Microsoft Office 2016 preview update brings Real Time Presence in Word, Simplified File Sharing and more features.

It was only a month ago that Microsoft rolled out the first preview version of Office 2016 for users to try out.

The Redmond company says that over one million users have been using Office 2016 Preview on Windows, as well as on Mac.

Microsoft hasn’t announced the exact build number of Office 2016. But lets go ahead and take a look at what news in the latest update for Office 2016.

Real Time Presence in Word:

When Microsoft launched the preview build last month, it highlighted a new feature called Collaboration. As the name suggests, it allows multiple users to work on a document at the same time, and the changes would be reflected for all users in real-time. The feature was only available for Office Online, but has now been partially introduced in Word.

While you still can’t make changes to the document in real-time, i.e Real Time Typing, Word now has the ability to show you where your co-authors are working in a document. This feature is called Real Time Presence. However, this feature isn’t being rolled out to everyone just yet. For the time being, it is only enabled for OneDrive for Business subscribers. Microsoft says it will be rolled out to more users soon.

Simplified File Sharing:

File sharing has been simplified in Office 2016. It is possible to share files with just a click of the mouse. You can click on the ribbon, which will let you share the file with other users. They can then edit, review or comment on the file.

Insights:

In our previous coverage of Office 2016, we mentioned the contextual information gathering feature called Insights. It is powered by Microsoft Bing, and displays relevant information from the web, for keywords which you select. Insights are displayed in the task pane. Again, this feature isn’t available in all apps, and is currently only available in Outlook and Word.

Version History:

Finding different versions of files is also easier. Files on Sharepoint or OneDrive (for Business) now have the ability to view and restore previous versions of files. The Version History option is available from the File > History menu.

Miscellaneous improvements:

Other changes in the latest Office 2016 Preview include improvements for Grammar checkers, and Power Pivot.

You can download Office 2016 Preview from Microsoft’s official website. It is a trial version only, but you can activate it if you have a subscription for Office 365.