After the public preview goes live few months ago, Microsoft has now officially launched Office 2016 to the masses. The launch earlier this week brings together new version for all the programs within the popular productivity suite including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, Project, Visio, and Access.
Microsoft seems to be focusing a lot on collaboration for the new Office 2016. For example, the company implemented real-time co-authoring which is a feature that already available on Office Online since 2013. However, this feature is only available on Word at this moment while it will be implemented into other Office programs as time goes by.
Users are also now able to share their documents with other users directly from their Office programs through the integrated Share options. For business users, they will receive additional collaborative features such as integrated Skype for Business, Office 365 Groups, and more. The official launch of Office 2016 also marked the official arrival of Sway into the suite which has been referred to by many as a “digital storyteller tool”.
While there might be not much to talked about user interface since there is no major change to Office’s Ribbon UI, there are still several interesting additions as the Tell Me search feature which is designed to help users to find the right command within Office’s vast list of functionalities.
At the same time, there’s also another new feature called Smart Lookout that taps on Bing’s search capabilities in order to provide additional information regarding a highlighted keyword on one’s document. Some of the features from Windows 10 such as Cortana and Windows Hello have also been integrated with Office 2016. Here’s a quick look on some of the main new features that are available on the new productivity suite:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7-Y1Vygo4w
In terms of availability, users are able to obtain the new Office 2016 starting from this week onwards either via one time purchase or Office 365 subscription which starts at RM 21.99 per month for Office 365 Personal and RM 29.99 per month for Office 365 Home. Existing Office 365 subscribers are already able to download the new Office 2016 starting from yesterday while automatic updates will be rolled out next month.
