v2.17.1
What is new, and what we are hoping you will tell us
This is the page for people who already have it. Every other page here is trying to persuade somebody to download the suite; this one assumes you did, and is the only way we have of saying anything to you afterwards.
Release · 23 October 2026
Version 2.17.1: print templates that call people by their names
A Data Files print template names a related record as a person reads it on paper: a payslip for Camille Sharma, not EMP-0143 Camille Sharma, and a letter to Dear Zara Tanaka, not Dear TEN-0017. A record with no name, such as an invoice, still prints by its number.
In Mail, deleting or moving a message takes that message out of the list and leaves the rest where they were. In Data Files the side panel scrolls as one, and a database with a page online shows a small globe beside its name.
Release · 23 October 2026
Version 2.17.0: Data Files with people, roles and a database engine
A Data Files database can be protected. Its Admin adds people, each with a role and a password, and a role decides which tables, fields, forms and reports its people see and what they may change. The Admin can see the database as any role would before anyone relies on it.
A table can be linked live to PostgreSQL, MySQL or MariaDB. The engine keeps the records, so every computer linked to it works on the same ones, and a linked table on screen is read again every 15 seconds. Queries, reports and forms use it like any other table.
A form names the record a field points at, a sale by its receipt number rather than its number in the table, and a list too long to hold becomes a box you search as you type.
Release · 22 October 2026
Version 2.16.1: Data Files forms that keep what you type
A date and time typed into a Data Files form is kept again, the words in a form’s lists show whole, and a form’s list of related records names them rather than showing their numbers. A field called E-mail keeps its hyphen on a form.
A query can round its answers, and the sample businesses’ averages now do: an average spend of 15.08, not a long run of decimals. The newest sample businesses come in the download.
Release · 22 October 2026
Version 2.16: your own profile again, an account manager in Mail, and print templates that say when and what
Rutba Office 2.15.0 started on a new, empty profile, so mail accounts and settings looked gone. Nothing was removed, and 2.16.0 opens your own profile again, as it was before 2.15.0.
Mail has Manage accounts beside Add account, with each account’s signature, out of office and Remove in one place. In Talk you can remove or block a contact, withdraw an invitation you sent, and send it again a couple of days later.
Data Files’ print templates can say which records they are for and when a part of them shows, keep only the lines you want, keep a running balance from an opening balance, and group lines under headings with subtotals.
Release · 22 October 2026
Version 2.15: templates that keep up to date, and search and filter in Data Files
When Rutba publishes a newer set of templates and sample databases, Rutba Office fetches it with its own update check, checks Rutba’s signature on it, and uses it from the next start. A database made from one of Data Files’ templates or samples is offered the newer design when one arrives, its records and your own changes kept.
Data Files searches and filters a table’s records and a query’s results alike: dates and numbers by a range, words by matching, and any value by selection from its cell. A saved query opens with its records and an Edit query button, and the side panel takes pinned favourites.
Every template in the gallery, and every sample business, links to its page on this site, and a database or document made from one links back to it.
Release · 22 October 2026
Version 2.14: Out of office at your mail server, and events over several days
Mail’s Out of office can now turn on your mail server’s own automatic reply, with your message, start and end, so it answers with your computer off, and your own filters keep working beside it. Where a server cannot, Rutba Office sends the replies itself, as before, and says why.
Calendar draws an event over several days as one bar across them in the month, and the list of the next thirty days shows it on each of its days. Data Files prints whole numbers as Access does, a year as 2018.
Release · 21 October 2026
Version 2.13: twenty-five sample businesses, print templates, and Talk invitations
Data Files now starts from twenty-five sample businesses, from a corner store and a takeaway to a garage, a lettings agency and a payroll, each a working database with a year of invented records or empty for your own, and each with a guide of its own. They are on the samples page to download too.
Print templates lay out an invoice, a receipt, a payslip or an agreement from a record, with your letterhead, on A4, Letter, A5 or a till roll, to print or save as a PDF, from a form or the list. Queries calculate columns as Access writes them.
Talk invites people by email, from your own address or from Rutba's, and by a link you send any way you like. Each app opens on New, its starters and the files you opened in it lately.
Release · 21 October 2026
Version 2.12: Data Files, Talk with your Rutba account, and formatting the words you select
Rutba Data Files is the thirteenth app: tables of records related to each other in one file, queries designed with criteria and totals, forms, reports to print or save as a PDF, and five ready-made databases to start from. Documents can merge letters from one of its tables. Add it from Choose apps.
Talk signs in with your Rutba account, in your browser, and stays signed in. In Presentations and in a Worksheets cell, Bold, colour, size and the rest now go to the words you select, and a box shows its words as they look while you type. Worksheets shows and keeps the styled words in a cell, and a workbook saved as .ods opens again looking the same.
Mail opens a new message beside your messages or in a window of its own. AI Tools can now answer AI apps on other machines too, if you choose it, with a key AI Tools keeps; this computer only stays the default. The installer opens on the apps you have on.
Release · 21 October 2026
Version 2.8: Talk, a bigger Video, and old files
A new copy starts with the Office apps, and Image, Video, Recorder, Talk and AI Tools are added from Choose apps whenever you want them. Rutba Talk is the twelfth app: messages and calls between contacts, straight between the two computers. Its Rutba sign-in is still being set up.
Video gains a library of titles, word art, shapes, icons and sound effects, four starters to begin from, speed with the pitch kept, Freeze Frame, Reverse and a preview on a second screen. Mail has a Safety switch on every message, and there are now 27 templates, all of them to download from the Templates page.
Worksheets opens the old files still around: Lotus 1-2-3 worksheets with their formulas, dBASE and FoxPro tables, Access databases read only, SYLK and DIF, each to save as .xlsx.
Release · 20 October 2026
Version 2.6: choose your apps
Choose which of the eleven apps you want, in the installer or from Choose apps in the launcher. An app you leave out is not shown and does not open its kinds of file, and it stays installed, so turning it on again takes one click.
Recorder records a part of a screen and takes still pictures of what is shown, the screen or the camera. Mail writes a message in the whole window when you want the room.
