• What's new in MS Office 2016 FAQs

    As part of the project to upgrade all University PCs to Windows 10, MS Office 2010 has been replaced by MS Office 2016 on all managed PCs. 

    All new or replacement staff PCs and laptops will be delivered with Windows 10 and MS Office 2016.

  • The first time you launch an Office application you have two options:

    • Open Other Workbooks/Documents, to locate an existing file.
    • Blank workbook/document, to create a new file.

    Thereafter, you can open a file from the Recent list, This PC, or Browse.

    Open a file

    Top Tip: You can keep a file at the top of the Recent list; hover over the file you want to keep and click the pin icon.

    To save a file, choose save to This PC, or Browse.

    One Drive is cloud based storage hosted by Microsoft that is very similar to the University's supported service - Google Drive. The University does not provide you with a One Drive account.

    • We recommend that you continue to save your files to your faculty/directorate shared drives or Google Drive.
    • If you create a One Drive account, it will be a personal account, owned by you. The IT Acceptable Use Policy has useful guidance about  storing University documents.
    • If you wish to save your files to Google Drive, you can do this by saving files to a local version of Drive installed on your device, which is synchronised with your University Google Drive.

    In Office 2010, advanced formatting options were buried in hard to find dialog boxes. Now these options are available in new task panes.

    Right click your object, for example, a picture or chart element. Make your selection from the shortcut menu. The new Format pane appears with options that are tailored for the selected object.

    Format chart

    Clip Art has been replaced with Bing-powered images.

    Click Insert, Online Pictures.

     Insert Online Pictures

    When using images from Bing, you are responsible for respecting copyright, and the license filter in Bing can help you choose which images to use.

    You can collapse or expand parts of a document with just a click.

    Comments now have a Reply button. And when a comment is addressed and no longer requires attention, you can mark it as done.

    You can insert online videos and watch in Word, without having to leave the document. 

    Yes, when you click a chart, you’ll see a simpler Chart Tools ribbon. With just a Design and Format tab, it should be easier to find what you need.


    Three new chart buttons let you quickly pick and preview changes to chart elements (like titles or labels). See Format your chart.


    Excel now recommends the most suitable charts for your data. Give this feature a try when you create your first chart.

    The Quick Analysis tool lets you convert your data into a chart or table in two steps or less. See Analyze your data instantly.

    Flash Fill is like a data assistant that finishes your work for you. To see when this feature comes in handy, see Split a column of data based on what you type.

    Picking the right fields to summarize your data in a PivotTable report can be a daunting task. Now you can get some help with that. When you create a PivotTable, Excel recommends several ways to summarize your data, See Create a PivotTable to analyze worksheet data.

    The new Excel Data Model lets you create PivotTables based on multiple tables in Excel. By importing different tables, and creating relationships between them, you’ll be able to analyze your data with results you aren’t able to get from traditional PivotTable data. See Create a Data Model in Excel. 

    The Microsoft Office Training Center is a good place to start.

    IT Services offer self paced tutorials and classroom training for staff and postgraduate students.