The next big release of Office is coming in the next few weeks, Office 2016 will start rolling out on September 2016. This new version Office is pretty big with new features such as real time editing like Google Docs does as well as OneDrive attachments in Outlook. Also this version is built for Windows 10 and works like it as well with upgrade cycles and plans which match Windows 10 Home and Pro. Starting September 22nd, Microsoft will make Office 2016 “broadly available” – according to Julie White, Office 365 technical product management. Office 365 Home subscribers will be able to update their version of Office to the latest version, but in October the applications will be manually updated and so will the security patches.

What does Office 2016 bring that’s new?

It’s very apparent that since the launch of Windows 10, Microsoft has taken a new approach to effectively everything that they do as the company is heavily focusing on putting the cloud and using mobile devices, also in Office 2016 more than one user will be able to access one document and edit it in real time, using OneDrive.

One new feature is called Tell Me – it’s a brand new search tool which will be present in Word, Excel and PowerPoint for finding certain features in Office. Typing “add picture” or “insert table” will instruct it to do it for you.

Also the software suite looks a bit cleaner with a better design which goes with Windows 10, but the ribbon is still there.

Pricing

Office 2016 doesn’t have a confirmed price from Microsoft as of yet, but Office Home and Student 2013 is £94.99 on Amazon – so it may be around that price.

Also if you have an active Office 365 subscription, you get immediate access to Office 2016.