Office 2016 Overview

Microsoft Office 2016

Microsoft Office is a lot more than Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook, although that’s what most people think of first. There’s now a whole range of options, from the Office 365 cloud services to the mobile apps for iOS and Android.

This latest release Office 2016 is all about making it easier to use. It has a new look and fresh tools to help you find features. It makes collaborating and sharing documents and information much easier and gives businesses more options for securing information. It also gives Excel a real update for the first time in years.

Multiple Purchase Options

Microsoft’s commitment to adding more features regularly underlines that fact that the best way for many people to get Office is as a subscription service rather than software you pay for once (although that option is still there). There are still multiple ways to get Office. The Office 365 subscriptions for businesses include the Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive for Business and Skype for Business services as well as the Office software.

Office 365 Business includes the Windows or Mac versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, and Publisher, and each person can put them on up to five PCs or Macs. Office 365 ProPlus adds Access. As usual, Visio and Project get new versions at the same time as Office, but you have to buy them separately.

Easier to Use

When software is as powerful, as mature and as complex as Office is on Windows, making it easier to use can be as important as adding more features. That’s the trade-off Microsoft has been making with Office since the ribbon interface was first introduced. The Tell Me feature is a big help here, it makes it easy to find the Rules editor in Outlook.

New Features

There are new features in Office 2016 and many, many improvements to existing features. The sharing and co-authoring tools continue to become more powerful and easier to use. Excel finally gets new chart types, and the data analysis tools like maps are built in, and available in all versions, instead of being expensive and complicated extras.

Call as for advice and information about Office 2016 and your options to upgrade.

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