What you need to know about Office 2016 before you install it

Microsoft has just published the Office 2016 Preview application for home and enterprise. It is available to Office 365 subscribers, other Office users and non-Office users on the Office website.
If you are not an Office 365 subscriber, you can download a 32-bit or 64-bit installer for the Office 2016 Preview from the site.
A click on one of the download links loads a small stub installer to the computer system which downloads the full installation package when executed on it.
There is no information on how large that download is, but expect it to be hundreds of Megabyte large.
Use the product key NKGG6-WBPCC-HXWMY-6DQGJ-CPQVG on the system after installation when asked to enter it. You are asked to activate Office when you launch one of the applications that ship with it for the first time. There you need to click on the "enter a product key instead" link to provide the key above and activate the preview this way.
Note: Office 2016 Preview will replace existing versions of (desktop) Office on the system. Microsoft notes that you will be able to go back to those versions if you remove the Office 2016 Preview again from the PC.
System Requirements
Microsoft does not reveal system requirements for Office 2016 Preview on the download site. The company refers users to the general system requirements page for Office which lists different requirements based on Office products that you may use.
What we do know at this point is that you need Windows 7 or newer to install the preview on the computer (sorry Vista users).
If you take Office 2013 as a baseline, your computer should meet the following recommendations:
- CPU: 1GHz or faster
- Memory: 1GB for 32-bit and 2GB for 64-bit.
- Hard Disk: 3 Gigabyte of storage space.
- Display: 1024x768
The preview includes the following programs:
- Acces 2016
- Excel 2016
- OneNote 2016
- Outlook 2016
- PowerPoint 2016
- Publisher 2016
- Word 2016
Office 365 subscribers can participate in the preview if their subscription comes with Office 365 ProPlus rights.
A wording on the Office 2016 Preview page indicates that preview users need to purchase an Office 365 subscription once the trial period expires to continue using Office 2016. The other option listed on the page is to uninstall the preview to go back to the original version (if one was installed on the PC).
Does this mean that an Office 365 subscription is mandatory for Office 2016? Or is this just about the Preview itself only which you need to upgrade or uninstall when it expires?
About the trial period. The trial of Office 2016 Preview expires in 179 days according to notifications displayed in the apps when you run them. The notification can be closed and won't show up the next time. It is likely that it will be displayed regularly though.
What is new?
A blog post over at the Office blog highlights major changes coming to Office 2016. Head over to read it in full or read our summary of the changes instead below.
- Real-time co-authoring comes to the Windows desktop. In the first preview version, only Word 2016 supports it meaning that you can work with other team members on Word 2016 on the desktop or Office online on the same document at the same time.
- Deeper cloud-integration to "create, open, edit and save" files from your desktop. Improved attachment of files from OneDrive in Outlook.
- New batch of smart applications and machine learning to improve how you work with the programs including Bing Insights support to retrieve web information, the Exchange feature Clutter which prioritizes mail and Tell Me, a search tool that finds commands you type.
- New analysis tools in Excel including one-click forecasting, integration of Power Query, improved Power Pivot, new charts and graphs, and option to publish to Microsoft Power BI Preview.
- Data Loss Protection for Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
- Multi-factor authentication in Outlook.
- Information Rights Management extended to Visio files.
- Better network traffic management, enhanced distribution management, flexible update management.
Now You: What is your take on the preview? Will Office 2016 become subscription-based only?

Martin, I would appreciate that you do not censor this post, as it’s informative writing.
Onur, there is a misleading statement “[…] GIFs are animated images …”. No, obviously you don’t seem to have take much notice of what you were told back in March regarding; Graphics Interchange Format (GIF).
For example, https://www.ghacks.net/2023/03/31/whats-gif-explanation-and-how-to-use-it/#comment-4562919 (if you had read my replies within that thread, you might have learnt something useful). I even mentioned, “GIF intrinsically supports animated images (GIF89a)”.
You linked to said article, [Related: …] within this article, but have somehow failed to take onboard what support you were given by several more knowledgeable people.
