Microsoft Office 2016

[ccrow]

I haven't been much of a Microsoft fan over the years. Most of the new versions of Office just move everything around and don't really add anything that 95% of the world cares about. The last really helpful feature added was when Word started underlining your spelling errors in red, in Office95.

That aside, they seem to be upping their game lately. Some of the Office365 stuff is pretty good, especially the home package where you get 5 computers and 5 mobile devices for $10/month.

They are offering a 120 day free trial of Office 2016, the full version. No rigmarole, no sign up, just download it, install it, and use the trial key. (It looks like activation will work without registering if you have a product key, this was often painful in Office 2013.)

https://products.office.com/en-us/office-2016-preview

The interface isn't changed much from Office2013, so if you're on that version now you won't have to re-learn where they put everything. The toolbars are searchable - very smart - there is a control top-center where you can just type in what you're looking for if you can't find it in the toolbars, e.g. type in "table" and it will get you to the controls to insert a table.

They hung in there with OneNote and it's finally a useful product. If you take a lot of notes, it's hard to beat. It is like wiki in a single file. I have used it to provide internal reference materials, it's easy to use for both the end user and the person that maintains the document.

If you're a real nerd, the VBA IDE seems improved, a little easier to get to reference materials and maybe an improved code editor.

[buckethead]

Will it do email?

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

I was pretty happy when they added the "-IFS" formulas and the remove duplicates function to excel in 2010

[TerryB]

It's 2015.