Office 2016 is now officially a week off, so it’s time to take stock. The new office suite from Microsoft is mainly about online collaboration, but there are still quite a few new features added in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. This is our review of Office 2016 for Windows.
At first glance Office 2016 only a minor upgrade from the previous version, which has now been three years is old. But it’s mostly the way you can now work with others that makes it substantially different office suite than its predecessor. Office 2016 focused largely namely, real-time collaboration, and the spindle therein Office 365.
Pleasant cooperate
The biggest change in Office is working with others. Microsoft’s software has always had a handy feature to easily share documents with others and see the revisions of others, but in recent years this position has largely been shifted to other online suites like Google Docs. Microsoft has therefore paid great attention to working together in a single document.
This was already possible in the online version of the word processor, but can now also in the desktop software that offers infinitely more options. At this moment together work added only in Word, PowerPoint and OneNote, but in the end it must also be possible to work in Excel.
Share
The central hub of the collaboration is the ‘share-menu
The central hub of the working process together the’ Share ‘menu, which recall is via a distinctive button at the top of a document. From the share menu, it is possible to share a document with other users. This could include working with someone, but someone just give access to view the document
Moreover, that did not work perfectly with us -. We have multiple machines, systems, and office accounts tried a document to share with each other, but no one was invited in through the mail. Fortunately, there is also the option to copy a link to a document to the Clipboard, and just send it via email or IM.
For non-office holders
The beauty of the cooperative function is that not everyone needs to have an Office suite. If this person does not, you can using the shared link also use the free browser version of Word or PowerPoint. Which has a lot less functionality on board, but for the majority of the work in Office you which functions not necessary
The cooperation itself is working in a document very well:. Text appears directly, in real time in picture. Delays are rare, although it can happen that “the connection will stop ‘and you suddenly have to restart the program. That happened to us several times, although we can not say what was the cause of it.
Chat
When you use Office 365 Pro, it is also possible to chat with your colleagues in the app. That is done from the Share menu, where you can simply click on the name of an employee and you can make a call via Skype For Business. And if that does not work you can always use the Notes feature in Word itself that allows you to take notes.
That collaboration is incidentally all depends on your Internet speed, because if it is not properly quickly what goes wrong with the sync and before you know it you’re totally confused.
Small external changes
In appearance has changed little, but Office fits better with Windows 10
In appearance Office has not changed very much, and keep the classic colors in the package still present. That Microsoft is trying to keep the apps in line with the well-known Metro UI which came forward in Windows 8, but Office 2016 is also clearly focused on Windows 10. The bars at the top became thicker, and the icons are larger so they are easier to use on touch screens.
of the older Office 2013 users will not mind standing watch on the new package. Generally, most UI elements have remained the same.
Other Options
The menu of Office 2016 looks almost the same as in previous versions, but there are a few added features that are very focused on safety. Take the ability to encrypt documents and secure them with a password, or hanging a digital signature to sign it.
The Info menu is also much more info about the document such as how long it has been for and whom the changes have done.
About, is also the place where you can share documents with other users, and where of course you can find all options like printing a document or exporting to PDF.
New Outlook features
Most of the new features are found mainly in the document software, but also Outlook email app gets an update. That update is not large and is hardly noticeable, and the rest of the application remains largely the same. Sometimes enjoyable.
Clutter
However, there is the list of Inbox and Sent Items another option, ‘Clutter’. That’s an extra folder that some middle ground between the spam folder and your inbox. Clutter is trying to make managing your inbox smarter, a bit like the way Google that ‘Inbox’ also trying to do.
Clutter “learns” from your email behavior, while watching what type of emails you immediately throw away, or just open directly. Also comes standard news, such as newsletters or press releases earlier in the Clutter Box rightly so your inbox remains a bit cleaner. Before that Outlook must learn from your e-mail behavior, so that again is one thing that Microsoft wants you to know …
There are still quite a few small improvements in Outlook 2016, which you can save much time. Think about adding to the smarter of annexes, which can now be ‘latest “or can be linked from or OneDrive SharePoint to an email.
Smart search
In all programs in Office 2016 is a smart search function, which is based on Microsoft’s own Bing search engine. The feature is called ‘Tell Me “(” Tell me “), and should serve as an integrated smart assistant. The idea is that in this way you can immediately learn how a function works, and that’s not a luxury in the impenetrable forest of options that Word and Excel are rich.
Do you know for example how an envelope must make, then you can go rooting through the many menus and submenus – or you can just ‘envelope’ type into the search bar. Then all options immediately come forward with the top of the simple option to create an envelope immediately.
Nou a search function is not very revolutionary, and the fact that Tell Me works well we find, very spoiled, something we expected though. However, there is still a few additional features in search engine.
Contextual search
There is the ‘Smart Lookup “which in fact is nothing but a Bing search. Which can be accessed from ‘Tell me’ menu, but also right when you select a word. You can then look up what that means, though it is not possible to do that through Google. And let’s face it, Bing is it still inferior to Google.
But try Bing ‘contextual search, “so not only search for the search term but also for the words in the rest of the document.
There is also the option to search a request assistance, so you get to ‘envelope’ in a separate window pops up where you will learn about how you can use the envelope menu. That’s the same menu you can access by pressing F1, and so is not entirely new to Windows or Office -. But interesting nonetheless
Conclusion
Where Office 2013 still focused primarily storage in the cloud, Office 2016 lifts the cloud work to a higher level. The office suite is running largely to collaborate online, which now from the software itself can not only through the browser. The creation of such collaboration is not always easy, but the work itself goes quickly and without delays.
The question is for whom the new Office is suitable for many standard word processing features are also available in the mobile version also available for Windows (look in the store Word Touch), or via the browser – you have to ask yourself whether you really want to pay for it. But for power users is Office 2016 as indispensable as before, with an impressive number of features that you will not find anywhere else. In addition, a number of useful enhancements to as the ‘smart inbox “Clutter in Outlook, and a search function that makes many menus easily searchable.
Office 2016 is a small but solid improvement in what is still the best office suite in the world.
| Pack |
Price |
| Office 2016 release |
€ 149, – |
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| Office 365 Home |
€ 10, – per month |
| 5 desktop and tablet 5 and 5 telephone systems |
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| Office 365 Personal |
€ 7, – per month |
| one desktop and one tablet and one phone installation |
| |
|
| Office 365 Students |
Free |
| 1 installation |
|
| |
|
| Office 365 Business |
€ 8.80 per user per month |
| |
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| 365 Business Office Premium |
€ 10.50 per user per month |
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Published: 28/09/15 05:45 last update: 09/28/15 11:59 