On September 22, Microsoft released Office 2016 for all new Office 365 subscribers, whether they want it or not. That’s OK, Office is a great product and new subscribers will be looking at how Office 2016 will integrate with their existing productivity and workload management tools before renting.

How about existing subscribers, though, who already have their current version of Office tightly integrated with their other productivity tools? Microsoft will be pushing the updated version to them in October. Here is how to control your own update schedule…..

If you don’t want to be an early adopter guinea pig (sorry Microsoft but you do have form here), or if you want to ensure that Office 2016 will work seamlessly with your other productivity tools, simply disable updates. Here’s how:

Hit the ‘File’ Tab on your toolbar > Click on ‘Account’ in the navigation bar > Update Options > Disable updates.

If you are an Office 365 subscriber you will have to migrate to Office 2016 sometime soon, and from a security perspective updating regularly is important, so check compatibility soon and once the dust settles on the early adopters of the update, enable updates on your own subscription and get used to the new Office.

Of course, all my managing critical results and competing priorities training programmes cover all current versions of Microsoft Outlook used by my clients.