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Microsoft Announces Office 2016 and Office For Windows 10 Coming Later This Year

Posted by samzenpus on from the coming-soon dept.

An anonymous reader writes At its Windows 10 event yesterday, Microsoft unveiled the touch-optimized version of Office. Today, the company offered more details about that version, and then snuck in another announcement: the next desktop version is under development, it is called Office 2016, and it will be generally available "in the second half of 2015." Office for Windows 10 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook), meanwhile, is also slated to arrive later this year, though Microsoft has shared more about it and plans to offer a preview in the coming weeks. These new Office apps will be pre-installed (they will be free) on smartphones and small tablets running Windows 10. They will also be available to download from the Windows Store for other devices.

23 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. No! by MagickalMyst · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I don't want to buy a new computer!

    --
    Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
    1. Re:No! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Windows 10 is Windows 8.1 with a Windows 7 Start Menu - it really isn't a big change, so think of it as SP3 (Windows 8.1 was SP1 for Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 Update was SP2). It will be a free upgrade for Windows 8 users, and - given that MS is finally taking its tablet market seriously - is likely to have efficiency improvements rather than bloat.

      I'm still surprised how fast Windows 8.1 works on my low end HP Stream tablet - this isn't the company that brought you Vista any more.

      (Of course, few'll take the Metro interface seriously until there is a method to sideload Metro apps on non-developer machines without shelling out $3000+ for a volume pack of licenses - most economic activity does not take place in enterprise or hobbyist markets, but among small businesses, and MS used to understand this.)

    2. Re: No! by jbolden · · Score: 3, Funny

      Lots of their customers use SharePoint which is a rather large innovation as compared with what your talking about in terms of Office Suites in areas like collaboration. SharePoint is very much like what CVS or GIT provide programmers but even richer.

      Things haven't stayed the same, but where they changed the most is in areas that their bottom rung of users don't notice. By linking more tightly with SharePoint they can easily show how far ahead Office is of the other office suites.

    3. Re: No! by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 4, Insightful

      People always go on about how wonderful LibreOffice (or whatever they're calling it these days) and Google Docs are. They're not. They can do the basics but they can't take the semi-pro market like Office can.

      THIS! I once tried installing LibreOffice on my computer, and my computer self destructed! Melted the damn thing, Before that it inserted "fuck " instead of "and", in every letter I typed. the spreadsheet couldn't add 2+2, then my dog ran away, my wife left me, the lower 40 got accidenatlly planted in Monsanto corn and they sued me, and my milch cows went dry.

      Actually, it has been a few years since I used Microsoft Office.

      Have they solved the cross platform compatibility problems yet? Office isn't even compatible with iteself. Used to spend a lot of time repariing documents and PowerPoints on the Mac that got balled up when coming from the PC side.

      If you are trading files between MS, MAC, and Linux systems, how does Microsoft Office do?

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    4. Re: No! by Penguinisto · · Score: 2

      Not to drift too off-topic, but I noticed something WRT Sharepoint...

      In most companies that I've seen, Sharepoint runs the company site that has all the HR and official corporate stuff (schedules, forms, etc), but that's it. Usually only one or two departments take their chunk of it even halfway seriously, while the rest put up some perfunctory content (if they even bother) and ignore it. Individual user content? Unless it's a multinational corp, you won't really see any of that, if at all.

      Meanwhile, in the departments where the developers/sysadmins/engineers live, Confluence and JIRA dominate for content and ticketing, respectively (and before that, basic Wiki pages like TWiki held all the tribal knowledge). Sales departments usually turn to Salesforce, SAP, or similar.

      I'm really not sure if any company uses it any differently outside of Microsoft itself. I think the only reason any organization bothered with Sharepoint in the first place is because the beancounters think it's "free" (nevermind the OS licensing and infrastructure requirements).

      That said, Sharepoint has document versioning, sure... but that's about where the similarities to Git or Subversion end (CVS? Okay maybe, but only because CVS is outdated simplistic crap compared to SVN or Git.)

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    5. Re: No! by Rob+Y. · · Score: 3, Insightful

      LibreOffice has the potential to be fully cross-platform, and it would seem to me to be to Apple's benefit to make it seriously good. The reason iPhones and iPads were able to take off is that the web (and web standards) made it possible to do most of what you do with a computer without that computer having to run Windows. Macs have benefited from that - as well as the fact that the success of the iThings has accelerated the process.

      A successful LibreOffice would be the next step toward making the second biggest use of computers cross-platform. In fact, Microsoft's last best hope for success in mobile lies in the fact that Windows tablets can be bundled with MSOffice. Yes, they're coming out with iOS and Android versions - but that's just a desparation move. The minute Windows mobile devices gain some traction (or the iOS/Android versions outlive their usefulness in some other way), the non-Windows versions will become second-class. But if Libre got really good - and became available (and successful) on mobiles - iOS devices would continue to be able to compete on the merits. You'd think Apple would want to help that happen. Are they still afraid of losing the official MSOffice for the Mac? Google seems to have a difference of opinion about where document processing should happen. Much as a full-featured office suite would make Android laptops a viable - and even attractive - alternative, that doesn't seem to be their priority (though their use of Open Document formats in their online apps is helpful).

      Windows will continue to dominate in the business world. There's just way too much inertia there in terms of third-party apps. But mobile (and, yes, Chromebooks) have demonstrated that the general public doesn't need or particularly want it at home. A cross-platform, full-featured office suite would just solidify that trend.

