Microsoft has finally started the global rollout of its Office 2016 productivity suite; the company announced on Tuesday. Users with an existing Office 365 subscription are entitled to download the update for free, while those without one can also purchase a subscription. A one-time purchase for both Mac and Windows will cost users $149 for the Office Home & Student 2016, Office Home & Business 2016 will cost $299, and finally Office Professional 2016 will be available for $399.
Office 2016 for both Mac and PC can now be purchased via Microsoft’s online store along with physical stores starting now. Though, ZDNet reports that company has not responded whether it’ll be available for sale through other retail outlets.
The new Office Home & Student 2016 edition includes updated version of Word, PowerPoint, OneNote. The Office Home & Business 2016 includes the added the functionality of Outlook 2016 along with Word, PowerPoint and OneNote, while Professional version includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook along with Publisher and Access as well.
https://youtu.be/0x3iA746WBE
The new Office 2016 is essentially aimed at providing collaborative features, which help a number of users to work on the same project together. For instance, ‘Word’ now gets real-time coauthoring, which allows users to collaborate on the same document. In the coming future, the company also plans to expand this functionality to other applications as well. Other notable features in the new Office 2016 include a ‘Tell Me’ box, which allows users to easily look-up for any in-app function.
It is worth pointing out that Microsoft will be pushing frequent updates to this new version of Office only for those who’ve subscribed for Office 365. However, users who opt for a standalone copy of Office 2016 will be receiving constant updates though not as frequently as the users who go via Office 365 Personal, Home, and Business subscriptions.
In the future, Microsoft is expected to add more functionality to its latest Office suite with support for real-time coauthoring in PowerPoint, along with the company’s new GigJam service which allows users to work together across multiple applications and services. The company also announced that the testing for GigJam has begun in private beta, which will be made available in Office 365 sometime next year.