Release · 20 October 2026
Version 2.5: Recorder, and going live
Rutba Recorder is the eleventh app: your screen, camera and voice made into one video as you record, with scenes you can change while it records, a title and a logo. Go Live streams the same picture to YouTube, Facebook, Twitch or any RTMP server at once, with your stream keys kept encrypted on this computer.
Video now plays a video file before it edits it and records a voice on its own. Mail opens a message in a window of its own and a draft to be finished.
Release · 17 October 2026
Version 2.4: AI tools, off until you say so
An AI app on this computer can now make and read documents, workbooks, presentations and PDFs with Rutba Office, in folders you choose. The tools are off until you turn them on, for this session or always, and they never overwrite or delete a file.
Nothing listens on the network, so no other machine can connect. While the tools are on, a badge in every window shows when an AI app is connected, and a click says which app and what it last did.
Release · 17 October 2026
Version 2.3: edit on the picture itself
In Video, anything on the preview can be picked, moved, resized and turned to any angle, with its place, size, angle, opacity and blend as numbers too, and any clip or still can be a picture in picture.
Add Media asks where files go: after the clips on a track, on a new track, or at the playhead. The In and Out points and markers drag along the timeline, and a track splits in two, moves, solos and stays locked.
Release · 16 October 2026
Version 2.2: on newer foundations
Rutba Office now runs on Electron 44 and newer versions of the libraries Mail reads and sends with, for their security fixes. Every app, file and setting works as before.
The whole release routine ran on the new versions first, and the update from 2.1.1 is tested installed, portable and while the app is closing.
Release · 16 October 2026
Version 2.1.1: turned pictures and shapes behave
A picture, shape or text box that has been turned now shows its frame and handles turned with it, takes clicks on its own outline and resizes along its own sides, in Documents, Worksheets, Presentations and Image. Before, the frame stayed upright and a turned object could become hard to take hold of.
More Rotation Options sets an exact angle in Documents, Worksheets and Presentations.
Release · 15 October 2026
Version 2.1: faster video, and a suite everyone can use
Video writes its own MP4 with the computer’s hardware, a minute of 1080p in under half a minute. Image keeps a selection in the project, carries a mask with its layer and lets you type straight onto the picture.
Every app passes an accessibility audit, works from the keyboard alone with F6 between areas, tells a screen reader what is in a document, and reads in Windows High Contrast. A plain statement of what is met and what is not is published with the source.
An update no longer stops because Rutba Office was still closing: the installer now closes it, and releases go up only once their files are checked.
Release · 15 October 2026
Version 2.0: the review tools, finished in every editor
Presentations can redact a deck, inspect it for what should not travel, keep ink as PowerPoint keeps it, and let you draw on the slide show, and its comments take mentions, edits and Resolve. Worksheets inspects and redacts a workbook too.
In the dark theme every app was measured for readable text, and a cell with its own fill keeps words that read on it. After Recognise Text, Find in a PDF marks the very word it found.
2.0 is a new number, not a new kind of release: it is still a beta, offered as an update like every 1.x release, free, with no account.
Worth knowing · 15 October 2026
The next version is 2.0
Rutba Office has had seventy numbered releases since 1.0.0 on 8 September, and version numbers past fifty had stopped saying anything useful. So the release after 1.51 is 2.0.
Nothing about how you get it changes. An installed copy is offered 2.0 the way it was offered every 1.x release, with no account, and your files and settings stay as they are. It is still a beta for Windows, and the builds are still not code-signed.
Release · 15 October 2026
Version 1.51: receipts and invoices, read on your computer
Worksheets turns receipts and invoices into rows, one each, with the figures checked against the page’s own sums. Mail shows an attached invoice’s sender, total and due date when you open it, and PDF finds a scanned invoice’s details and turns a form’s tick boxes into real check boxes.
It reads English, Urdu, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese and Japanese, and says plainly when it cannot be sure, such as figures printed in Arabic-Indic digits.
Calendar’s month shows as many of a day’s events as fit again, and the new Tour page shows the ten apps at work in 34 pictures.
Release · 14 October 2026
Version 1.50: review tools, and Mail grows up
Documents makes and fills forms as Word does, redacts words out of every part of a copy, inspects a file for what should not travel and saves ink as Word saves it. Presentations compares a reviewed copy of a deck, with every change to accept or reject.
Mail indexes archives on threads of their own, opens archives past 2 GB where they lie, reads and sends signed and encrypted mail, and adds several accounts at once. The signed and encrypted mail was reviewed for security before release.
Account settings are looked up only when you press Add, from the address’s own domain, and a password goes to a server outside that domain only after you agree.
Release · 14 October 2026
Version 1.49: comment, fill, sign and redact PDFs
PDF now comments and marks up a file as Acrobat does, fills forms, places a signature you type, draw or photograph, and redacts: the marked words come out of the pages and out of everywhere else in the file, from its properties to its bookmarks.
No greyed-out button is left: the few that need an online service are gone, and the rest are built. The panels beside the work resize in every app, galleries shrink before they fold, and Video’s preview takes the room it needs.
A visual pass over every app, light and dark, put right what looked cramped or out of line, from Calendar’s columns to Contacts’ labels.
Release · 13 October 2026
Version 1.48: new ribbons in every app
Every app’s ribbon is redrawn to Office’s measure: one height on every tab, a picture for each command in the app’s own colour, and menus that drop from their button.
A narrow window folds the ribbon from its end inwards, the way Office does, instead of scrolling it out of sight, and Icons only keeps it compact with each name in its tooltip.
Alt shows KeyTips on every tab and control, the arrow keys move through the ribbon with a ring that shows, and in Urdu and Arabic the ribbon mirrors properly.
Release · 13 October 2026
Version 1.47: text recognition, on your computer
The suite now reads the words in pictures and scanned pages itself, with the network off: English, Urdu, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese and Japanese, with Urdu marked beta while it learns Nastaliq print.
