Microsoft Office has been around since the ancient times(around 1990) and every few years they decide to update it. sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. This year, the biggest changes, in my opinion, are the addition of two features:
Live/Real Time Collaboration - yes, you can be at home and your partner can be in their office or across the globe and both of you can work on a document in real time. This is beyond essential for business purposes but also, as this is the Home & Student edition, it is now also essential for K-12 students(since working in teams is now a school mandate) and for college students(over winter break when everyone has gone home but a group project is due when school resumes). This cuts down on unnecessary emails back and forth, trying to find the most recent version of the Word or Excel document, and email is not exactly "real time." With Office 2016, you can watch your partner make changes and you can undo or add to what they are doing immediately. It all happens as they, or you, are manipulating the document.
"Tell me what you want to do." - this is so essential that it almost makes me sad it wasn’t included in prior iterations of Office. "Tell Me." is a search box that, once you start typing will start displaying suggestions. Begin typing "Insert" into the search box and "Insert Caption" and "Insert Picture"(among other suggestions) pop up. No more having to dig around in the Ribbon to find what you want. Want to make a Table in a Word Document? Start typing "Table" in the "Tell Me." box. It gives suggestions such as "Add Table, " View Table Gridlines, " "Table Styles, " "Table of Contents, " "Draw Table, " etc. Click on the suggestion you want, and that function happens. This handy feature makes Office easier and faster, especially for those who don’t happen to know where 100% of the functions lie in the Ribbon.
I am very pleased with the changes in this year’s Office, especially since I was never a big fan of the Ribbon. Yes, it is still there, however, now I can find things instantaneously rather than rooting around for a function I don’t use very often.