It’s been almost five years now since Microsoft have updated their Office suite, but now it’s finally here. The Microsoft Office 2016!
At the Convergence 2015 event in Atlanta, Microsoft announced an update on their office, it is said it will continue to supply the Office software across iOS, Android systems and, obviously, Windows.
For several months, it is said that the Office 2016 has been in testing and fortunately for some, it is now available for a business technical preview. However you will need to sign up for a business profile on Microsoft Connect to gain access.
Features Of The New Office 2016
Here are some enhancements and new features in the new Office 2016 for the business technical previews:
- Data Loss Protection – While it has been around for Exchange, Outlook, OneDrive for Business and Sharepoint, this feature now comes with Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
- Theme – A new dark theme for those who wants a change with their traditional look of Microsoft Office apps.
- Foreground Network Calls – This feature has been eliminated to ensure that Outlook will remain responsive on unreliable networks.
- Email Delivery Performance – To cut short the amount of time in downloading messages, displaying message list and showing new email after you just resumed activity from hibernation.
- Search – Enhanced for more usability, reliability and performance of Outlook search. Also, the FAST-based search engine is now integrated in Exchange.
- Accessibility – More keyboard accessibility like PivotTables and Slicers for your high-value Excel features. A number of readability issues in Outlook also have been modified and fixed.
- Information Rights Management – IRM protection is now extended to Visio files to enable both online and offline protection of Visio diagrams.
About macros and add-ins however, Microsoft stated that there will be no changes in the current release.
“It’s rare that “no changes” is a something we’d want to highlight, but we think it’s worth celebrating the consistency in the programming model across releases. We understand how important this is and we’re committed to a high level of compatibility as we continue to innovate”
Kirk Koenigsbauer, Corporate Vice President for the Office 365 Client Apps and Services team
Testing And Releasing
Unfortunately the Office 2016 isn’t quite here yet, as it is only available for business technical preview and you can sign up from their official site. It is said that the Office 2016 for Windows will be launching in the second half of 2015, while Mac has planned to be readily available this summer. Packaging and pricing will however be revealed later just before the release.
