Upgrading Office 2013 to 2016

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From browsing around the net it seems that there is no “upgrade” path for those people with licensed copies of Office 2013 to upgrade to Office 2016. It’s a case of buying the whole suite again (at over $200).

I have no desire to use Office365.

My desktop runs Win7. No plans to upgrade to Win10 until March 2016 or so.

I currently use LibreOffice on my laptop (when I teach) as it reads Office files just fine. Any teaching Powerpoint files I create on my desktop using dual monitors.

I do use the Outlook 2013 PC client extensively (typically email and calendaring). I use POP3 and store any email I wish to keep locally. My calendar snycs with gmail (using the excellent gSyncit Outlook addon at:

http://www.fieldstonsoftware.com/software/gsyncit4/

Then gmail syncs the calendar with my Android phone.

So, if MS insist that there is only an upgrade path by buying the whole suite again…I may be tempted to take my desktop to LibreOffice also. The problem is that LibreOffice doesn’t have an email client program.

Does anyone use LibreOffice with some other email client program? If so, can you provide any details of what that software is and any feedback re:

Usability, similarity to Outlook, compatibility with Outlook PST and Contacts etc

Thanks,

Kevin

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From browsing around the net it seems that there is no “upgrade” path for those people with licensed copies of Office 2013 to upgrade to Office 2016. It’s a case of buying the whole suite again (at over $200).

I have no desire to use Office365.

My desktop runs Win7. No plans to upgrade to Win10 until March 2016 or so.

I currently use LibreOffice on my laptop (when I teach) as it reads Office files just fine. Any teaching Powerpoint files I create on my desktop using dual monitors.

I do use the Outlook 2013 PC client extensively (typically email and calendaring). I use POP3 and store any email I wish to keep locally. My calendar snycs with gmail (using the excellent gSyncit Outlook addon at:

http://www.fieldstonsoftware.com/software/gsyncit4/

Then gmail syncs the calendar with my Android phone.

So, if MS insist that there is only an upgrade path by buying the whole suite again…I may be tempted to take my desktop to LibreOffice also. The problem is that LibreOffice doesn’t have an email client program.

Does anyone use LibreOffice with some other email client program? If so, can you provide any details of what that software is and any feedback re:

Usability, similarity to Outlook, compatibility with Outlook PST and Contacts etc

Thanks,

Kevin

There’s a couple of programs in Office not as easily replaced, Outlook and Publisher. Otherwise LibreOffice is quite nice and can even open the discontinued Microsoft Works files.l

There’s several choices of installable E-Mail Clients, two free ones I like are Outlook Express Classic [OEClassic] and the client that that comes with the SeaMonkey browser. I have put both on Win7, Win8/8.1 and Win10 computers.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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Since you teach if you can get an education SKU of Office 2016 it should be very cheap.

Joe

--Joe

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Hmmm…hadn’t thought of that path…I’ll check it out.

EDIT
—-
Looks like Office Student doesn’t include Outlook. See https://products.office.com/en-us/home-and-student

Thanks,

K

Since you teach if you can get an education SKU of Office 2016 it should be very cheap.

Joe

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I asked MailBird TS a couple of questions. These were:

I currently use Office 2013. I use Outlook fairly extensively, especially calendaring. I store many emails locally. I sync my Outlook calendar to the gmail calendar and then my cellphone picks up the gmail calendar.

Does Mailbird handle this?

Does Mailbird handle reading/importing Outlook 2013 PST and Contacts?

Does Mailbird “import” Outlook 2013 accounts?

Is there a list of things somewhere that Mailbird does or does NOT handle from Outlook 2013?

Their answer was:

We do have google calendar in Mailbird.

You can import contacts to Mailbird but only from vcard format.

As for emails and accounts, this will be possible once we release import early next year.

We do not have a list of things that Mailbird does or does NOT handle from Outlook 2013.

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From browsing around the net it seems that there is no “upgrade” path for those people with licensed copies of Office 2013 to upgrade to Office 2016. It’s a case of buying the whole suite again (at over $200).

I have no desire to use Office365.

My desktop runs Win7. No plans to upgrade to Win10 until March 2016 or so.

I currently use LibreOffice on my laptop (when I teach) as it reads Office files just fine. Any teaching Powerpoint files I create on my desktop using dual monitors.

