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Microsoft Office 2016 was announced on September 22, 2015 for both macOS and Windows. Satya Nadella, chief executive officer at Microsoft, explained, “The way people work has changed dramatically, and that’s why Microsoft is focused on reinventing productivity and business processes for the mobile-first, cloud-first world. These latest innovations take another big step forward in transforming Office from a familiar set of individual productivity apps to a connected set of apps and services designed for modern working, collaboration and teamwork.”

On January 18, 2018 a major update to Office 2016 was announced. It includes new features, security updates, and non-security updates. Here are several highlights:

Edit Word files with others in real time
Thumbnails are visible in a shared Word file’s upper-right corner showing who else is working on the document with you. Flag icons indicate where others are working, and you can view changes as they type. For more information on how to simultaneously edit a document with other authors, follow these directions.

Changes are saved automatically
Documents, worksheets, and presentations stored in the cloud are now automatically saved, and when you share a file you can see others’ updates in seconds. Need to revert to an earlier version? Check the version history for a list of changes plus access to earlier versions. Learn more.

Excel
Collaboration on Excel documents is also available with shared files stored in the cloud. You can see others’ updates in seconds, and you have the ability to review the version history and revert to any previous version. Excel offers new chart styles (such as funnel, sunburst, and histogram) to transform your data into professional visualizations. Use the new Map chart type to transform geographic data into a map with just a few steps. New logical functions, IFS and SWITCH, are available. New PivotTables are a great way to summarize, analyze, explore, and present your data. Multi-threaded calculation formulas update more quickly when values are changed using Excel’s multiple processing threads.

PowerPoint
New features include a
utosave, real-time collaboration, the ability to review version history, and reverting to previous versions. You can tell which Slides were modified by others while you were away. A new feature, QuickStarter, helps you build an outline. You can now use your mouse as a laser pointer to draw attention to certain parts of your slide during a presentation.

Outlook
Using your mobile device, y
ou can now save time organizing your inbox by swiping left with two fingers across to archive a message, or swipe right to delete it.

Please Note: Microsoft’s September 12, 2017 security update for Office for Mac 2011 noted that Office 2011 will no longer be updated, and encouraged Office 2011 users to upgrade to Office 2016. Click here to read our post about this.