      --
      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
    6. Re:No! by boskone · · Score: 3, Funny

      wow. umm, I disagree.

      I think Windows 10 is the most important release since I've been in IT (20 years).

      It fundamentally changes what windows is and how users will access technology.

    7. Re:No! by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      It fundamentally changes what windows is and how users will access technology.

      That's what Microsoft's been telling us about every new Windows release that has come along since ever. So far, the only thing that's changed is that bluescreens came into being, and then were hidden.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  2. Re:huh?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Office 365 is not software per se, but a service that also happens to include software. It includes Office 2013, which surely will be updated to 2016 as soon as it is available. And as far as we can see, it has been and continues to be quite successful.

  3. Re:huh?? by bemymonkey · · Score: 2

    Near as I can tell, Office 2013 is exactly the same as the software Office365 subscribers are getting. I'd assume Office365 users just get auto-updated to Office 2016 as soon as it's released...

  4. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by bemymonkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Apparently the screenshots in the article are the full-screen "touch" versions. I'd expect the regular versions to have the full ribbons just like 2010 or 2013 (which I've actually grown to like, because they expose keyboard shortcuts for practically EVERYTHING).

  5. "Free" as in "free lunch" by Flavianoep · · Score: 4, Insightful

    These new Office apps will be pre-installed (they will be free) on smartphones and small tablets running Windows 10.

    It's not free if you have to buy something else to get it. Just my 2 cents.

    --
    Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
    1. Re:"Free" as in "free lunch" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Only slashdot turns a gift (from MS) into something bad, you guys are trying to hard

  6. Re:huh?? by stooo · · Score: 5, Funny

    >> WTF happened to Office 365

    It will be renamed "Office 362" when the statistics will show 3 days downtime per year :))))

    Or perhaps "Office 363" on leap years :)

    --
    aaaaaaa
  7. In-App Purchases? by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

    If this is going where I think it's going, Microsoft is going to give away the razor for free but charge you for the grammar checker. Then they'll be able to claim all those free users as customers to inflate their credibility.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  8. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Billly+Gates · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Name one function that was removed since 2003. Just because learning something new is hard doesn't mean something was taken away.

    My opinion maybe unpopular here with a large group of slashdotters but I actually hated the menu in Office 2003 and the silly menus to show more. My worst was the nested menus and options where I needed many mouse clicks to perform tasks.

    The ribbon was talked about and was cool back then in 2004 when MS R&D showed what it could do. Then of course people who were set in their ways whinned when 2007 came out and it and now it is uncool here.

    It took me 1 week back in 2007 to get the hang of it and yes I was a little frustrated at first. :-(

    After 1 month I got it and preferred it over the menus. That was 6 years ago! Today when I go on a coworkers computer with Office 2007 with Outlook which still has menus I am stomped as I do not know where everything else. Does this mean it is now inferior because *I* do not know where something is?

    With ribbons I can preview changes before I make select them. Keyboard shortcuts work better when I hit the alt key. Try it? Office on a laptop with no room with a mouse is so much better as a result with the alt key and the previews.

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
  9. Re:Why do they take so long to load? by Richard_at_work · · Score: 4, Informative

    Get an SSD - Word 2013 loads in under a second here.

  10. Microsoft did not reveal any upcoming features by sproketboy · · Score: 2

    "Microsoft did not reveal any upcoming features it is planning for Office 2016." Except changes in the formats to break everything again.

  11. Re:no more ALL CAPS & BLINDING WHITE by urbanriot · · Score: 2

    ... what you call downgrading, I call upgrading. I haven't experienced a bug in Office 2010 since SP1 yet Office 2013 is missing features and has plenty of bugs. Oh, and yes, the garish color as you relay AND THE RIBBON SHOUTING HOME AND VIEW, THAT'S FIXED WHEN YOU UPGRADE TO OFFICE 2010.

  12. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by urbanriot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I was anti-ribbon back in 2007 as well, until I read a blog post by a Microsoft programmer that basically said, "look dummy, every single item you had access to with these cumbersome menus is available on screen." Certainly I wouldn't accept that at face value so I opened up Office 2003 and tried to find an equivalent function I couldn't find in 2007 and in doing that, I realized it really was 'all there' and shortly thereafter became a devout Follower of the Ribbon.

  13. Re:Why do they take so long to load? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Get an SSD...

    The standard, ages-old "fix" for bloating, slowing MS-ware: buy new hardware.

  14. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by smooth+wombat · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Except in Microsoft's recent pattern, FINDING those items is much more difficult and less intuitive. What was once a single-click to see all your options from 'View' (for instance), is now a "click and hope" funfest as you meander from ribbon to ribbon trying to come across what you're looking for.

    The layouts are not intuitive, they have moved items from where they used to be, have buried items in sub-entries and it takes longer to accomplish what you want.

    By any measure, that is not an upgrade no matter how many people wish it to be so.

    --
    We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
  15. Re: No!- Libreoffice and sharepoint by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Looking at the release notes for libreoffice 4.4.0 coming out next week. Direct connections to sharepoint nad onedrive are supported. Checkin, Checkout and versioning.
    https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/4.4#Connection_to_SharePoint_and_OneDrive
    http://mihai-varga.github.io/sharepoint-20102013-connection.html
    http://mihai-varga.github.io/onedrive-connection.html