Along with Windows 10, Microsoft is working hard on the next version of Microsoft Office, Office 2016. About two months ago, Microsoft released IT Pro and Developer Preview version of Office 2016, a preview version of Office 2016 for IT Pros and Developers. About two weeks ago, Microsoft announced the release of Office 2016 Public Preview to let enthusiasts try the next major version of Office and take feedback from them.
Office 2016 for Windows
Office 2016 final version will be released in Fall 2015 (last quarter of 2015), according to the official Office blog. The desktop suite of Office 2016 includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, Lync, and Publisher applications.
Office 2016 although looks similar to Office 2013, the user interface has been tweaked to accommodate new features. For those who are curious and those who have been complaining about the absent of a real dark theme in Office 2013, yes, Office 2016 does include a new dark theme.
With Office 2016 applications, you can easily create, edit and save files in the cloud from your Windows desktop. The modern attachments in Outlook allows you easily attach files from your OneDrive account. The new Tell Me search allows you quickly find and launch commands (Office features) by typing what you want to do. The feature is helpful when you want to perform a task but not sure about the location of the feature/option.
There are plenty of exciting features in Office 2016 Preview and many more will come before the general availability of Office software.
Those of you who would like to try out Office 2016 before the general availability can download and install Office 2016 Preview. But remember that you can’t install Office 2016 Preview alongside Office 2013 or Office 2010, meaning you need to uninstall previous version of Office from your PC to be able to install Office 2016 Preview.
In addition to that, official ISO images or full setup files of Office 2016 are not available yet. You need to download a small (~ 5 MB file) click-to-run installer and then run the same in order to download and install Office 2016. The product key required to install Office 2016 Preview can also be found at the download page.
And finally, please note that Office 2016 is a desktop Office suite and different than Office touch for Windows 10. While Office 2016 is successor to Office 2013, the Office for Windows 10, the touch friendly version of Office, doesn’t include all the features of Office 2016.
Download Office 2016 Preview
Anyone who is running Windows 7 or later version of Windows operating system can download and install Office 2016 Preview for free. Visit the following page to download Office 2016 web-setup.
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