I do use the Outlook 2013 PC client extensively (typically email and calendaring). I use POP3 and store any email I wish to keep locally. My calendar snycs with gmail (using the excellent gSyncit Outlook addon at:

http://www.fieldstonsoftware.com/software/gsyncit4/

Then gmail syncs the calendar with my Android phone.

So, if MS insist that there is only an upgrade path by buying the whole suite again…I may be tempted to take my desktop to LibreOffice also. The problem is that LibreOffice doesn’t have an email client program.

Does anyone use LibreOffice with some other email client program? If so, can you provide any details of what that software is and any feedback re:

Usability, similarity to Outlook, compatibility with Outlook PST and Contacts etc

Thanks,

Kevin

There’s never been a free upgrade between versions of Office. MS are doing that for Windows 10, but I doubt very much they will ever offer a free upgrade of Office.

You say you don’t want Office365. I just wanted to make sure you know that it’s purely a licencing and delivery model. The applications are exactly the same, they can be installed on your PC and do not require internet access to use. The fundamental difference is that you pay once for Office (non-365) but don’t get updates to new versions vs you pay a monthly fee and get upgrades to new versions for free.

You’ll have to determine whether that is better or worse financially.

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@dogknees…..Yep, I understand the cost model. Thanks.

EDIT
—-
I just looked again.

Office for 1 PC is $69.99/year.
Office Home (5 PCs) is $99.99/year.
Office 2016 is $229.99/year.

Maybe I need to see if the wife wants Office on her PC. Then I could ditch LibreOffice on my laptop and install Office on it. Food for thought., I guess.

EDIT2
——
So, maybe Office Home (allowing 5 computers) is a possible upgrade path. A couple of questions (for anyone using that product):

1. I normally use my desktop for email (Outlook 2013). If I install Office Home on my desktop and my laptop…how are sync issues handled if I am traveling with the laptop and use Outlook on it? I use POP3 (not sure I want to go IMAP or not. So, if I DL email on the laptop (and using POP3) then I can’t get them back to storing those that I want to on my desktop. OR is there some method of easily doing that?

2. Is there any way of setting up the laptop (accounts, screen view etc, etc) by “cloning” settings from my desktop?

I backup my desktop PST and Contacts on a regular basis (as part of my backup regime), so can easily import those onto the laptop.

4. Is there any “guide” around about using Outlook on multiple PCs for the same accounts…i.e. dos and donts?

TIA

K

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BTW, from a quick browse of a review of Office 2016…it seems very largely aimed at business oriented updates. I did NOT see much use for me as an “old” retired guy that does adult teaching. I might just stick with Office 2013.

I’m sticking with O2013 as well for now, even tho I have a “free” upgrade to 2016 via my 365 sub. I see it mainly for enterprise teams, not a small biz guy like me, or home users. From a quick review of my own a week ago:

13+ Reasons You Should Upgrade to Microsoft Office 2016

I don’t see anything major, but look like generally nice changes. It looks like Office 2016 has been built from the ground-up with mobile and cloud users in mind, for teams it should be a pretty good upgrade.

Core products get a “Tell me” function which looks quite good, and there’s also a Smart Lookup which might be useful.

Outlook gets improved attachment handling–about time!–and a Clutter learning feature, for the not-quite-spam stuff.

Excel got rid of the dumb all caps ribbon text.

PowerPoint has a ‘record your screen processes with audio’, like screencasting.

I haven’t seen any deal breakers anywhere so far.

if I DL email on the laptop (and using POP3) then I can’t get them back to storing those that I want to on my desktop. OR is there some method of easily doing that?

There is a simple method, which I’ve used for a long time. There’s a setting in each POP3 installation to the effect “leave mail on server” or “delete mail on server”. On your laptop, phone etc you want the “leave” option set, and on your desktop pick the “delete after X days” or “delete from server when I delete locally” if it gives those choices.

Result: All your mail will always be available for your desktop to download, until you delete via desktop–and also downloadable on your other devices until you delete via desktop..

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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I’m sticking with O2013 as well for now, even tho I have a “free” upgrade to 2016 via my 365 sub. I see it mainly for enterprise teams, not a small biz guy like me, or home users. From a quick review of my own a week ago:

13+ Reasons You Should Upgrade to Microsoft Office 2016

I don’t see anything major, but look like generally nice changes. It looks like Office 2016 has been built from the ground-up with mobile and cloud users in mind, for teams it should be a pretty good upgrade.

