Screenshots: Microsoft Office 2016 Preview

Word 2016

Let's start with Word.

As you can see, it looks like Word 2013.

Image: Mark Kaelin

Word Ribbon interface

It has the same Ribbon interface that you either hate or love.

Image: Mark Kaelin

Options and configuration settings

The options and configuration settings found under the File tab are also very similar to Office 2013.

Image: Mark Kaelin

Enhanced collaboration features

The most important change for Office 2016, according to Microsoft, are the enhanced collaboration features. So, while you could share documents in Office 2013, users of Office 2016 will be able to do much more. However, so far in this gallery, it is hard to tell how.

Image: Mark Kaelin

Office 365

Of course, many of us will be getting our Microsoft productivity suite in the form of Office 365 no matter which year is tacked on to the end of the standalone version.

Image: Mark Kaelin

Ribbon associated with Tabs

I could show you an image of the Ribbon associated with each Tab, but there's very little difference between 2013 and 2016 in this regard.

Image: Mark Kaelin

Ribbon under the Insert tab

This is the Ribbon found under the Insert tab.

Image: Mark Kaelin

Excel 2016

This is a blank workbook in Excel 2016. Again, it looks like Excel 2013.

Image: Mark Kaelin

Easy collaboration

No matter which application you are using, collaboration is always a click or two away.

Image: Mark Kaelin

One Drive for Business

And collaboration goes hand-in-hand with One Drive for Business and cloud services.

Image: Mark Kaelin

Ribbon under the Formulas tab

This is the Ribbon you see under the Formulas tab in Excel 2016.

Image: Mark Kaelin

Access 2016

This is a screenshot of the commonly available templates found in the opening screen of the often forgotten database application: Access.

Image: Mark Kaelin

Power of 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 than an unwieldy spreadsheet forced to act like a database.

Image: Mark Kaelin

​OneNote 2016

OneNote could be a major application in a user's productivity.

Image: Mark Kaelin

PowerPoint 2016

And, of course, there's the inevitable PowerPoint presentation creating application. It would be nice to see a few more (better) templates available, but these appear to be all holdovers from 2013.

Image: Mark Kaelin

Slide presentations

Slide presentations don't strike me as collaborative, but I suppose once a collaborative project is complete, the information and the decisions that result from it must be disseminated.

Image: Mark Kaelin

Sharing PowerPoint presentations

Sharing your PowerPoint presentations on an internal cloud storage server might save someone from having to attend a meeting or two, which is generally a good thing.

Image: Mark Kaelin

Publisher 2016

Publisher is still around if you need to produce a well-laid out physical copy.

Image: Mark Kaelin

No new Publisher templates

There are no new templates in Publisher either, which is disappointing.

Image: Mark Kaelin

Microsoft Office 2016 is familiar

Based on a cursory set of screenshots, Microsoft Office 2016 is similar to Office 2013 and very familiar to users and subscribers of Office 365. What differences there are, are subtle and generally operate behind the scenes. Microsoft's plan to seamlessly integrate cloud services into Office 2016 seems to be working, at least from the perspective of the user interface.

This photo is of Julia White. She's a General Manager at Microsoft and is responsible for product management for Office, SharePoint, Exchange, and Office 365.

If you really want to know how Office 2016 is going to work and what changes and features your users will be seeing in the next year or so, I encourage you to watch her presentations at MicrosoftIgnite 2015.

Image: Microsoft News