Microsoft Office 2016 is a fantastic program with a hefty price tag. Jonathan Parkyn reveals how to get its best features for free
If you read our review of Office 2016, you’ll know what we think about it. In short, it’s great – but it’s not cheap.
Microsoft’s new office suite will set you back at least £120 for a standalone version (Home and Student). If you opt for an Office 365 Personal or Home subscription plan, it’ll cost £60 or £80 per year respectively. But Office 2016 is far from being your only option – there are several free office suites that offer equivalent features for free. Here we reveal the best of the bunch.
Online collaboration
Word 2016 lets users collaborate on documents in real time. In other words, you and a friend or colleague can be working on the same document and see each other’s changes as they’re made. It’s a brilliant feature that makes it really easy to work together with multiple users over the web.
But real-time collaboration is nothing new. Users of Google Docs, Sheets and Slides have been doing it for years – for free. Log in at https://docs.google.com and open a new or existing document, then click Share in the top-right corner. Under People, type the email addresses of the people or Google Groups you want to collaborate with, choose ‘Can edit’ as the access type and click Send.
If you and your collaborator are online and working on the same document at the same time, you’ll be able to see the other person’s changes as they are made and vice versa.
Better still, as long as you’re both signed in with a Google account, you can even chat with each other as you work. Simply click the speech-bubble icon at the top right and start typing.
Help boxes in plain English
One of the best new features in Office 2016 is the ‘Tell me what you want to do’ box that appears on the top toolbar.
These boxes are a nifty way to find features and tools without digging around in the Ribbon. You don’t even need to know the name of the tool you’re trying to find. Simply type what you want to do in plain English – ‘I want to resize a photo’, for example – and you’re presented with a list of tools that can do the job.
Another great idea, but again not new. The ‘Tell me…’ boxes have been part of Microsoft’s free online Office apps for a while now. Log in at https://onedrive.live.com and open a document in the Word or Excel Online app, and you’ll find a ‘Tell me…’ box next to the Ribbon tabs. It works in the same way too – just start typing your question for options.
Get instant confirmation
Highlight and right-click any word or phrase in Word, PowerPoint, Excel or Outlook 2016, select Smart Lookup, and the Insights pane will open on the right-hand side. This pane provides you with instant research material, such as search links and Wikipedia information under the Explore tab, and dictionary definitions of the word/phrase under Define.
Once again, this self-same tool is available in Microsoft’s free-to-use Online Office tools. Google Docs has a very similar feature, too. Highlight and right-click a word or phrase in a Google document, then select either Research or Define for a pop-up pane of relevant information.
Share files as links
If you want to share a file in your OneDrive cloud storage, you no longer need to download or sync the file to your own PC before attaching it to an email. In Outlook 2016 you can simply choose your OneDrive account from the Attach File dropdown menu and send the file as a link instead. Your recipient will then be able to grab the very latest version of the file directly from your OneDrive.
Gmail already lets you do something very similar with Google Drive files, for free. When composing a Gmail message, instead of clicking the paper-clip icon to attach a file, click the Google Drive icon. Select your file, make sure the ‘Drive link’ option is selected in the bottom right, then click Insert.
Cut inbox clutter
Outlook 2016 has a new tool called Clutter that lets you filter low-priority emails and keep your inbox manageable. It’s great – in theory. But the feature is only available to Office 2016 business users with full access to Office 365 online.
Gmail has used a similar system for a couple of years now. According to your preferences, it sorts your emails into tabs (Primary, Social, Promotions and more). You don’t have to be a business user or pay anything to use this feature.
Restore old versions of files
Another Office 2016 feature that’s only available to business users is the ability to view and retrieve previous versions of files, so you can restore an older version if you make a mistake or want to return to an earlier draft.
Dropbox already provides this for all its users, whether or not you’ve upgraded to paid storage. Just right-click a file and select Previous Versions to see a list of all the versions available for that file.
Similarly, in a Google Drive document, spreadsheet, presentation or drawing, open the file, click File and then click ‘See revision history’.
FREE FEATURES YOU WON’T FIND IN OFFICE 2016
Office 2016 still hasn’t got these features – but you’ll find them for free elsewhere…
• Support for older versions of Windows
Office 2016 only works on Windows 7 or later, while LibreOffice (www.libreoffice.org) runs happily on older versions, including XP and Vista.
• Familiar interface
Still hate the Ribbon? LibreOffice sticks to classic toolbars and menu structures that are much more familiar to users of older Office versions.
• As many installs as you like
Office 2016 (Home and Student editions) only lets you install the software on one PC. Office 365 Home allows up to five installs. In contrast, you can install LibreOffice on an unlimited number of PCs.
• Less hard-drive space
Office 2016 gobbles up 3GB of storage when you install it. LibreOffice takes up around half that. And, if you opt for Google Drive or Microsoft’s Office web apps, they take up no hard-drive space whatsoever.
• Portable version
Want to be able to take your office suite everywhere with you and run it on any PC from a USB stick? LibreOffice comes in a portable version (www.snipca.com/18164). Office doesn’t.