Office 2016 to arrive on September 22

Microsoft Office 2016 for Windows has been officially announced, and it will be released on September 22.

Office 2016 includes new features that were previewed in March for commercial Office 365 subscribers.

Although services such as Evernote and Google Drive are beginning to get to a point where they’re good enough for many consumers’ needs, Office is still the best package out there for spread sheets, fully compatible presentations and of course word processing.

Volume licensees will be able to download Office 2016 starting on October 1, according to Microsoft’s announcement. Taking a page from the Windows 10 playbook, Microsoft is calling this monthly updated release the “Current Branch“. In a recent blog post, Julia White, Microsoft’s general manager of Office 365 technical product management, clarified a few details about the upcoming Office 2016 service models.

Microsoft added a number of other new capabilities to Office 2016 based on comments and requests from IT professionals, White noted. The much anticipated Office Suite will be quite similar to the existing version, hence provide a more familiar environment for the users. Visually it has had a facelift to bring it more into line with the Universal app platform that Microsoft has adopted in Windows 10. Office 365 has been available in a lot of desktops and devices since its introduction.

Those with Office 365 ProPlus subscriptions will be able to continue getting monthly feature and security updates. The file sharing has also been made better with this, providing an option to share files with the team.

The new suite of Office applications will give Office 365 ProPlus business subscribers a choice of two types of ongoing updates.

Microsoft will release the next Current Branch, including updates to the new Office 2016 apps, on September 22, White said.

“The next Current Branch will release on September 22nd and will have all of the new Office 2016 app updates included”, White said.

On the other hand, Current Branch for Business, or CBB customers, will get updates every four months.

In addition to the Office 2016 launch date, White offered up some options for businesses using the productivity software.