Core products get a “Tell me” function which looks quite good, and there’s also a Smart Lookup which might be useful.

Outlook gets improved attachment handling–about time!–and a Clutter learning feature, for the not-quite-spam stuff.

Excel got rid of the dumb all caps ribbon text.

PowerPoint has a ‘record your screen processes with audio’, like screencasting.

I haven’t seen any deal breakers anywhere so far.

There is a simple method, which I’ve used for a long time. There’s a setting in each POP3 installation to the effect “leave mail on server” or “delete mail on server”. On your laptop, phone etc you want the “leave” option set, and on your desktop pick the “delete after X days” or “delete from server when I delete locally” if it gives those choices.

Result: All your mail will always be available for your desktop to download, until you delete via desktop–and also downloadable on your other devices until you delete via desktop..

I’m on my 21st day of a new laptop, on which I installed Office 2016, from my Office 365 Personal subscription. I was using previously Office 2013, from a corporate Office 365 subscription, on a company issued laptop.

I must say that I agree with your impression – there are no new “must have” features, but some of the new things are nice. I really like the Tell Me function, which I think can be very useful whenever you need to know how to do something with the specific Office app you are using. It has already been useful to me – I am definitely not an Office heavy user and some things just get forgotten if they are not part of my daily usage.

I also like the improved attachment handling in Outlook (my 2nd most used Office app, first is OneNote). It makes it easy to find attachments, especially if you have just zipped something or used another Office file and want to send it.

The fact that there are no bad surprises in this Office 2016 is precisely the reason that I think the upgrade is worthwhile. You will get the latest Office version, a few useful improvements (for those who “struggle” with the ribbon interface, Tell Me alone should be a reason to upgrade) and no unpleasant surprises. For anyone having an Office 365 subscription, I personally see no reason not to upgrade :).

I am so comfortable with the new version, that I will upgrade my Office 365 plan from Personal to Home and use some of the additional licenses in a couple family laptops I plan to upgrade from XP and Vista to 7 during the holidays, using the fact that I will upgrade some of the hardware as well.

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For anyone having an Office 365 subscription, I personally see no reason not to upgrade :).

Just an abundance of caution since mine is business use, let the main bugs get zapped first–thank you for being a guinea pig 😀

For example, a colleague is currently trying to nail down why an append import from Excel to Access is dropping 100 records without warning–same import which has worked for years. #1 suspect is Windows 10, #2 is office 2016.

I mostly don’t need the Tell Me feature, I have my Word and Excel ribbons festooned with my own custom tabs organized by task/project–which is a whole lot better than orged by software grouping–with the daily stuff on the Quick Access Toolbar.

But yes, sounds like a definite upgrade for me next year.

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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I didn’t expect a free upgrade to 2016, but I would have thought that MS could have offered current license holders something of a break. It doesn’t help that when I retired from the Federal government, I bought 2013 for $20 as part of their “bulk licensing scheme”. Now, I am retired I don’t like paying $200+ for the next version. I don’t mind paying an upgrade fee.

K

There’s never been a free upgrade between versions of Office. MS are doing that for Windows 10, but I doubt very much they will ever offer a free upgrade of Office.

You say you don’t want Office365. I just wanted to make sure you know that it’s purely a licencing and delivery model. The applications are exactly the same, they can be installed on your PC and do not require internet access to use. The fundamental difference is that you pay once for Office (non-365) but don’t get updates to new versions vs you pay a monthly fee and get upgrades to new versions for free.

You’ll have to determine whether that is better or worse financially.

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Thunderbird about to be dropped? See:

http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/mozilla-updates-firefox-abandons-thunderbird-and-firefox-os-291525.html

K

I have been using LibreOffice and Mozilla Thunderbird for a while now, and do not miss Office/Outlook at all.

I was able to import emails from Outlook into Thunderbird.

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I didn’t see a date on the URL that you posted, but the one that I posted had a December 16, 2015 date on the article and the first sentence stated “While it intends to stop work on its chat software Thunderbird[/B]“. Later on the same article states “In addition, the Mozilla Foundation is set to drop Thunderbird, its famous messaging software, the development of which has been abandoned for several years. Mozilla is therefore concentrating on its star browser more than ever.”

