At the Microsoft Ignite 2015\r\nconference, held in early May, the company showcased its latest iteration of Microsoft\r\nOffice. You can download and try the Office2016 Preview for yourself if you are curious, or you can just\r\nflip through the screenshots in this image gallery.
This image shows Satya Nadella explaining Microsoft’s\r\ncommitment to providing the tools for a modern collaborative workforce.
It has the same Ribbon interface that you either\r\nhate or love.
The options and configuration settings found under\r\nthe File tab are also very similar to Office 2013.
The most important change for Office 2016,\r\naccording to Microsoft, are the enhanced collaboration features. So, while you\r\ncould share documents in Office 2013, users of Office 2016 will be able to do\r\nmuch more. However, so far in this gallery, it is hard to tell how.
I could show you an image of the Ribbon associated\r\nwith each Tab, but there’s very little difference between 2013 and 2016 in\r\nthis regard.
This is the Ribbon found under the Insert tab.
This is a blank workbook in Excel 2016. Again, it\r\nlooks like Excel 2013.
No matter which application you are using,\r\ncollaboration is always a click or two away.
And collaboration goes hand-in-hand with One Drive\r\nfor Business and cloud services.
This is the Ribbon you see under the Formulas tab\r\nin Excel 2016.
This is a screenshot of the commonly available\r\ntemplates found in the opening screen of the often forgotten database application: Access.
It’s a shame that Access is so often underused, because it can be a powerful tool when a problem requires a database rather\r\nthan an unwieldy spreadsheet forced to act like a database.
OneNote could be a major application in a user’s\r\nproductivity.
And, of course, there’s the inevitable PowerPoint\r\npresentation creating application. It would be nice to see a few more (better)\r\ntemplates available, but these appear to be all holdovers from 2013.
Slide presentations don’t strike me as collaborative,\r\nbut I suppose once a collaborative project is complete, the information and the\r\ndecisions that result from it must be disseminated.
Sharing your PowerPoint presentations on an internal\r\ncloud storage server might save someone from having to attend a meeting or two,\r\nwhich is generally a good thing.
Publisher is still around if you need to produce a\r\nwell-laid out physical copy.
There are no new templates in Publisher either,\r\nwhich is disappointing.
Based on a cursory set of screenshots, Microsoft\r\nOffice 2016 is similar to Office 2013 and very familiar to users and\r\nsubscribers of Office 365. What differences there are, are subtle and generally\r\noperate behind the scenes. Microsoft’s plan to seamlessly integrate cloud\r\nservices into Office 2016 seems to be working, at least from the perspective of\r\nthe user interface.
This photo is of Julia White. She’s a General\r\nManager at Microsoft and is responsible for product management for Office,\r\nSharePoint, Exchange, and Office 365.
If you really want to know how Office 2016 is going\r\nto work and what changes and features your users will be seeing in the next\r\nyear or so, I encourage you to watch her presentations at MicrosoftIgnite 2015.
Mark W. Kaelin has been writing and editing stories about the information technology industry, software, hardware, gaming, finance, accounting, and technology geekdom for more than 30 years.
