It was released on macOS on July 9, 2015, and on Microsoft Windows on September 22, 2015, for Office 365 subscribers.

[12][better source needed] New features in the Windows release include the ability to create, open, edit, save, and share files in the cloud straight from the desktop, a new search tool for commands available in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, Access, Visio and Project named "Tell Me", more "Send As" options in Word and PowerPoint, and co-authoring in real time with users connected to Office Online.

[13][14][15] Other smaller features include insights, a feature powered by Bing to provide contextual information from the web, a Designer sidebar in PowerPoint to optimize the layout of slides, more new chart types and templates in Excel (such as treemap, sunburst chart (also known as a ring chart), waterfall chart, box plot and histogram, and financial and calendar templates), new animations in PowerPoint (such as the Morph transition), the ability to insert online video in OneNote, enhanced support for attachments for emails in Outlook (supporting both locally-stored files and files on OneDrive or SharePoint), a Groups feature for Outlook, and a data loss prevention feature in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

[14][15][16] Microsoft Office 2016 is the first in the series to support the vector graphic format SVG.

[19][20] In Word, there is a new Design tab, an Insights feature, which is powered by Bing, and real-time co-authoring.

[20] Outlook 2016 for Mac has very limited support for synchronization of collaboration services outside basic email.

[23] Office for Mac received Touch Bar support in an update on February 16, 2017, following the launch of the 2016 MacBook Pro models.

All traditional editions of Microsoft Office 2016 contain Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote and are licensed for use on one computer.

In response to feedback, Microsoft later added the Tell Me box to the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) version of OneNote.