Next Tuesday will see the official release of Office 2016 for Windows. It’s more of a marketing landmark than a genuine release since the preview software has been available to almost anyone for months.
The Office 2016 for Windows release events might be sub-titled ‘Much ado about nothing’The Office 2016 for Windows release events might be sub-titled ‘Much ado about nothing’ (or at least ‘about little’). The changes in the new software are evolutionary and there’s not much that will make a big difference to us average Office users.
The new Excel charts are welcome but also about as interesting as it gets.
‘Tell Me’ is a good improvement to Office help. Beware the carefully rehearsed demos with search phrases carefully chosen to show Tell Me at its best. When you stray from the expected narrow wordings then Tell Me can’t cope. For example, in Excel 2016 previews asking how to ‘Move Column’ yields no useful results.
The ability to act on a command direct from the Tell Me list is great in the short term. But it doesn’t help us learn where the command is on the ribbon. Some people will just return to Tell Me to find the same command over and over again. A ‘Show me where’ option would have been good.
Microsoft makes a lot about ‘real time’ document collaboration in Word 2016, trying it’s best to fool people into thinking document collaboration is something new. It’s not. The last few versions of Office have let multiple people edit the same document at the same time. With Office 2016/Win you can see other edits in finer detail, rather than having paragraphs locked out because someone else is editing.
Two ‘Office 2016’
We’ll all have to get used to talking about ‘Office 2016 for Windows’ since there’s now two ‘Office 2016’ – either the Windows or Mac version.
Office-Watch.com is going to use the terms Office 2016/Win and Office 2016/Mac – unless someone has a better idea.
Update:
Jan S suggests “How about WOffice 2016 and MOffice 2016? ” – which are great when spoken aloud.