In PDF, Recognise Text makes a scanned file searchable without changing how its pages look. In Pictures and Image, Copy Text from Picture copies the words in a photo. In Worksheets, Data from Picture turns a photo of a table into cells.
Reading runs on threads of its own, so no window waits for a long scan, and the measured error rates for each language are published with the source.
Release · 13 October 2026
Version 1.46: a PDF app, templates, and Mail as an archive tool
PDF is the suite’s tenth app: read a PDF, find and copy its words, and put its pages in order: reorder, turn, take out, extract, insert from another file, split and merge, each page copied into the new file exactly as it was.
Documents, Worksheets and Presentations open a gallery of sixteen templates, made by the suite’s own engines, with your own saved templates beside them, and Insert, QR Code puts a scannable code in any of the three.
Mail opens an Outlook .pst, .ost or .olm archive where it lies, searches every account and archive at once, bodies included, and exports a search or folders for legal hold to mbox and PDF with a manifest of SHA-256 hashes.
Release · 13 October 2026
Version 1.45: introduction videos, and a photo editor’s tools in Image
Video makes introductions: a project of scenes from a template, a teleprompter above the camera, retakes, a brand kit with your name in a lower third, and Zoom on Clicks from where you clicked. Captions come in and go out as .srt and .vtt, and Export lays a video out for YouTube, LinkedIn, Reels, Shorts, TikTok or email.
Image has the tools of a photo editor: selections by rectangle, ellipse, lasso, wand or colour, a brush, an eraser, fill and gradient, the clone stamp and healing brush, layer masks, free transform and perspective.
Checking or setting a password in Worksheets or Documents no longer holds up the other windows; the window that asked shows it is working.
Release · 12 October 2026
Version 1.44: a screen recorder, layers in Image, and a smoother Video preview
Video records your screen: a whole screen, one window or a region, with the camera as a second file in a corner you choose, the microphone and the computer’s own sound. The recording lands on the timeline as layers, so the camera can still be moved, reshaped or removed. Presentations’ Screen Recording uses the same recorder.
Image has layers: text, WordArt, shapes, icons and charts on layers of their own, blend modes, adjustment layers, Canvas Size and Trim, saved as a .rimg project. In Documents, Worksheets and Presentations, Picture Format, Edit in Image opens a picture in Image and puts it back when you save.
Fixed: in 1.43, playing a video flickered and its sound started over on top of itself. The preview now plays steadily, and an exported video no longer starts with a moment of black. 1.44.0 shipped without installers because of a missing file icon; 1.44.1 is the same release with installers that build, and a failed update check now says what happened in a sentence.
Release · 12 October 2026
Version 1.43: a Video editor, quick edits in Image, and pages side by side
Video is now an editor on a timeline: several clips, stills and sound on lanes, split, trim and ripple, transitions between clips, titles and lower thirds, and export with sound to MP4 or WebM. Projects are saved as .rvid files, and unsaved work comes back after a crash.
Image gains straighten, resize, levels, curves, white balance and the rest of the tone tools, and pen, shapes, arrows and text drawn on the picture. Pictures can batch edit a folder: resize, convert, rename and turn upright in one go.
In Documents the pages stand side by side as the zoom drops, as Word lays them, and Side to Side turns them like a book. Ctrl and the mouse wheel, or Ctrl+Plus and Ctrl+Minus, zoom the page in Documents, Worksheets, Presentations and Mail.
Release · 10 October 2026
Version 1.42: Rutba Office in Hindi, and kashida for Arabic
The app menu’s Language section now offers Hindi (हिन्दी) beside English, Urdu and Arabic. About 5,360 messages are translated into standard Hindi in Devanagari, numbers are grouped as India groups them (12,34,567), and Devanagari digits (१२३) are a choice. The Hindi was drafted by machine against a glossary of the suite’s terms and is waiting for a native speaker’s review. The installer is still in English on a Hindi or Urdu Windows.
In Documents, Word’s Arabic justifications, Justify Low, Medium and High, are kept in the file and offered for a right-to-left paragraph. Printed and saved as PDF, the lines are filled by lengthening the joins between letters, as Arabic is justified. Calendar’s week now starts on the language’s own first day: Saturday in Arabic, Sunday in Urdu and Hindi.
1.42.0 shipped without installers because of a broken Hindi language file in the installer builder; 1.42.1 is the same release with installers that build.
Release · 9 October 2026
Versions 1.40 and 1.41: Rutba Office in Arabic, with Hijri dates
Arabic (العربية) joins English and Urdu in the Language section, about 5,350 messages in Modern Standard Arabic with the words Microsoft Office uses, and the window mirrored right to left. Counts use Arabic’s six plural forms. Numbers are in Western digits, as Office in Arabic writes them by default, and the new Digits section switches to Arabic-Indic digits (١٢٣), or Urdu’s (۱۲۳) in an Urdu window. Like the Urdu, the Arabic was drafted by machine and is waiting for a native speaker’s review.
Worksheets reads and writes Excel’s Hijri date formats, and Calendar can show the Hijri date beside each day. Find now passes over the marks a word is written with, as Office in Arabic does: كتب finds كَتَبَ, and احمد finds أحمد. A Match diacritics box finds a word only as it is written.
Release · 9 October 2026
Version 1.39: the rest of the windows in Urdu
What the engines and the mail, calendar and contacts services say in their own words, such as a wrong password or a file that will not open, now reaches a window set to Urdu in Urdu, with the file names and numbers put back in their places. That is about 310 more messages.
In Documents, the citation styles, source types and bibliography fields, the Table of Authorities categories, Insert Field, and the envelope and label sizes are in Urdu too. In Worksheets, Power Query’s applied steps read in Urdu, each written as a sentence in Urdu’s own word order. The installer is still in English, and all of the Urdu is waiting for a native speaker’s review.
Release · 9 October 2026
Version 1.38: Rutba Office in Urdu
The app menu’s Language section now offers English, Urdu (اردو) or your system’s own language. Nearly 4,900 words go through the translation: the ribbons and their tooltips, the menus, dialogs, panes and status bars. A window in Urdu mirrors its frame, so the ribbon reads from the right and the window buttons move to the left, as Windows places them for a right-to-left language. A document’s page, a sheet’s grid and a slide keep the direction their own file gives them, so typing works as before. Dates and counts follow Urdu’s own rules.
