Hot on the heels of Office 2016 for Mac,
Microsoft today released a preview of Office 2016 for the operating
system that it actually earns money from. You know—Windows.
In fairness, Windows isn't in such desperate need for an updated
Office. Office 2013 is fresher than Office 2011 was, and so it's not
altogether surprising that Office 2016 is to Office 2013 much the same
as what Office 2013 was to Office 2010. This is a minor update with some
small new features and a visual refresh.
The preview is currently aimed at IT professionals and developers,
and as such it requires an active Office 365 subscription. A
consumer-oriented preview should be released later in the year, but it's
pretty clear that Microsoft wants people to subscribe to Office 365,
and the company is going to continue to offer small perks for having a
subscription. Last year's Outlook for Mac update was similarly an Office 365-only benefit.
The install process also seems to be a little janky. Signing in to the beta is done through Microsoft's Connect site,
and in theory running the installation script Should Just Work™, but
it's not always smooth sailing. For reasons that aren't immediately
obvious, Office 2016 cannot coexist with Office 2013. The Preview is
meant to replace 2013. On our test system, however, this was
unsuccessful. 2016 did not install properly, and it instead left broken
remnants of 2013 behind. Removing both and reinstalling 2016 appeared to
work, however.
The preview will keep itself up to date using the same Click To Run
download and deployment system that Office 365-provisioned versions of
Office 2013 also used. Microsoft says that it will be releasing monthly
updates to the preview and that the current version isn't complete. By
default, the updating should be automatic and fairly transparent.
Enlarge/
Why oh why oh why oh why isn't Outlook orange-gold anymore? Also,
Access' colors are broken. Those white bits shouldn't be white.
On starting the apps, one change is immediately obvious. They're a
lot more colorful than before. While the old white scheme (and several
others, including a dark theme for those who find Office 2013 too
bright) is still available, by default each Office app uses the app's
color in its title bar and ribbon area, making the different apps a lot
more distinctive. (Well, except Outlook, which still uses blue. It's not
quite the same blue as Visio or the same blue as Word, but you know,
it's all pretty damn similar, and I wish they'd bring back Outlook's
gold color to distinguish it from its siblings.)
The next thing you'll notice is that some of the apps—Excel, Word,
PowerPoint, Project, and Visio—have a new special entry on their
ribbons: "Tell me what you want to do." Type what you want to do, and
it'll show a sensible list of options. This "Tell Me" feature has been
in the Office Web Apps for about a year now; adding it to desktop apps has been a long time coming. It's less clear why they haven't added this to all the apps.
File
this one under "why didn't they do this in Office 2007?" Though there
used to be add-ons, such as Scout, they weren't as convenient or
built-in.
The "backstage" area used for saving, opening, print previewing, and
similar tasks has also been slightly spruced up. Perhaps most usefully,
the e-mail address for each online location has been added below the
location's name, making it much easier to distinguish between home and
work accounts. The Browse button is also consistently at the top.
Browsing for files to send as attachments should also be simpler, or
even eliminated entirely, as the "add attachment" button in Outlook now
provides quick access to all recently opened Office documents.
Of the apps themselves, Outlook's modifications are probably the ones
that will be most widely appreciated. When the Outlook window is made
particularly small, it changes behavior to work more like a mail client
on a phone or tablet. Instead of the usual three pane view (a list of
folders on the left, a list of e-mails in the middle, and the e-mail
itself on the right), it'll shrink down to a two or one pane view, as
dictated by the size. In its smallest single pane view, clicking an
e-mail will open it in preview, with a back button at the top left to go
back to the list of messages.
Enlarge/
I don't really use Word, but the e-mail address identification of each
account and top Browse button are both marginal improvements.
As another nod to small devices, Outlook can sync fewer mails.
Outlook 2013 defaults to storing one month of mail locally. In 2016,
this can be cut to 1, 3, 7, or 14 days.
Also handy for mobile users: Office apps will now respect orientation
information embedded into photographs. Pictures taken on your phone
will no longer end up on their side or upside down when you stick them
into a Word document.
Outlook has some behind-the-scenes changes too. Long ago, Microsoft
added the ability to use HTTP to communicate between Outlook and
Exchange. This offered the full functionality of Outlook/Exchange's
native MAPI protocol while still being firewall-friendly, and it has
been variously known as HTTP-RPC or "Outlook Anywhere." This protocol
had two layers; MAPI commands were wrapped inside a second protocol,
Windows RPC, and RPC was then wrapped in HTTP. In Exchange 2013 Service
Pack 1, Microsoft added a new option called MAPI-HTTP. This removed that
RPC layer, directly encapsulating MAPI inside HTTP, for a lower
overhead, lighter weight, faster protocol.
Adding attachments is now quicker than ever.
The new protocol is also designed to be more resilient to temporary
network glitches or losses of connectivity, so it should stay connected
better on unreliable networks such as 3G or in-flight Wi-Fi.
MAPI-HTTP is already available in Outlook 2013 Service Pack 1 for
perpetually licensed Office or the February 2014 (or newer) update for
Office 365. Outlook 2016 includes MAPI-HTTP for all customers and, to
improve responsiveness on unreliable networks, it has moved all network
activity to background threads to ensure that network issues can never
interrupt the user interface.
The result is that e-mails should arrive sooner, especially after waking from hibernation.
Excel's data analysis and reporting features continue to be expanded.
Power Query is now a built-in feature rather than an add-on, new
forecasting functions have been added, and the capabilities of new Data
Model-style PivotTables (ones that can incorporate data from multiple
tables) have been expanded to be closer to those of classic (single
table) PivotTables.
Office 2016 should be better at keeping data from falling into the
wrong hands as well. Visio now supports Office's Information Rights
Management DRM-like capabilities, and Word, Excel, and PowerPoint now
support the euphemistically named "Data Loss Protection," previously
found only in Outlook, Exchange, OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint
(and named "Data Loss Prevention" in those products, but perhaps
Microsoft has renamed it). Not a backup tool, as its name might imply,
DLP allows administrators to create policies governing document
authoring and sharing to prevent things like leaks of personally
identifying information.
For example, with DLP an administrator can detect e-mails that appear
to contain social security numbers and subsequently prevent those
e-mails from being sent outside an organization. This won't stop
determined leakers or prevent people from leaving USB drives full of
sensitive information on the train, but it should help against
accidental leaks.
As is so often the case with Office, the new version appears to be
better than the old version, but not so much better that an Office 2013
owner should be compelled to upgrade. It's possible that will change as
we get nearer to the release, but we'd be surprised if anything truly
groundbreaking were added to the mature and capable suite.
Similarly, however, we don't expect Office 2016's release to be the
final version of the bundle. New features will continue to be rolled out
post-launch and incorporated into the monthly updates
