People’s favorite Microsoft Office is getting the latest version, Microsoft Office 2019. The productivity suite preview is aimed more at corporate customers rather than individual users. The tech giant Microsoft announced the preview process for Office 2019, the next in its long line of productivity bundles. And while it wasn’t an invite-only beta, not every organization that runs Office can jump into testing.
When Microsoft first began talking about Office 2019, the company said that Office 2019 would only be supported on Windows 10, but did not categorically rule out running the suite on older operating systems, such as Windows 7. Well, now the company said in a document.
“Office 2019 Preview can only be installed on Windows 10. Only versions of Windows 10 that are currently receiving servicing updates are supported.”
Easy Steps to get Microsoft Office 2019
Only customers who have rights to Microsoft Collaborate, the portal, and service that last year replaced the long-running beta program called Microsoft Connect, only those users are eligible for the Office 2019 preview. To register with Collaborate, you must have access to the Microsoft Dev Center Dashboard and have a Microsoft account.
The starting point for registration is here.
- Access the Dev Center Dashboard, sign into Collaborate and click on Overview button in the sidebar on the left.
- Select Engagements from the row of four options.
- Pick Office 2019 Commercial Preview from the list of available options which Microsoft now calls a preview program select Join, accept the terms offered and click Join once again.
- To access the preview – click on the Packages icon in the sidebar on the left. It’s the second from the bottom. Two items should appear.
- The “Office Deployment Tool (Win32)” is a 2MB .exe file that Microsoft billed as the tool to “download and configure the Office 2019 Preview.”
“Office 2019 Commercial Preview Documentation” includes several Microsoft Word files. The documents spell out how to use the deployment tool to install the preview, how IT can use System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) to deploy the beta, across multiple machines, how the preview will be updated, and more.
Let us know if you like the beta version of Microsoft Office 2019?