The Urdu was drafted by machine against a glossary of the suite’s recurring terms and is waiting for a native speaker’s review. If a word reads wrong to you, the contact page reaches us. Messages the engines give in their own words, such as a wrong password, are still in English, and so is the installer. They come next.
Release · 9 October 2026
Versions 1.36 and 1.37: your own multilevel lists, and documents worked on off the main process
Home → Multilevel List → Define New Multilevel List makes a list of your own a level at a time, and a level can be linked to a heading style, so Heading 1 reads Chapter I., II. and Heading 2 reads 1.1, 1.2, as Word links them. All thirty-six of Office’s WordArt warps are now drawn, and WordArt prints as the page shows it.
Opening, editing, laying out, printing and saving every document, workbook and deck now happen on a thread of their own. Mail, the launcher and the other windows answer at once while a long document is laid out for print or a big workbook recalculates. If that thread ever stops, it is started again and your unsaved work is offered back.
A click pressed in a slide show just as the next slide arrived is no longer lost. An event or a card made while a CalDAV or CardDAV sync was sending is now kept for the next sync instead of being dropped.
Release · 9 October 2026
Versions 1.34 and 1.35: Word’s list library, Pivot Column, and a Save that leaves the other windows alone
Home → Multilevel List in Documents opens Word’s list library, from 1. 1.1. 1.1.1. to Article I. with Section 1.01 under it, and a document Word made with those lists opens numbered the same way. WordArt’s Transform → More now holds thirty warps.
Power Query in Worksheets can pivot a column into columns of their own and add a Conditional Column (if Region equals East then Home). Scripts can set widths and heights, autofit and merge, and Record Actions writes them. Home, Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End move as Excel’s do, and the grid now scrolls to keep the active cell in view.
Saving compresses the file off the main process, so a large workbook no longer stills Mail and the other windows while it saves. Each release is now checked against a time budget too: a 300-page document, a 100,000-row workbook and a 200-slide deck must each open within twenty seconds. On the test machine each opened in about two seconds or less.
Release · 9 October 2026
Version 1.33: record with the camera, templates of your own, and Rotate that saves the photo
Recording a show from a deck with cameos now records the camera as well, slide by slide, and puts each slide’s recording in its cameo’s place, as PowerPoint does. Record → Reset to Cameo makes a slide live again.
Save as Template, in the app menu of Documents, Worksheets and Presentations, keeps a .dotx, .xltx or .potx in Documents\Custom Office Templates, the folder Office uses, so both list the same templates. Home shows them under Start something, and choosing one opens a new, untitled document made from it.
In Pictures, Ctrl+R turns a photo a quarter clockwise in its file and saves it. A JPEG is turned by its orientation tag and its pixels are not touched; a PNG is redrawn, which loses nothing. Power Query gained Fill Down and Up, Unpivot Other Columns, Merge Columns and Extract.
Release · 9 October 2026
Versions 1.31 and 1.32: WordArt that bends, a picture watermark, and printing from the file
Shape Format → Text Effects → Transform lays WordArt along an arch, a circle or a button, and More gives twenty of Office’s warps: waves, inflate and deflate, slants, chevrons, fades and curves. They are saved as Office saves them, so Word, Excel and PowerPoint show the same shape.
Documents has a picture watermark, saved in the header as Word saves one. Print now starts from the document’s own paper, orientation and margins, with A3 and A5 as well, and a deck keeps its print choices where PowerPoint keeps them.
Pictures draws a tile for an SVG, AVIF or WebP the system has no thumbnail for. A picture or clip on a network share is only shown once you have opened that share yourself, because looking at a share hands it your Windows sign-in.
Release · 9 October 2026
Version 1.30: a release spent putting things right, and stars and tags in Pictures
We read back through everything 1.26 to 1.29.10 added and fixed what we found. A document over five hundred pages prints whole, Accept All reaches headers, footers and notes, and opening a large file no longer holds up the other windows. Dialogs keep focus as they should for a keyboard or a screen reader. A letter’s recipient list or a query’s source on a network share is never read just because a file names it.
Pictures can rate a photo one to five stars with the keys 0 to 5, and tag it. Both are kept on this computer and never written into the picture. A folder’s tile says how much it holds, and the filter can search the folders inside the one you are in.
Every release now carries the counts of the checks it passed on Windows, written in by the checks themselves: 1,882 engine tests and 1,184 application checks for this one. A fuzzer opened 5,400 damaged files, old formats included, and every one was opened or refused with a plain sentence.
Release · 8 October 2026
Versions 1.29.8 to 1.29.10: Power Query, scripts, calendar sync and motion paths
Worksheets now has Get & Transform (Power Query) for shaping, merging and appending data from a table or a CSV file, and Automate for scripts in the shape of Excel’s Office Scripts. A script runs in a sealed worker that cannot reach the network or your files, and Record Actions writes one from what you do. A cut and paste now takes every formula that pointed at the cells along with it.
Calendar and Contacts can keep in step with a CalDAV or CardDAV server you add, such as iCloud or your own. Nothing goes anywhere else.
Presentations has motion paths, effects by paragraph, 3D models, a live camera Cameo, and Design Ideas worked out on your computer. Review → Show Changes lists what changed in a deck since you last opened it. Documents, Worksheets and Presentations share a thesaurus (Shift+F7). Documents has 3D models, and PDFs that keep Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and Cyrillic text. Mail merge now has Ask, Fill-in and Set Bookmark, and keeps the recipient list’s ticks.
Release · 8 October 2026
Version 1.29.7: selecting, copying and filling in Worksheets the way Excel does
Drag across the cells to select a range, past the edge to keep scrolling, or across the headings for whole rows and columns. Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V now go through the system clipboard, so cells copied here paste into other programs as a table, and cells from elsewhere paste in here.
