Office 2016 is now available to Office 365 subscribers on a plan which includes office. We have been using Office 2016 for a while. Below are some of our favourite new features.

Enhanced Collaboration

Office 2016 is designed for collaboration. Word 2016 now includes co-authoring in which lets you see other users’ changes in real time. Going forward, Microsoft will extend this feature into other office applications.

Skype for Business

Skype for Business is now available from within Office apps meaning you can IM, screen share, video chat and talk from within your documents. Skype for Business also has faster screen sharing and now adds the option to start a real-time co-authoring session from any conversation or meeting.

New Collaboration Features

New features in the form of Office 365 Groups and Office 365 planner. Groups allows individuals to easily create public or private teams. Groups get a shared inbox, calendar, cloud storage for files and a OneNote notebook. Planner provides visual dashboards and email notifications to help teams organise work by creating new plans, organising and assigning tasks, setting due dates and update statuses.

New Look

Office 2016 has new themes, the default is called “Colourful” which shows each application header in its own colour (Blue for Word, Green for Excel, Purple for OneNote etc.) Alternatively, you can switch the Theme to Dark Gray or White which changes the header and styling appropriately. Additionally, the menu headings have been tweaked so they are now in proper case, rather than all capitals as in 2013.

Tell Me

Ever since Microsoft introduced the Ribbon menu in Office 2007, there have been a few features I have struggled to find. “Tell Me” addresses this with a search bar embedded into each application. Simply describe what you are trying to do and office will surface the command or feature for you. Another new feature called “Smart Lookup” brings insights from the web into your document.

Outlook Enhancements

Ever write a proposal, save it and then go into Outlook, click attach and have to go find the document? Well now with Office 2016 the MRU syncs across applications and devices. When you go to attach a file in Outlook, it shows the files you recently worked on.
When attaching a file stored on SharePoint or OneDrive, Outlook automatically sends a link rather than attach the file.

You can take out a free 30 day trial of Office 2016 here