Microsoft Office 2016 for Windows release date: Productivity suite out on Sep. 22

[photo: Commons Wikimedia/Microsoft Corporation]

When Microsoft released the new Office for Mac back in July, there were no official details on the office suite's release for Windows-based machines. Now, Microsoft has announced when Office 2016 for Windows will be rolled out. 

In a post on the official Office blog site, Julia White, general manager of Office 365 Technical Product Management of Microsoft, confirmed the rumors that the new Office 2016 version will be released next week and it will be available next month for those with volume licenses. 

"You may have heard the rumors, but today I'm happy to confirm that Office 2016 will be broadly available starting on September 22nd," said White. "If you have a volume licensing agreement in place, you can download Office 2016 from the Volume Licensing Service Center starting October 1st." 

Those who are using Office 365 Personal and Home editions can start installing the new 2016 apps starting Sept. 22 from office.com. Meanwhile, the updates for the apps will start rolling out in October, with the pattern modeled after the Windows 10 updates. This means that the new Office 2016 will receive new updates automatically. 

Although the new Office 2016 will look like previous versions of the app, Microsoft had listed the many upgrades for the new app, including new deployment and management options for users, added support for data loss prevention across the app, and multi-factor authentication. 

The post also mentioned details on the Office 2016 rollout for Office 365 ProPlus, the subscription edition for organizations. Aside from the integrated, automatic updates on the new Office 316, the new apps for ProPlus subscribers will also have access to a new Current Branch for Business option starting February next year, with four additional months' worth of security updates included.