Paste Special (Ctrl+Alt+V) pastes formulas, values or formatting alone, adds or multiplies the copy into the cells already there, skips blanks, and transposes rows into columns. The fill handle carries a selected series on by its step, and Auto Fill Options at the corner switches between copying and filling.
Release · 8 October 2026
Version 1.29.6: tables that work like Word’s, right to left, and old Office files opened in full
Tables in Documents now have Word’s Table Design and Table Layout tabs. You can pick a table style, merge and split cells, draw a table or rub a line out with the Eraser, and put formulas such as =SUM(ABOVE) in a cell. Tables print the way Word prints them, with the header row repeated on every page.
Right to left reaches the ruler, tab stops, tables and sections in Documents, a whole sheet in Worksheets, and paragraphs on a slide. Arabic, Urdu and Hebrew read the way they should.
Word, Excel and PowerPoint files from Office 97 to 2003, and older Word and Excel files back to the 1980s, now open in full with their styles, tables, pictures and charts. A password-protected one opens with its password. OpenDocument text, Rich Text and web pages open and save whole.
Worksheets has Excel 365’s newer functions, LAMBDA and XMATCH among them, a PivotTable field list, and references coloured as you type a formula. Mail has a junk filter that learns from what you mark and never sends anything away to decide.
Release · 7 October 2026
Versions 1.29.1 to 1.29.3: over ninety buttons that used to be greyed out now work
In Documents, Review → Compare marks what changed between two versions of a document, and View → Split shows it in two panes. There is a table of authorities, a signature line, embedded objects and the Draw tab for writing on the page.
In Presentations, video and audio play in the show. You can record narration and timings slide by slide, export the deck to video, and make custom shows, Zoom links and notes and handout masters.
SmartArt goes into a document, a sheet or a slide from lines you type, and Office opens it as shapes you can edit.
Release · 6 October 2026
Version 1.29: Rutba Word is now Documents, and Presentation is now Presentations
The two apps now have plural names, like Worksheets, Contacts and Pictures. Mail and Calendar keep their names, and so do Image and Video for now.
Nothing you have set up changes. A pinned Rutba Word on the taskbar opens Documents, and .docx and .pptx files still open in the same apps with the same icons.
1.28.1, the day before, closed some gaps a review found. A window can no longer read the mail passwords the suite stores, an attachment cannot be saved outside the folder you chose, and a save that cannot finish leaves the file as it was.
Release · 26 September 2026
Version 1.28: an index, a table of figures and fields in Word, and themes for a workbook
In Rutba Word, References → Mark Entry (Alt+Shift+X) marks words for the index in a box that stays beside the page, and Insert Index lays the index out under its letters with the pages each entry falls on (indented or run-in, with page numbers right-aligned behind a leader), written as the fields Word itself updates. Insert Table of Figures lists the captions of one label, each linked to its caption with its page, and Update Table and F9 keep both up to date. Insert → Quick Parts → Field puts a page number, the page count, the date or the time, the file’s name, the author or the title anywhere in the text, in a format of your choosing, worked out again by F9 and before printing.
In Worksheets, Page Layout → Themes, Colours, Fonts and Effects dress a workbook in one of the eleven themes Presentation offers, with your own colours and fonts saved from Customise; cells in theme colours, tables, charts and shapes follow, and the theme is written into the workbook as Excel writes one.
And everywhere: the first start after an update now opens its window. Until this release, the first start after an update could build the window and never show it, until the suite was started a second time.
Release · 26 September 2026
Version 1.27: password-protected files, an accessibility checker and spelling everywhere, mail merge and references in Word, pivots in Worksheets, and themes and animations in Presentation
In Rutba Word, Worksheets and Presentation, a .docx, .xlsx or .pptx protected with a password in Office now opens: the window asks for the password, and a file changed since it was protected is refused rather than opened as whatever it now decrypts to. File → Info → Encrypt with Password saves one encrypted as Office 2013 and later do, and the half-minute recovery copy is encrypted with the same password. Review → Check Accessibility lists what makes a file hard to use with a screen reader (missing alt text, tables without a header row, slides without a title, text too pale for its background), each with a fix; Review → Spelling (F7) walks the whole file in an Editor pane against English (UK) and English (US) dictionaries that never leave your machine, with a dictionary of your own shared by all three apps.
In Rutba Word: mail merge from a workbook, a list or Contacts, with envelopes and Avery labels; equations; a table of contents that refreshes; citations in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard or IEEE and a bibliography; captions numbered by a field; tracked changes recorded as you type, with Accept and Reject; Restrict Editing, enforced in the window; text boxes; pictures behind or in front of the words, arranged, grouped and listed in a Selection Pane; and hyphenation.
In Worksheets: PivotCharts and slicers; a sheet’s pictures, shapes and charts picked, moved, turned, aligned and grouped; workbook protection with a password; Page Layout view and Page Break Preview; custom views; Consolidate and Forecast Sheet; an outline with subtotals; an advanced filter; Flash Fill; Evaluate Formula; manual calculation; comments as conversations; scatter charts; Split; and a watch window.
In Presentation: eleven themes with their colour, font and effect variants; the Slide Master; transitions and animations with an Animation Pane; comment threads; equations; undo and redo; gradient and picture fills, glow, soft edges and reflection; and shapes aligned, grouped, turned and flipped. In Mail: a signature for each account, a message scheduled to send later, and automatic replies while you are away.
Release · 24 September 2026
Version 1.26: sections, a table and a chart on a slide, columns and cross-references in Word, and sparklines in Worksheets
In Presentation, Home → Section gathers slides into sections (Add Section, Rename Section, Remove Section and Remove All Sections, as PowerPoint offers them), drawn as headings above their first slide in the thumbnail strip and in Slide Sorter; Slide Show → Hide Slide takes a slide out of the show without deleting it; and Design → Background Styles offers the theme’s backgrounds, a gradient, four solid colours and Apply to all slides. Insert → Table puts a table on the slide whose cells are edited in place, a row or a column added or removed from a right-click; Insert → Chart puts in a Column, Bar, Line or Pie chart with a small grid to edit its figures, written the way Word and Worksheets already write one.
