Microsoft Office 2016 Professional Plus

Overview

Office 2016 is the release a lot of machines never moved off, and there are reasons for that beyond inertia. It is the last cycle that feels entirely local: nothing in the ribbon pushes you toward a cloud location, the file dialogs open on the drive rather than a service, and the whole suite starts fast on hardware that would struggle with a current build. For document work that has to match what a colleague has open on an older machine, this is often the safest thing to install.

This is the Professional Plus edition, which means the full set rather than the cut down home lineup. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, Publisher and the Skype for Business client are all present. The archive holds both the 32-bit and 64-bit installers, the licensing has been applied ahead of time, and a magnet is posted alongside the direct link for anyone on a connection that will not hold a three gigabyte transfer.

What is in the suite

Word, Excel and PowerPoint are the reason most people are here and all three are complete, with the full formula library in Excel including the array and lookup functions, the reference and mail merge tools in Word, and the presenter view and animation set in PowerPoint. Outlook is the full desktop client with support for both the standard mail protocols and the corporate account type, and it keeps a local data file rather than requiring a synced mailbox.

Access and Publisher are the two that only ship in the Professional tier and the two people most often go looking for. Access handles a local database with forms, queries and reports and remains the quickest way to put a front end on a table of records. Publisher covers the small print jobs that do not justify a full layout program, with the templates and the commercial print settings intact.

Choosing the right architecture

Both installers are in the archive and the choice matters more than people expect. The 64-bit build is what you want if Excel work involves very large sheets, because it can address memory beyond the four gigabyte ceiling that constrains the 32-bit version. The 32-bit build is the safer choice if you depend on older add-ins or on a document automation setup that was written years ago, since a great deal of that code was never rebuilt for the wider address space.

The two cannot be mixed on one machine, and the installer will refuse to proceed if the other architecture is already present. If you need to switch, remove the existing installation completely first, including the click to run components if any are lingering from a newer suite.

Living alongside newer builds

This suite can share a machine with a newer Office in the click to run format, but it is not a clean arrangement and file associations will fight over which program opens a document. If you only need the two Professional applications, install those alone from the setup configuration and leave Word, Excel and PowerPoint to the newer build. The archive readme has the exact configuration entries for that arrangement.

Document compatibility runs in both directions. Files written by current versions open here, with the caveat that a feature added after this cycle appears as static content rather than an editable object. Files written here open anywhere, which is the reason this build is still handed around offices that standardised on it.

What you get

• Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, Publisher and the Skype for Business client
• Both 32-bit and 64-bit installers in one archive
• Volume channel build with licensing applied ahead of time
• Full Excel formula and analysis library including the data model tools
• Outlook with local data file support and no forced mailbox sync
• Access database engine with forms, queries and report designer
• Configurable setup so you can install only the applications you want
• Multilingual interface packs included
• Direct archive and torrent magnet both posted

Inside the archive

• Office 2016 Professional Plus installers, 32-bit and 64-bit
• Language interface packs for the list shown above
• Setup configuration files for selective installs
• Readme covering the side by side arrangement with newer suites
• Magnet link file for the torrent transfer

System requirements

Installing it

1. Remove any existing Office installation completely, including click to run leftovers from a newer suite.
2. Unpack the archive to a local drive and suspend real time protection.
3. Open the folder for the architecture you want and run the setup executable as administrator.
4. Let the installer finish without interrupting it. On a mechanical drive this can take fifteen minutes or more.
5. Open Word once, check the account panel shows a licensed state, and close it. Nothing further is required.

Mirrors

Release history

Questions about this release

Comments

Comments are read before they appear. If a build stops working, say so here and it gets rebuilt rather than quietly left up.