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Office 2016 Preview
At the Microsoft Ignite 2015 conference, held in early May, the company showcased its latest iteration of Microsoft Office. You can download and try the Office2016 Preview for yourself if you are curious, or you can just flip through the screenshots in this image gallery.
This image shows Satya Nadella explaining Microsoft's commitment to providing the tools for a modern collaborative workforce.
Image: Microsoft News
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Word 2016
Let's start with Word.
As you can see, it looks like Word 2013.
Image: Mark Kaelin
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Word Ribbon interface
It has the same Ribbon interface that you either hate or love.
Image: Mark Kaelin
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Options and configuration settings
The options and configuration settings found under the File tab are also very similar to Office 2013.
Image: Mark Kaelin
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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
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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
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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
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Ribbon under the Insert tab
This is the Ribbon found under the Insert tab.
Image: Mark Kaelin
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Excel 2016
This is a blank workbook in Excel 2016. Again, it looks like Excel 2013.
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Easy collaboration
No matter which application you are using, collaboration is always a click or two away.
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One Drive for Business
And collaboration goes hand-in-hand with One Drive for Business and cloud services.
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Ribbon under the Formulas tab
This is the Ribbon you see under the Formulas tab in Excel 2016.
Image: Mark Kaelin
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Access 2016
This is a screenshot of the commonly available templates found in the opening screen of the often forgotten database application: Access.
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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.
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OneNote 2016
OneNote could be a major application in a user's productivity.
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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
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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.
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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
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Publisher 2016
Publisher is still around if you need to produce a well-laid out physical copy.
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No new Publisher templates
There are no new templates in Publisher either, which is disappointing.
Image: Mark Kaelin
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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
Office 2016 Preview
At the Microsoft Ignite 2015 conference, held in early May, the company showcased its latest iteration of Microsoft Office. You can download and try the Office2016 Preview for yourself if you are curious, or you can just flip through the screenshots in this image gallery.
This image shows Satya Nadella explaining Microsoft's commitment to providing the tools for a modern collaborative workforce.
Image: Microsoft News
By Mark Kaelin
Mark W. Kaelin has been writing and editing stories about the IT industry, gadgets, finance, accounting, and tech-life for more than 25 years. Most recently, he has been a regular contributor to BreakingModern.com, aNewDomain.net, and TechRepublic.