In Rutba Word, the “A” button on the Home tab opens Text Effects: an outline, a shadow, a glow in gold, blue, green or red. Insert → Bookmark lists a document’s bookmarks and adds, deletes or goes to one, a bookmarked paragraph now staying editable; Insert → Cross-reference inserts a REF field to a bookmark, shaded on the page and refreshed with Update Fields, in a run of its own that keeps its paragraph editable too. Insert → Drop Cap offers None, Dropped, Dropped two lines and In margin. Layout → Columns lays a section out in one, two or three columns, or two of unequal width, each filled to the foot of the page before the next starts, with its own footnotes; and a selection dragged into the margin, or made with a triple-click or Ctrl+A, now reaches Delete, Backspace, typing and a paste as every other selection does.
In Worksheets, Formulas → Error Checking opens a pane listing every cell whose value is an error, across every sheet, each with its reference, the value in red and a plain sentence saying why; a click goes to the cell, and a cell fixed drops off the list. Insert → Sparklines draws a line or a column through a row’s figures inside its own cell, written the way Excel writes one. And in Word, Worksheets and the In and Out buttons in Mail, the zoom slider now scales the page or the grid alone. The ribbon, the status bar and the slider itself no longer grow under the pointer.
In Mail, adding an account now starts from a row of provider tiles (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud and more), each filling in the servers with no network and, where a provider wants one, a button that opens the page an app password is made on; a dozen more providers joined the table. Writing back to an mbox now keeps its bytes rather than mangling anything outside plain ASCII. And in Pictures, View → Slideshow shows the folder full-window with a fade between pictures, and a clip’s length now sits on its tile. In the launcher, a recent file can be renamed in place or taken off the list from a right-click, F2 or Delete.
Worth knowing · 22 September 2026
Every release, on one page
Thirty-one releases in the first fortnight is a lot to keep track of from the What’s new dialog one at a time. The timeline puts them all on one page, newest first: the day each shipped, the apps it touched, the changes it led with, and the notes written the day it went out, with nothing summarised afterwards.
Release · 21 September 2026
Version 1.25: a link on a slide’s words, paragraphs sorted in Word, and formatting cleared from a shape
In Presentation, Insert → Link puts a web address on the selected shape’s words, written as PowerPoint writes one, drawn underlined, and followed with Ctrl+click; editing the words keeps the link. Home → Clear all formatting takes bold, size, colour and font off a shape’s words and keeps their links.
In Rutba Word, Home → Sort puts the selected paragraphs A to Z or Z to A (numbers in their order, case set aside), each moving whole with its look, or the whole document when nothing is selected.
Release · 21 September 2026
Version 1.24: a picture from a file shows and deletes, a multilevel list in Word, and find and replace across a presentation
In Rutba Word, a picture inserted from the file dialog is written whole and drawn (it used to be written as the digits of its bytes and drew as nothing), and a picked picture goes with Delete, its block with it. Home → Multilevel list numbers 1., 1.1., 1.1.1., and Increase and Decrease indent move a list paragraph a level, so a numbered list nests 1. a. i. as Word’s does.
In Presentation, Home → Find lists every shape the words are on across the deck, a match clicked goes to its slide, and Replace all rewrites the words everywhere, each run keeping its look.
Release · 21 September 2026
Version 1.23: Word gets page borders, a watermark and line numbers; a slide gets the Format Painter, the footer band and shadows
In Rutba Word, Design → Page Borders draws a box around every page, Design → Watermark writes DRAFT, CONFIDENTIAL or your own words behind the text as Word writes its own, and Layout → Line Numbers puts a number beside every line down the margin: continuous, restarting on each page, or every fifth line. All three were greyed out; all three are written the way Word keeps them and printed by the PDF.
In Presentation, the Format Painter carries one shape’s fill, outline and font onto the next shape you click; Insert → Header & Footer, Date & Time and Slide Number write the footer band on this slide or every slide, the number following a slide when slides move; and Shape Effects puts a shadow under a shape, from the ribbon or the Format pane.
Release · 21 September 2026
Version 1.22: sheets come and go from the tabs, the Data and Formulas tabs fill in, and a slide’s text does everything the box can
In Worksheets, a + at the end of the tabs adds a sheet and a tab’s menu renames or deletes one. A workbook used to keep exactly the sheets it opened with. On the Data tab, Text to Columns, Remove Duplicates and a Sort by up to three columns are live; on the Formulas tab, Trace Precedents and Trace Dependents draw the arrows on the grid and Create from Selection names each column of a block from its header.
In Presentation, Layout and Reset on the Home tab, strikethrough, character spacing, change case and highlight on the words, and Align text, Text direction and Columns inside a box are written as PowerPoint keeps them and drawn on the stage. In Rutba Word, Shading and Borders on a paragraph and a Page Colour are written, painted and printed.
Release · 21 September 2026
Version 1.21: a cell’s words move in and turn, the Page Layout tab writes the file, and a slide keeps its look
In Worksheets, the Home tab’s indent arrows move a cell’s words in and out and Text orientation angles, turns or stacks them, on screen and on the printed page, kept in the file as Excel keeps them. The Page Layout tab now writes the file’s own page setup (Margins, Orientation and Size used to change a note in the window that nothing read), and Print Titles, Scale to Fit and Breaks are live; Insert → Header & Footer takes what prints at the top and the foot of every page.
In Presentation, Bullets, Numbering, the list-level arrows and Line spacing are written as PowerPoint keeps them, a slide keeps its bullets and its bold words when its text is edited (it did not), and Cut, Copy and Paste move a shape between slides. Keys typed briskly after Enter in a worksheet are no longer thrown away.
Release · 21 September 2026
Version 1.20: a picture goes into a worksheet, and the selection becomes the print area
In Worksheets, Insert → Pictures puts a picture from a file at the cell, at its own proportions, drawn at once over the cells and written as Excel keeps a picture, so Excel shows it too; one undo step takes it away. Page Layout → Print Area makes the selection what prints (kept in the file as the sheet’s own print area, where the print dialog and Excel start from), and Clear print area takes it away.
