Microsoft to Roll Out Office 2016 From September 22

This was disclosed in a blog post by the General Manager of Office 365, Julia White, who detailed how the Office 2016 productivity suite for Windows will be rolling out to users, she also said that customers with volume licensing agreements will be able to download the software on October 1.

The updated version of Office includes a number of new features for desktop customers, including the ability to co-edit documents at the same time, sync files to OneDrive in the cloud, and more.

The Blog post reads; “You may have heard the rumors, but today I’m happy to confirm that Office 2016 will be broadly available starting on the 22nd of September 2015. If you have a volume licensing agreement in place, you can download Office 2016 from the Volume Licensing Services Center starting October 1st.

“This post is your one-stop shop for the tools, guidance and resources needed to get ready for Office 2016. We’ve enhanced the upgrade and installation experience, and for Office 365 subscribers, we’ve made changes to how the 2016 apps are updated moving forward. We’re also delivering new tools and resources to help you prepare, deploy and manage Office.”

“Based on feedback from many organizations running Office 365 ProPlus, I am excited to announce that we are adding a new option for updating Office called Current Branch for Business. If your organization typically waits a few months prior to rolling out a new version of Office or needs more time to test Office 2016 and your customizations between feature updates, this will be welcomed news.

“We’ve also addressed a number of the other top IT requests in Office 365 ProPlus, including deployment support for Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) to help control network traffic when deploying updates and new reports on Office activation and usage available in the Office 365 admin portal.

“This captures a few of the highlights of what we’re working on to support admins with the upcoming Office 2016 release. You’ll see a lot more coming on September 22nd and beyond. Of course, you can still download the Office 2016 Preview now to experience what’s coming, and don’t forget to register for a Microsoft Cloud Roadshow near you to learn more,” White said.