Microsoft Office 2016: Full-featured, industry-standard, & does what you need it to!
February 28, 2020
Microsoft Office 2016: Full-featured, industry-standard, & does what you need it to!
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Office 2016
Our entire office uses the Microsoft Office 2016 suite on a daily basis as follows:
- Outlook for all internal and a considerable amount of external communication
- Word to create internal & external documentation
- Excel to view, edit and manipulate data files, as well as other administrative tasks
- Access to edit and manipulate data and prepare large amounts of data for import into our software
- Provide industry-standard software to create & edit the most common file types
- Create visually appealing newsletters & documents
- Maintain consistency across different tasks & projects
- Create documents that are universally usable by nearly all computer users
- It's sometimes too "idiot-proof". It tries to do everything for you, even if you don't want it done; e.g. Excel has an issue where it likes to trim leading zeros, which is seldom convenient.
- Some new features are available only in the online version (Office 365); e.g. some productivity plugins for Outlook.
- Locks files for use; kind of like point #1. Often, it would be nice to keep a file open while using it in another application, especially when the other application is only reading and not editing.
- Improved corporate image via visually appealing documentation & industry-standard files to share.
- Improved communication via shared company & team calendars.
- Negative: It has kept us from moving to an online suite more geared towards full collaboration & integrated document management.
- LibreOffice and G Suite
LibreOffice is a free software suite that fills some holes left in Microsoft Office, e.g., a "Draw" program that allows for easy creation of charts & diagrams. LibreOffice will save files in Microsoft formats, but sometimes the formatting is off when opened in Microsoft's suite; this is always improving. Otherwise, Microsoft Office 2016 sets the standards, and others seem to follow.
Google G-Suite is great for the current direction collaboration and document creation / management is moving. It is not yet as widely used, and not all our clients would have the tools to open a Google Docs document, for example; I suspect it might also give a less formal impression than sending a Word doc. (I also suspect this will change over the next decade or so.) Some of the applications have fewer tools than the Office equivalents. Depending on your needs, this could be a plus or a minus.
Google G-Suite is great for the current direction collaboration and document creation / management is moving. It is not yet as widely used, and not all our clients would have the tools to open a Google Docs document, for example; I suspect it might also give a less formal impression than sending a Word doc. (I also suspect this will change over the next decade or so.) Some of the applications have fewer tools than the Office equivalents. Depending on your needs, this could be a plus or a minus.
Do you think Microsoft Office 2016 (discontinued) delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Microsoft Office 2016 (discontinued)'s feature set?
Yes
Did Microsoft Office 2016 (discontinued) live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Microsoft Office 2016 (discontinued) go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Microsoft Office 2016 (discontinued) again?
Yes