Office 2016 Preview for Windows

A preview is available of Office 2016, the next version of the Office desktop suite for Windows PCs. The preview gives organizations an early opportunity to test the upcoming version with existing macros, add-ins, installation procedures, and other potential migration trouble spots. However, the preview also appears to be less stable than public previews of previous Office versions, as Microsoft tries to collect data earlier from a larger audience.

At upper right is the most prominent new feature for end users: Tell Me, which enables users to search for Office commands using words and phrases. (The feature was previously introduced in the Microsoft-hosted Office Online applications.) Microsoft also plans multifactor authentication support, Outlook performance improvements, and data loss prevention features to detect potentially sensitive data (such as payment card numbers) in documents. More detailed plans will probably be announced at the company’s May 2015 Ignite conference, and a production release will probably arrive in the second half of 2015.