September 22^nd is the date Microsoft’s Office 2016 will roll-out for Office 365 Personal and Home users, the company has stated. Microsoft said that on that date the suite will become ‘broadly available’, although customers with a volume licensing agreement can download Office 2016 on October 1^st.

As the first Office release built for Windows 10 it’s reason enough to get a little excited, and the new suite does include some new features: document co-authoring for real time collaboration in Microsoft Word; a bunch of new charts for Excel, explained in detail here; ‘Tell Me’ navigation support; data protection advice within Office, as well as syncing files in OneDrive.

The update model has also been changed according to a Microsoft blog post. “We’ve enhanced the upgrade and installation experience, and for Office 365 subscribers, we’ve made changes to how the 2016 apps are updated moving forward. We’re also delivering new tools and resources to help you prepare, deploy and manage Office,” says Microsoft’s Julia White.

For companies and organizations with the subscription version of Office apps (Office 365 ProPlus), they will carry on receiving regular updates. Although this will now come under Current Branch, which will include all the latest security and feature updates. Microsoft has also added a Current Branch for Business, based on feedback from customers. Current Branch for business will offer, “Three cumulative feature updates per year, while continuing to offer monthly security updates,” Microsoft says. This has been designed for businesses that would prefer to test new releases of Office 2016 before rolling out the new features.

Photo credit: Bhupinder Nayyar via Flickr