Microsoft is today launching the IT Pro and Developer Preview of Office 2016 for the Windows desktop.
“This early build doesn’t yet contain all the features we’re planning to ship in the final product,” explains Microsoft’s Kirk Koenigsbauer, but you’ll get a close look at what’s coming alongside monthly updates until Office 2016 ships later this year.
Microsoft is improving Outlook 2016 search, storage footprint, and email delivery performance, alongside some improvements to image insertion in Word 2016 and Excel 2016.
While Microsoft has previously added new ways to extend Office for developers, the software maker says it’s not touching add-ins or macro abilities in Office 2016, leaving things the same way for existing documents.
Of particular interest to IT pros are a number of technical improvements being made to Outlook, the expansion of Data Loss Protection (DLP) to Word, Excel and PowerPoint, new “click-to-run†deployment features for managing Office distributions across a network, extended Information Rights Management protection for Visio, and more.
In addition, Microsoft says it’s not making any changes to Macros or Add-ins, so that companies won’t have to deal with compatibility issues during testing.
You can sign up for Microsoft’s Office 2016 preview here.