Whether the fact that one can still DL the software means that they are going to continue maintaining it…I don’t know.

K

Doesn’t look like it…

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/channel/

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BTW, from a quick browse of a review of Office 2016…it seems very largely aimed at business oriented updates. I did NOT see much use for me as an “old” retired guy that does adult teaching. I might just stick with Office 2013.

K

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I guess I don’t read that the same way. The text states “the Mozilla Foundation is set to drop Thunderbird“. Maybe Windows Secrets can find out for us?

K

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Back to the original question about Office 2013 to 2016. I have a subscription to Office 365, at the time Office 2013 version, and upgraded to 2016 version with no additional cost. I installed and operate Office from my local PC, not the cloud. If you have an Office 365 account, you can go into your account, at office.com, and deactivate your current install. When you reinstall, it will automatically be the newer version.

I don’t know if this helps or I misunderstood the question of going from 2013 to 2016.

Merry Christmas to all.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. -Edmond Burke-

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Thanks edn….in my mind at least I was not looking to give MS money to rent Office. The only reason would have been if my wife (who doesn’t seem to like Libre Office) would convert to Outlook (she currently used the browser to pickup her email). She seems to dislike Outlook more (having used it work before she retired) than using the browser. Personally, I prefer Outlook.

Currently, when I develop viewgraphs for teaching I do it on my desktop with Office 2013 but teach using LibreOffice reading those Powerpoint files using the laptop. So, having Office on the laptop would be useful but not worth going with 365 just for that.

K

I don’t know if this helps or I misunderstood the question of going from 2013 to 2016.

Merry Christmas to all.

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“While it intends to stop work on its chat software Thunderbird“

Haven’t seen it used as a ‘chat’ function, maybe I missed that?

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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Yep, I saw that also….I assumed (bad word, I know) that that was a Thunderbird “hidden talent” or that maybe the statement referred to email as “chatting”. I tried Thunderbird some number of years ago and didn’t really like it. I used Eudora Pro for many years but when they stopped developing that I switched to Outlook PC client (the same as I was using at work at that time). It seemed like the easiest choice at the time…still is .

K

Haven’t seen it used as a ‘chat’ function, maybe I missed that?

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MS offered a year of Office 365 at half-price ($35 instead of $70) in October. I had been using Office 2007. I too like the “Tell Me What You Want to Do” option. It certainly is an improvement over Office 2007. I also use Thunderbird as my email client but I’m considering switching to Outlook.

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Why bother? I installed Office 2016 on one PC and wished I’d stayed with Office 2010 because a few useful components in Office 2010, especially in Outlook 2010, have been thrown out to make it more streamlined. Do the developers at Microsoft have any experience of working in a proper office environment? I think not, and are only interested in prolonging their jobs by creating new unnecessary “upgrades”.

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You may have a point, although from looking at 2016 “features”…they all seem like “corporate” type additions and being retired now…I don’t I need them.

K

Why bother? I installed Office 2016 on one PC and wished I’d stayed with Office 2010 because a few useful components in Office 2010, especially in Outlook 2010, have been thrown out to make it more streamlined. Do the developers at Microsoft have any experience of working in a proper office environment? I think not, and are only interested in prolonging their jobs by creating new unnecessary “upgrades”.

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It depends upon what is meant by “abandonment”, I suppose. Thunderbird is expecting to separate from Mozilla’s Firefox completely in the near future. Here is a quote from the Thunderbird blog:
“The Thunderbird development team is working hard on the next major release of Thunderbird, version 45, which is due for release in March of 2016.” https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/

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Thanks RockE. There seem to be conflicting websites re Thunderbird. I don’t use it anyway, so no bother to me.

Outlook is my most used Office app, followed by Powerpoint, Excel and Word (although I have used all of these extensively over many years…Government documentation dontcha know ).

I appreciate all the feed back from all the responders that have used 2016 and Office365.

Happy New Year!

K

It depends upon what is meant by “abandonment”, I suppose. Thunderbird is expecting to separate from Mozilla’s Firefox completely in the near future. Here is a quote from the Thunderbird blog:
“The Thunderbird development team is working hard on the next major release of Thunderbird, version 45, which is due for release in March of 2016.” https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/

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