Office 2016 Public Preview Becomes Available

The next generation of Office has been rumored, but not discussed much of late. Microsoft’s main focus has been Office 365, and with a ton of subscribers, it makes sense. During the Ignite 2015 show in Chicago, Microsoft took the wraps off of Office 2016 in a public preview.

Office 2016 had been available as an IT Pro and Developer preview since March, but hadn’t made it beyond that point. Monday marked the next step, and made it available to all Office users everywhere, all in preparations for a Fall 2015 release, which is very exciting to Office fans.

New For IT Pros

The first thing that IT professionals will notice, are the number of updates available for them to try out and implement. Office 2016 includes data loss protection, Outlook Multi-factor authentication, and information rights management. These will keep data secure and keep it within the walls of the business.

Additionally, Office 2016 will give IT professionals better network traffic management, enhanced distribution management, flexible update management options, and simplified activation management. All of these make Office 2016 easier to use, manage, roll out, and use in businesses of any size.

Office 2016 Highlights

For the everyday user, getting access to documents from anywhere will be a huge improvement. Microsoft made it easier to get documents from OneDrive and other cloud platorms. Additionally, collaboration with real-time co-authoring will be available in all Windows Desktop applications, starting with Word.

Smart applications will allow Tell Me to be implemented, making clutter easier to manage. Other major improvements include one-click forecasting, intuitive data connecting and shaping capabilities, easy data modeling and powerful analysis, being able to publish to Microsoft Power aBI preview, and modern charts and graphs.

The Office 2016 preview is available now to join and try out. It still is in beta mode, but if you are willing, it’s worth checking out.