Would you like a peek at the next version of Microsoft Office for Windows? Well you can, if you’re willing to take a risk and play by Microsoft’s rules.
Office 2016 (also called Office 365 Desktop) Technical Preview is now available for download. Details on how to do that are below.
Say Nothing
To qualify you have to agree to a ‘Non-Disclosure Agreement’ (NDA) which means you won’t say anything publically about Office 2016 until Microsoft says that’s OK. IT Professionals and journalists are familiar with NDA’s because they are regularly used for pre-release software. NDA’s are serious and Microsoft drops from a great height on NDA transgressors.
Keep it separate
This is a very early Technical Preview (TP), far from a public preview release, let alone final software.
There will be bugs, crashes even the possibility of lost data in documents. Not all features will be there, some may change or be dropped before the public release. Installation and upgrades are not the smooth and easy experience that you’re used to.
Don’t use the Technical Preview on any important or production computer. TP’s are better and safer on a virtual machine, most likely Hyper/V or VMWare Workstation. Virtual machines let you run different copies of Office on the one computer without any conflicts.
Windows 8.1 for Microsoft Office users has a whole chapter on Hyper/V intended for both novices and more advanced virtual machine users. It takes you step-by-step through setting up a virtual machine with Windows and Office.
An Office 365 account is required.
We’ve already mentioned some of the changes in Office 2016 that have been disclosed. One that’s come to light is automatic image rotation which means someone at Microsoft may have finally listened.
How to get Office 2016 Technical Preview
- Go to Microsoft Connect and sign in, preferably with the same Microsoft account that you use with Office 365.
- Look for ‘Office Consumer Technical Preview’ on the list and click ‘Join’
- ‘Sign’ the non-disclosure agreement. This isn’t your normal ‘terms and conditions’ stuff that we all ignore and just click OK. So read and understand what you’re getting into.
- You’ll be asked for the email address that you received the invitation to join the program. Putting in your own email address (or any address) seems to satisfy.
- Download the various parts and documents.
