4 Features you likely overlooked in Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2016

Most people open Word, type, save and close it again. The 2016 Professional Plus edition, however, shipped with a handful of helpers that sit quietly in the ribbon and rarely get clicked. If your office still runs Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2016 on a few desks, the four features below can shave real minutes off routine work, and none of them calls for a training course.

1. Tell Me: a search box for commands

Next to the last ribbon tab sits a small field with a light-bulb icon and the words "Tell me what you want to do". Type a plain phrase such as "line spacing", "freeze panes" or "track changes" and the matching command appears in a short list, ready to run. There is no need to remember which tab hides it.

The box reacts to context, too. With a table selected, the suggestions lean towards table tools; with a picture selected, image options rise to the top. For staff who switch between Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook only occasionally, this is often the quickest way to stop hunting through menus. Pressing Alt+Q jumps straight into the field.

2. Clutter: a second inbox for low-priority mail

Outlook 2016 connected to an Exchange or Office 365 mailbox could switch on Clutter, which watched how you treated incoming mail and moved messages you tended to ignore into a separate folder. Newsletters you never open and automated notices you skim past gradually stop crowding the main view.

Nothing is deleted along the way. You can check the Clutter folder once a day, drag anything important back to the inbox, and the filter learns from that feedback. Microsoft later replaced Clutter with the Focused Inbox in many setups, so depending on how your mailbox is hosted you may see one or the other.

3. Smart Lookup for research inside the document

Right-click a word or phrase and choose Smart Lookup. A pane opens on the right with definitions, web results and related images pulled from Bing. Microsoft grouped this under the name Insights, and it works in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook alike.

It is handy for checking an unfamiliar term in a contract draft or getting background on a supplier named in a spreadsheet. Keep in mind that the lookup sends the selected text to an online service, so skip it for confidential phrases.

4. Six chart types Excel lacked before

Excel 2016 added charts that previously needed add-ins or awkward workarounds:

You will find them under Insert, then Recommended Charts or All Charts. Selecting a clean, labelled data range first gives the tidiest results, and the new types accept the same formatting options as the classic column and line charts.

Keeping an older suite in good shape

Microsoft's support for the 2016 release has ended, which means no new security fixes arrive. If you keep using it, install the final available updates, be careful with macros in files from outside the company, and plan when to move to a supported version. When buying any licence, old or new, purchase from a legitimate seller and store the proof of purchase with your records so activation questions are easy to settle later.