WinFuture is reporting that Office 2016 for Windows will be officially released on 22 September 2015, quoting a screen shot from an internal Microsoft site.
Source: Microsoft (allegedly) via WinFuture.
An interesting bit of news, if true, but it raises some questions.
- Does the date matter?
- Does Office 2016 for Windows matter much at all?
Release Date doesn’t matter
Anyone with an Office 365 rental/subscription can get Office 2016 for Windows right now. It’s called a ‘Preview’ version but it all but complete.
The release date is when the ‘final’ software is pushed out to the preview users. That software probably won’t be much different to what many people are using now.
Around the release date, we can hope that Microsoft will publish more documentation about Office 2016 for Windows.
But it’s mostly a marketing event. There’ll be usual hoopla and overstatements that regular Office users will have heard many times before.
Does Office 2016 for Windows matter at all?
Even Microsoft continues to push the ridiculous line that the most popular change in Office 2016 for Windows is a ‘new’ dark color scheme for the ribbon. Truly …
There are some interesting changes but not enough to justify anyone who is paying ‘one off’ for Office. Some changes are surprising in a ‘you mean that wasn’t already fixed?’ kind of way.
‘Tell me what you want to do’ is a welcome improvement to the help system.
The new range of Excel charts is very welcome and there’s updates to PowerQuery and PowerView that heavy data crunchers will love.
Outlook gets some ‘under the hood’ changes to the way it connects to Exchange Server and a more direct way to send email attachments.
The sad truth is that Office 2016 for Windows has some changes and improvements but, overall, not enough to get very excited about.
