Microsoft Office 2016 Consumer Technical Preview Open to Public: Report

The consumer technical preview of Microsoft's next Office suite for desktop, Office 2016, is now available to download for all users willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement. The general release Microsoft Office 2016 is expected to be made available in the second half of 2015. The original preview, released last year, was available only on an invitation basis.

Neowin reports that the Office 2016 Consumer Technical Preview is now available to download from the company's Microsoft Connect page and requires users to sign into the Connect Test Site program before registering, and completing various surveys.

(Also see: Windows 10 January Technical Preview Now Available for Download)

Microsoft is yet to reveal any features that can be expected in the upcoming Office 2016, apart from the fact that it is optimised for keyboard and mouse. Last September however, purported screenshots had come out detailing about the next version of Microsoft Office, then thought to be called Office 16. It was reported that the screenshots of Office 16 were from an early build being distributed to partners, and it only featured 'fairly minor' changes.

Some of new elements that were seen in the purported Office 16 screenshots had included the most-requested dark theme option (alongside the light grey, dark grey and white themes); automatic image rotation in documents (based on image metadata), with the ability to manually rotate it afterwards; as well as new syncing options for the Outlook email client to support devices with lower storage capacities, with download options including 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, or 14 days, when the earlier minimum was one month of email.

Last month, Microsoft also unveiled the touch-optimised version of Office for Windows 10 - Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook - for mobiles and tablets, it didn't say anything about Office for desktop.

The Redmond giant is also expected to release the Windows 10 Technical Preview for phones soon.