Office 2016

Office 2016 is the latest version of the flagship productivity suite from Microsoft that includes a range of programs from a word processor to a spreadsheet. Most of the improvements made to Office 2016 are behind the scenes. Average users might not notice much of a functional difference between Office 2016 and Office 2013. The reality is that some of the unseen improvements actually allow the suite of applications to perform better and faster especially when dealing with large documents. A few new features were added although they are largely targeted at improving business intelligence tasks for medium and large companies.

The primary new feature added to Office 2016 is a bar called the “tell me” box. The box acts like a search bar. You can use the bar to search seamlessly through all the help files and documentation related to the suite. The real power of this box, however, is that it can automatically perform tasks in the various programs. You no longer have to read a help file and then replicate the steps. If you do something like highlight text and enter the word bold in the box, then you get the option to automatically make the text bold with a single click. This can help to make learning about and using the Office 2016 much easier.

Office 2016 comes with several different programs and utilities. One of the most popular and useful is Microsoft Word. This is a complete word processor used by businesses, schools and average people all around the world. Word comes with a comprehensive spell checker and grammar checker. It has incredibly powerful formatting features that allow you to create documents with complicated layouts. You gain access to a wide range of templates for everything from invoices and brochures to business reports. Word is simple to learn and use for almost anyone who needs to create documents.

Excel is the spreadsheet program that comes with Microsoft Office 2016. This is a very helpful program for businesses of all types. You can enter data into the columns and rows of the spreadsheet. You then have many different options to work with that data. You can create formulas that manipulate, sort or otherwise change the data. You can use Excel to generate a variety of different graphs and charts automatically to help analyze the data. Excel can even link to outside documents to capture data dynamically as you are work in the various Office 2016 applications.

Office 2016 includes PowerPoint as well. This is a program for creating professional presentations. You build your presentation by creating slides. You can do almost anything in each slide. You can add images, videos and animations. You can drop in Word documents or Excel charts. You have the ability to use different transitions and sounds to make the presentation more entertaining for viewers. The presentation can be played on a computer later or shared with other people. You even have the option to print out presentations to hand out to audiences.

Access is one of the most complicated applications in Office 2016. This is a complete relational database management system. You can use Access to create entire databases from scratch using your own custom data. You can create data entry forms to make entering the information into the database easier. Access has a few features that really allow you to have complete control over the data and records you save. This includes the ability to create reports, search databases and export information to Excel or Word. Access can be used for many things from tracking employee records to maintaining accurate inventories of items.

Office 2016 includes a number of other applications and tools designed to make things easier. One of the most useful is called OneDrive. This program brings the power of the cloud to Office 2016. It gives users the chance to create a cloud-based storage account that is integrated fully with the Office suite. You can save, load and modify files stored in OneDrive from any of the Office programs. That cloud-based functionality is also coupled with new collaborative features. You can now use Word and other programs to see how people in a company are changing documents in real time. This makes it easier to work together on common projects.

Many of the programs and features bundled with Office 2016 such as OneNote, Publisher and Projects were all present within certain versions of the suite in the past. This is the first version to really combine everything into a single package. This latest version of Office 2016 is mainly designed for power users who need to get the most out of every program. That is why so many upgrades were made to the underlying code instead of the appearance of the applications.

There are very few problems with Office 2016. One is that many features require you to be connected to the Internet to work correctly. That can be inconvenient if you are trying to get work done at home while offline. Another issue is that the productivity suite is becoming more complicated with each new release. It can take some time to learn how to use each of the programs effectively. Office 2016 is the gold standard when it comes to productivity software. It can help businesses to succeed although it might be a little overpowered for people at home who just want a word processor. It is important to note that Office 2016 cannot run on the same computer as Office 2013. You can use only one or the other.

Pros

• Amazing and comprehensive set of features
• Complete package including many additional tools
• Improvements allow the programs to perform much better

Cons

• Few functional or cosmetic changes for average users
• Heavy focus on cloud-based features requiring a constant Internet connection