Microsoft has started the public testing stage of this Office 2019 productivity suite, with commercial customers now allowed to try out the upcoming version ahead of everyone else.

The so-called Office 2019 Commercial Preview is available now and it includes early versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, Access, Project, Visio, and Onenote (for Windows 10).

All these improvements will be included in Office 2019, but will also be made available to Office 365 subscribers as well.

Microsoft says this is actually just the first phase of its preview program, with Office 2019 for Mac, Exchange 2019, SharePoint 2019, Project Server 2019, and Skype for Business 2019, to also get testing versions for businesses within your coming months.
"Particularly aimed at businesses"

Office 2019 will exclusively support Windows 10 and will offer the Microsoft Store version of Onenote instead among the desktop sibling. Onenote for Windows 10, however, won't be forced on users, but it actually is the recommended choice for new customers.

Office 2019 for Mac, however, will continue to come with an improved version of these existing Onenote package, but for Windows, only Windows 10 users will be allowed to install the productivity suite.

With this new release, Microsoft is also improving Click-to-Run (C2R) with more features to deployment across organizations.

"With Office 2019, we're moving the perpetual versions of Office to C2R exclusively so IT can take advantage of modern deployment technology to reduce costs and improve security. The advantages of C2R include predictable monthly security updates, up-to-date apps on installation, reduced network consumption through Windows 10 download optimization technology, and an easy upgrade path to Office 365 ProPlus," Jared Spataro, General Manager for Office, says.

"C2R offers the same enterprise-focused management capabilities as MSI-based products and will also support an in-place upgrade when you move to Microsoft Office 2019 from older MSI-based products."

IT pros who yearn to try out the new Office 2019 Commercial Preview be required to sign up using this link.