If you used AI to help write this article, it has failed miserably.
EMRE ÇITAK posts are useless because they are fraught with inaccuracies and are irrelevant.
AI is stupid, and it will not get any better if we really know how this all works. Prove me wrong.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IYl1sTIOHI
Martin, [#comment-4569908] is only meant to be in: [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/07/09/how-to-send-gifs-on-iphone-two-different-ways/]. Whereas it appears duplicated in several recent random low-quality non relevant articles.
Obviously it [#comment-4569908] was posted: 9 July 2023. Long before this thread even existed… your database is falling over. Those comments are supposed to have unique ID values. It shouldn’t be possible to duplicate the post ID, if the database had referential integrity.
Don’t tell me!
Ghacks wants the state to step in for STATE-MANDATED associations to save jobs!!!
Bring in the dictatorship!!!
And screw Rreedom of Association – too radical for Ghacks maybe
GateKeeper ?
That’s called “appointing” businesses to do the state’s dirty work!!!!!
But the article says itself that those appointed were not happy – implying they had not choice!!!!!!
Rreedom of Association is one of our most important rights. Some people think it’s Freedom, but no, I say Rreedom is far more important. There are many STATE-MANDATED associations that save jobs, that’s right MANDATED. I can’t name any of them, but rest assured they are bad, because saving jobs are bad, and people having jobs leads to dictatorship!!! Anyone who disagrees is too radical for Ghacks maybe, because I’m not sure.
@The Dark Lady,
@KeZa,
@Database failure,
@Howard Pearce,
@Howard Allan Pearce,
Note: I replaced the quoted URI scheme: https:// with “>>” and posted.
The current ghacks.net is owned by “Softonic International S.A.” (sold by Martin in October 2019), and due to the fate of M&A, ghacks.net has changed in quality.
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/02/microsoft-is-removing-wordpad-from-windows/#comment-4573130
Many Authors of bloggers and advertisers certified by Softonic have joined the site, and the site is full of articles aimed at advertising and clickbait.
>> ghacks.net/2023/08/31/in-windows-11-the-line-between-legitimate-and-adware-becomes-increasingly-blurred/#comment-4573117
As it stands, except for articles by Martin Brinkmann, Mike Turcotte, and Ashwin, they are low quality, unhelpful, and even vicious. It is better not to read those articles.
How to display only articles by a specific author:
Added line to My filters in uBlock Origin: ghacks.net##.hentry,.home-posts,.home-category-post:not(:has-text(/Martin Brinkmann|Mike Turcotte|Ashwin/))
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/01/windows-11-development-overview-of-the-august-2023-changes/#comment-4573033
By the way, if you use an RSS reader, you can track exactly where your comments are (I’m an iPad user, so I use “Feedly Classic”, but for Windows I prefer the desktop app “RSS Guard”).
RSS Guard: Feed reader which supports RSS/ATOM/JSON and many web-based feed services.
>> github.com/martinrotter/rssguard#readme
We all live in digital surveillance glass houses under scrutiny of evil people because of people like Musk. It’s only fair that he takes his turn.
“Operating systems will be required to let the user choose the browser, virtual assistant and search engine of their choice. Microsoft cannot force users to use Bing or Edge. Apple will have to open up its iOS operating system to allow third-party app stores, aka allow sideloading of apps. Google, on the other hand, will need to provide users with the ability to uninstall preloaded apps (bloatware) from Android devices. Online services will need to allow users to unsubscribe from their platform easily. Gatekeepers need to provide interoperability with third-parties that offer similar services.”
Wonderful ! Let’s hope they’ll comply with that law more than they are doing with the GDPR.
No, they didn’t lmao.
https://twitter.com/vxunderground/status/1706523877478670542
What does this article about Musk/Tesla have to do with computing, devices, phones?
More irelevant filler.
yeah sure… they are always the victims and it is only against them ????
Believe them 100% and never question anything. This lawsuit sounds like the type you heard when people were eating batteries.