Excel Series: Office 2016 vs 365
When deciding whether to upgrade to a different version of Excel, or if IT has already upgraded you, it is important to understand the differences between Office 2016 and 365.
We will be looking at the differences in features and pricing for both Office 2016 and 365, as well as having a look at the 2019 version for comparison purposes.
Characteristics of Office 2016 to 365
| Office 2016 | Office 2019 | Office 365 |
| Once-off purchase | Once-off purchase | Subscription service |
| Local | Local | Cloud-based |
| One device license | One device license | 5 device licenses |
| Windows 7 or higher | Windows 10 | Windows 7 or higher |
| Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access | Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access | Includes online services such as Teams, Yammer, Sway |
| N/A | N/A | 1TB cloud storage |
| Security updates | Security updates | Monthly feature updates |
| Good for home and small business users | Stop gap for corporates not ready to go fully cloud based. Includes a subset of Office 365 features. | Best value for money for lots of people |
Features of Office 2016 vs 365
| Office 2016 | Office 365 |
| Autosave to hard drive | Autosave to cloud |
| One user at a time | Co-author with others (work in the same workbook at the same time) |
| Basic pen and ink colors | Ink effects like rainbow, galaxy and others |
| Tell me what you want to do | Office Training Center to assist with learning about features such as templates, teams and tips |
| Select non-contiguous cells using Ctrl | Deselect cells previously selected incorrectly |
| Built-in translator in the Review ribbon to translate words and phrases | |
| Changes to the ribbon icons | |
| Slightly laggy lookup functions in large spreadsheets | 67% reduction in processing time with lookup functions such as VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP and MATCH |
| CONCATENATE, IF, MAX, MIN | CONCAT, IFS, MAXIFS, MINIFS, SWITCH, TEXTJOIN |
| Column, bar, radial and other charts | Map chart and funnel chart added |
| Type equation | Use stylus to write an equation – Excel automatically converts to correct equation |
| Browse to add hyperlink to existing file | Suggests recent links |
| Type function name exactly | Improved autocomplete to type a portion of the function name |
| Generic PivotTable layouts | Save your own layout as a default option |
| Access PivotTable calculations from the ribbon | Calculations can now be added from the field list |
| A handful of other PivotTable and Power Pivot improvements | |
| Publish to PowerBI and use the Power Query feature called “Get and Transform” from within Excel |
Not sure what we are talking about in the above table, make sure you head on over to book your spot in one of our upcoming Excel Intermediate courses!
Price comparison of Office 2019 vs 365
The older Office 2016 package is no longer available for purchase as it has been replaced with the updated 2019 version.
| Package | Office 2019 | Office 365 |
| Home & Student | ||
| Price | R1 899 once-off | R1 199 pa (or R119 pm) |
| Devices | 1 device | 5 devices |
| Users | 1 user | 6 users |
| Programs | Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Outlook, Access | |
| Personal | ||
| Price | N/A | R899 pa (or R89 pm) |
| Devices | 5 devices | |
| Users | 1 user | |
| Programs | Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Outlook, Access | |
| Business | ||
| Price | R4 899 once-off | R125.40 per user per month |
| Devices | 1 device | 5 x 3 devices |
| Users | 1 user | 1 user |
| Programs | Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote | Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Access, Publisher |
Conclusion
As indicated above, there are a lot of things that can be considered in making the decision regarding whether or not to upgrade. In conclusion, for a home or individual user, the upgrade from 2016 to 2019 is most likely not worthwhile. However, Microsoft is pushing towards a subscription service and will be discontinue their support of Office 2016 and 2019 in the near future.
For businesses on the other hand, moving towards the subscription service for Office 365 has definite benefits as the ability to work in teams using the online tools will improve the efficiency of the business.
Finally, it’s time for your thoughts. If you have upgraded or are in the progress of upgrading, what has been the make-or-break factor in your decision? Please leave a comment below for other readers to benefit from. ?