Release · 21 September 2026
Version 1.19: a block of cells becomes a table, and a floating text box prints beside the words
In Worksheets, Home → Format as Table (or Insert → Table) makes the selection (or, from one cell, the block of data round it) a table: a header row, banded rows if you ask, and a style Excel knows by name. The header row and the banding are painted at once, a header cell with nothing in it is given its column’s name, and the file carries the table as Excel keeps one, so Excel shows it too. One undo step.
In Rutba Word a text box anchored at the left or the right (a pull quote, a sidebar) now prints beside the words, the lines next to it laid out shorter, as it has shown on screen; it was printed under its paragraph.
Release · 20 September 2026
Version 1.18: a footnote sits at the foot of its page, and a sheet of pictures prints as it shows
On screen a footnote now goes to the foot of the page its reference lands on (under the body, above the bottom margin, under a short rule), as it has in print; the footnotes used to gather at the end of the document. A paragraph split across pages keeps each note with the line that references it.
A paragraph of only pictures prints them side by side, as many to a row as fit the column, as the screen draws them and Word does: a sheet of four scanned cards prints two by two rather than one under another.
Release · 20 September 2026
Version 1.17.1: a page of scanned cards no longer runs over the edge
A scanner writes its scans into one paragraph, four cards two to a line, and Rutba Word split a paragraph only where a character begins a line, so the second line of cards was drawn across the gap between two pages. A paragraph of pictures now splits between its picture lines; pictures in a paragraph of their own sit side by side, as Word draws them; and print places a paragraph’s pictures a page at a time, each whole. In Worksheets a character typed briskly into a cell, the frame after the editor opens, is no longer lost.
Release · 20 September 2026
Version 1.17: frozen panes stay on screen, a note goes on a cell, and a picture never crosses a sheet’s edge
A worksheet’s frozen rows and columns now stay where Excel keeps them: the rows under the column headings, the columns beside the row headings, the corner at both, their headings with them, as the rest scrolls. A note goes on a cell with Shift+F2, the Review tab or the cell’s menu (the words and who wrote them), and the file carries it as Excel keeps one, so Excel shows it too; on a noted cell the same dialog changes or deletes it.
In Rutba Word a picture never crosses a sheet’s edge. One taller than the page’s inside (a scanned card, portrait, at the column’s width) is drawn to fit it, its proportions kept, on screen and in print; and a picture whose bytes arrive after the pages were laid out lays them out again, so it goes whole to the next page instead of growing over the edge.
Release · 20 September 2026
Version 1.16: a large workbook scrolls at once, and an update says so before, during and after
A frame on a sixty-thousand-row sheet took a third of a second, and three seconds where the file gave every row a height, so a flick of the wheel queued a dozen frames and the rows a person had scrolled up to stayed blank until the grid caught up. It is thirty milliseconds now, fifty with a height on every row, and ten rows are drawn beyond the edge in both directions so the rows above are there before the next frame lands. The launcher’s recent list scrolls inside its box (it used to be clipped, the last row cut in half), and a right-click on a file offers Open, Show in folder, Remove from the list and Clear the list.
An update installs on quit, so the next launch looked exactly like the last one. Now the first window of a new version says which version it is now and which it was, and What’s new opens the release’s own notes, bundled with the build so they read with the network off. While a download runs every window’s status bar counts it, says Update ready once it is down, and brings back a card put away with Not now; on Windows the taskbar button shows the download’s progress.
Release · 20 September 2026
Version 1.15: a floating picture prints where it sits, and a worksheet’s links and notes come alive
A picture anchored at the side of a paragraph has floated there on screen since 1.11, the words wrapping round it; print and PDF drew it as a block under its paragraph. Now the paginator lays the lines beside it shorter, for as far down as it reaches and into the paragraphs after it, and the PDF writer draws the picture at its side. A picture that will not fit goes whole onto the next page with its paragraph.
In Worksheets a hyperlink is read with its target, drawn underlined, and followed with Ctrl+click: an address opens outside the suite, a place in the workbook is gone to. Ctrl+K puts one on a cell, an address or a place, and offers to change or remove the one a cell has; the file carries it as Excel writes one. A cell with a note wears its red corner and tells the note on hover. Get mail in Mail is F5, and every Help tab now opens a help page that exists.
Release · 20 September 2026
Version 1.14: Pictures on a large folder: instant, steady, drawn only where you look
The viewer crawled on a big folder with clips among the pictures, and stuttered as tiles came and went. Every tile decoded the whole file, every clip was a live player, everything was drawn whether you could see it or not, and moving on emptied the stage before the next picture arrived. All four are gone: a tile is a small thumbnail the platform made once and Rutba Office keeps on disk; a clip’s tile is a frame of it; the grid and the filmstrip draw only the rows in view, so a folder of five thousand costs what a folder of fifty costs; and the picture on the stage stays until the next one has decoded.
With nothing open the folder fills the window (the folders inside it as tiles, chips that count it by kind, any order, three tile sizes), and one click opens a picture on a dark stage with a filmstrip under it. A phone’s sideways photograph is turned the right way up once, not twice. Fourteen application checks open a generated folder of three hundred pictures and clips and read back what the window did.
Release · 14 September 2026
Version 1.13: you are told when a release is waiting
An installed copy has looked for a newer release since 1.7 and installed it when you quit; it said so only in a chip on the launcher. From 1.13 a release the check finds is announced in every window the moment it is found, with the download’s progress; once downloaded, the card offers Restart and update, which quits, installs and comes back. Not now puts that version away for a day. If you simply carry on, it still installs when you quit.
Every release is now proved this way before it is called done: the previous release is installed on a test machine and watched until it has updated itself to the new one. 1.11.0 updated itself to 1.12.0 that way on the day 1.12.0 shipped.
Release · 14 September 2026
Version 1.12: the ruler, and a table’s borders, moved by hand
The ruler above a Rutba Word document now moves things: a paragraph’s first-line, hanging, left and right indents; its tab stops, added with a click, moved with a drag and removed by dragging them off the ruler; the page margins; and, with the caret in a table, the table’s columns. A dashed guide runs down the page while you drag, and the file is written when you let go.
