Updated: July 15, 2020 (June 15, 2015)

Office 2016 on Roadmap

As managing vice president, Rob Helm covers Microsoft collaboration and content management. His 25-plus years of experience analyzing Microsoft’s technology... more

[Oct. 5, 2015 note: A more recent version of this report can be found at www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/research/secured/2015/10/office-2016-comes-windows-desktops.]

A preview of the Office 2016 suites for Windows enables organizations to test some planned new capabilities with end users and check backward compatibility with macros and other extensions. Office 2016 is the next version of the Office suite for Windows PCs and will probably ship for production use in the second half of 2015. The latest preview is stable enough and delivers enough new capabilities to merit testing with pilot users. However, some planned capabilities, such as new Excel chart types, are still not available in the preview.

(For a timeline of current and future versions of the Office suite for Windows, see the illustration “Office Roadmap Overview“.)

Preview of Traditional Desktop Suites

The Office suites for Windows are Microsoft’s most widely used client applications for business. They enable document editing, data access and manipulation, e-mail, presentations, and collaboration on Windows PCs. The most important suites for large organizations are Office Professional Plus, Office Standard, and the Office 365 ProPlus Per-User subscription suite. These suites include combinations of the following applications:

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