Upgrading from Office 2010 to Office 2016

There is a big difference between Office 2010 and Office 2016.  More precisely there is a big difference between Office 2010 and Office 2013.  Office 2013 brought in a push towards online services.  There is not that much difference between Office 2013 and Office 2016.  With Office 2013/2016 you can restore your Office online from the Online Account created when you install Office.  Office 2013/2016 are associated with a Microsoft Account, which makes it more difficult for counterfeiters.  Both Office 2013/2016 are more associated with OneDrive.  Office 2013/2016 licence allows only one install on a computer at a time.  When Office 2013 was first introduced it was not possible to transfer it to a new computer, that was  a big mistake by Microsoft and soon had to change its mind. 

It is very difficult to purchase Office 2013/2016 on DVD.  Instead you need to purchase a Product Key which really is a Redemption Key.  The Redemption Key is used to download Office 2013/2016 from Microsoft Servers. The actual Product Key is stored on the Office Account.

All previous data is available/useable in the new version, uninstalling the previous version has no impact on data.  

That would imply the 2010 apps are storing data in the same place as the 2016 apps, so that after installing 2016, all the 2016 apps would see exactly the data the 2010 apps are seeing.  The same registry locations, the same directory locations, etc.  And you're saying that uninstalling 2010 would not delete any of those locations, so that that data is preserved for 2016 apps.  So for example, all the 2010 Word macros, templates, styles, history, add-ins and so forth would not be lost in the uninstall.  Same for Excel.  And the Outlook contacts accounts, calendars, add-ins, and so forth.  You may be right, but it has been my experience that an uninstall would remove anything associated with the 2010 apps. 

I need to understand a little better how this parallel install of Office 2016 works, since afterwards, there will be a 2010 version and a 2016 version of each app that can be run independent of each other and possible at the same time.

There are no 'Upgrade' office versions in that  the install of the newer version of a click to run product installs in Parallel with the earlier version.

All previous data is available/useable in the new version, uninstalling the previous version has no impact on data.

Hi David,

As Palcouk has mentioned, it will have no impact on the documents you created using Office 2010, your file should remain as is after you install Office 2016.

We always recommend users to make sure they back up all their important files before making any changes, this is to avoid lost of documents.

Please let us know if you need further assistance.

Office 2016 and 2010 use different program file locations and to a large extent different registry entries, but they share some folder locations that are better not shared - see http://www.gmayor.com/Toolbars_in_word_2007.htm  which shows how to separate the more problematical folders when different versions are present.

While you can have two versions of Outlook installed, and they will share the same data file, you cannot use them at the same time.