by Ulandi Exner
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I take a sip of my Pina Colada while feeling the warm ocean breeze blow through my hair. In front of me the dolphins are pirouetting in sync knowing that they have an audience.
Oh wait, the Pina Colada is just my morning coffee, the office air-conditioner is on the blink so it is blowing warm air and the dolphins are actually the keyboard keystrokes dancing on the screen. Oh how I long for the December holidays. The Christmas merchandise has already hit the stores and before we blink again we will be seeing in the New Year.
In September we saw the release of Office 2016, almost three years since the last major version of Microsoft’s productivity apps. I haven’t had the opportunity to install the latest version yet. The upgrade to Windows 10 was not pretty and my laptop is a little unstable now. But am I in a hurry to upgrade to Office 2016? Yes and no. Yes, because I suffer from FOMO (fear of missing out) and I always have to have the latest and greatest technology and software. However, what is different in Office 2016?
According to Preston Gralla who writes for Computerworld, the latest features focus primarily on collaboration and teamwork. Gralla goes on to say “If you work by yourself and will use Office as a standalone product, you’ll find far fewer changes from Office 2013”.
Some of the new features available in Office 2016 are (source : https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-s-New-and-Improved-in-Office-2016-)
- Co-Authoring:
- The ability to work with others simultaneously on a document regardless of the device you are using.
- Real-Time Typing:
- As you collaborate with others in a document, see where others are working and view their edits as they happen.
- Mail Triage:
- The clutter feature learns how you prioritise your mail and then helps you by putting low priority messages in a separate folder (while still giving you a daily summary so you don’t miss anything)
- One-Click Forecasting:
- With one simple click, create forecast charts based on historical data and predict future trends. This new capability uses the industry standard Exponential Smoothing (ETS) algorithm to give you reliable forecasting data.
- New Chart Types:
- Visualize financial or hierarchical data, and highlight statistical properties of your data with new chart types: Treemap, Waterfall, Pareto, Histogram, Box and Whisker, and Sunburst.
So to get back to my earlier question whether I will be upgrading right away? I would have to say no. Although the new features sound great, I have no immediate use for them so I will wait a little longer before I upgrade to Office 2016.
Are you using the new version of Office? Would love to hear your feedback and experiences.
So before I go back to dreaming of white sand and magical sunsets I leave you with this quote: It is never too late to be what you might have been – George Eliot
Ciao
