Microsoft Office 2016 is getting a worldwide rollout on September 22 with users able to manually download it for the first few days.
The successor to Office 2013, Office 2016 includes the latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote apps.
Microsoft announced that Office 365 Personal and Home users can begin manually installing Office 2016 apps for Windows from Office.com from September 22 onwards. The new Office 2016 apps will be pushed out via automatic updates beginning October 2015.
Those with volume licensing agreements will be able to download Office 2016 from the Volume Licensing Service Centre starting October 1.
Office 365 ProPlus users will continue to receive the monthly features and security updates labelled “Current Branch”. The next Current Branch for Office 365 ProPlus will be available on 22 September. This update will contain new Office 2016 app updates.
In addition, Redmond also announced a new option for updating Office called Current Branch for Business. The Office Current Branch for Business will offer users “three cumulative feature updates per year,” along with the usual security updates.
The next Current Branch for Business build of Office 2016 containing the same feature set as the September 22 release as well as four additional months of security updates will be released in February 2016.
The software giant noted that Office 2016 for Windows adds support for Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) in Office 365 ProPlus.
Besides IT features, the new Office also adds support for Data Loss Prevention, Multi-factor Authentication and other control capabilities.
The new version of Office for Windows also features support for improved collaborative editing and syncing, new ‘Tell Me’ help assistant which can be found in the Ribbon UI and integration with Power BI.
Microsoft also announced that it will conduct an IT and developer-focused event series called the Microsoft Cloud Roadshow that will see top Microsoft engineers providing two days of technical training related to topics spanning Azure, Office and Windows in 12 cities around the world. Registration for the free-to-attend programme is now open.
Redmond is yet to announce Office 2016 pricing details. The new Office suite runs on Windows 7, 8 and 10 tablets, laptops and PCs.