A table is drawn from the file’s grid (each column at the width its author gave it, merged cells spanning, sized rows tall), and grips on its borders move the two columns either side of an edge, or set a row’s height, written the way Word writes them.
Release · 14 September 2026
Version 1.11: shapes and pictures by hand, tooltips, a zoom slider
Every shape on a slide can be taken hold of: click to select, drag to move, eight handles to resize, the arrow keys to nudge, Delete to remove. A Format pane sets its fill and outline from the theme’s colours or any colour, and Quick Styles gives it the theme’s six looks.
In Rutba Word a picture anchored at the side floats there and the words wrap round it, with Wrap Text and Position on the Layout tab and corner handles to resize it. Worksheets gained the fill handle. Every ribbon button has a tooltip of the suite’s own, and a zoom slider sits in every document app’s status bar.
Release · 10 September 2026
Version 1.10: pages on screen, layers and designs, columns you can drag
Rutba Word (the app is called that now) lays its document out on pages as you type: paragraphs split at a line, tables at a row, a heading stays with what follows, a manual break heads a fresh page, and the status bar says which page you are on of how many. Headers and footers sit on every page.
Presentation opened two panes on the right: Layers, for the drawing order, hiding and naming of a slide’s shapes, and Designs, to put a slide on another of the deck’s layouts or start a new one from it. In Worksheets, drag a column heading’s edge to size it, or double-click it to fit.
Release · 10 September 2026
Version 1.9: the frame
Every window is drawn by the suite rather than the platform, and the frame was redrawn so the nine apps read as one product and are told apart at a glance: the header wears the app’s colour, the ribbon’s tabs are pills, and the marks, chips and controls share one design in both themes.
Release · 10 September 2026
Version 1.8: Calendar and Contacts
Two more apps on the same shell. Calendar: month, week, day and agenda over a diary on your own disk, with repeats, exceptions and time zones that survive the round trip through .ics. Contacts: one address book behind the suite, from .vcf and CSV, offered as you type an address in Mail.
Mail answers a meeting invitation from the message, and twenty accounts can be set up from one file. 1.8.1 judged the three document engines against files Office itself wrote, and fixed what that found.
Release · 9 September 2026
Version 1.7: beta, said plainly; every real file opened for real
Every release is now published as a beta and the window title says so. This one opened a corpus of real files and fixed what that found. It also brought printing to every window, with a dialog that counts the pages first; page setup written into a workbook; autosave and recovery of unsaved work; and, in 1.7.1, OpenDocument written as well as read.
Mail sets an account up from an address and a password. The servers are found for you.
Release · 8 September 2026
Version 1.6: pictures and shapes on a slide, drawings on a sheet
Presentation can now put a picture from disk onto a slide as a proper media part rather than a placeholder, and Shapes offers fifteen preset geometries written the way PowerPoint writes them: theme fill, darkened line, centred text.
Worksheets paints the drawings a file already carries: shapes, pictures and charts, at the size their author drew them. Connectors are read rather than skipped, braces and brackets are strokes, and rotation turns a shape about its centre. CEILING.MATH and FLOOR.MATH arrived with them.
The fidelity work in this release was measured against Microsoft on a second company’s real files: letter spacing, caps-only faces, Wingdings and Symbol bullets, and wrapped lines mapped back onto their source word by word.
And 1.6.1 fixes something an IT department would have found first: the Windows installer now removes every registered copy before installing, whether it was installed for one user or for all of them, keeping documents and settings. One copy on a machine, which is what an installer is supposed to guarantee.
Release · 8 September 2026
Version 1.5: the ribbons, and a workbook that opens in six seconds
Rutba Word, Worksheets and Presentation each got their real ribbon here (every tab and group, collapsing when the window is narrow) rather than the reduced toolbar they shipped with.
Underneath that: footnotes and endnotes in Rutba Word, character styles and exact line spacing, cover pages and text boxes that survive printing. Worksheets gained IRR, RATE and DATEDIF, text that spills over empty neighbours, and a function list read from the engine’s own catalogue. Presentation draws custom geometries as real paths and renders its thumbnails properly. A workbook that used to take eleven minutes to open now takes six seconds.
599 engine tests, all passing. Still Windows-only for published binaries.
A request · 8 September 2026
If you are using it, we would like to know
There is no telemetry in this suite, which is deliberate and which means we genuinely cannot tell whether anybody is running it. The only signals we have are the ones people choose to send.
So: if it opened your files, tell us. If it mangled one, tell us that instead and we will want the file. Either is more useful than silence, and the second is more useful than the first.
Worth knowing · 8 September 2026
The Windows builds are not signed yet
SmartScreen will warn you on first run, and it is telling you the truth: the publisher is unverified. Check the file against the release page, or build it from source, which takes four commands and no toolchain.
Code signing is a certificate and a process rather than a feature, and it is not done. Until it is, this notice is the alternative to letting people discover it at the moment they are deciding whether to trust us.
Being straight about it
What opening this page tells us
A page about honesty that was vague about its own instrumentation would be an odd thing to publish.
- The launcher asks this address for announcements. Once a day at most, it sends the version and your operating system name and nothing else: no identifier, no cookie, nothing about what you opened. It is how we know a copy was opened somewhere today, which is the only usage figure we have. It is a setting in the launcher, and turning it off stops the request and the announcements together. The update check is the other call, and it is also a switch.
- This is a website, so it has website analytics. Nothing loads until you accept the notice at the foot of the page, and if you decline we count nothing at all. That is the same deal every page here offers.
- The form is the real signal. Because the software reports nothing, the only way we learn that a version works is somebody saying so. That is a genuinely worse instrument than telemetry and we would rather have it than the alternative.
Something urgent or reproducible? The issue tracker is better than this form for anything with a file attached or a stack trace in it: open an issue. This page is for the things that are not quite a bug report.
Download the current version →What it does not send →How to report something useful →