Though Cortana might no longer be the center of attraction on Windows 10 PCs, this doesn’t mean that Microsoft is not working on new features for its voice assistant. The latest Windows 10 Insider Preview build 20270 on the Dev channel allows Cortana to find and open files on your PC. You can simply ask it to open a recent file, file by a certain author, or a particular type of document (for eg. PDFs or Word docs).
“You can now use Cortana on your PCs to translate their thoughts into direct actions to open and find files and save time spent navigating to apps/ folders to locate and open files,” reads the official blog post. Microsoft serves a few examples for Cortana’s new file skill, which you can check out right here:
- Parts of file names (Example: “Hey Cortana, opening marketing deck.”)
- Author names (Example: “Hey Cortana, open budget Excel from Anthony”)
- Find a document you have been editing (Example: “Hey Cortana, find my recent files”)
- Find a document of a particular type (Example: “Cortana, find my recent pdfs”)
This feature could be a boon for Enterprise users. Microsoft says that once you log in to your Windows 10 PC using corporate credentials, you can even search for and open the files saved on OneDrive and SharePoint. Cortana’s file search feature is just available to English-speaking users in the US.
The company may add support for even more languages before rolling out the feature globally with the next major Windows 10 update. There’s a number of bug fixes and improvements, including a split touch keyboard, a new ‘Advanced View’ checkbox in Optimize Drives, and more, in tow as well. You can check these out in the official blog post.
