Upgrading from Office 2016 to 365 and Outlook questions

Currently I have Office 2016 installed. I am not using OneDrive to store my files on (limited capacity).
As for Outlook : data is stored locally in .pst files.
I have quite multiple .pst files: multiple email accounts (Outlook, Gmail and ISP provided account), obviously all configured to use POP3.

I never owned a laptop, but I have ordered for one.

My intention is to switch of Office 365.

I have a few questions :

Uninstall 2016/Install 365
Frankly I am not sure how things will go after subscribing to Office 365 Home.
Q: Do I need to uninstall 2016 first, or what?
Q: Can I find a kind of guideline somewhere specifically about this 2016 -> 365 switch?

Storage of Outlook 365 (.ost) and document files
Right now, all documents and .pst files are stored within a password protected container.
Within Office 2016 and Outlook, all paths are set accordingly. Meaning that I need to unlock the container before anything else is being used, be screencaptures, PDF files, no matter what.
I intend to create a encrypted drive on the laptop (using BitLocker) and will apply a registry patch to 'force' Outlook to store the .ost files within this encrypted drive. (see: ForceOSTPath on Slipstick.com)

Obviously I need to make Outlook changes on my desktop as well (POP3->IMAP)

Q: Whereas the .pst files, including some archive pst files, contain mail of many years I guess I will start with a clean mailbox when switching to .ost ?

Q: Probably all contacts, calendar, tasks, whatever need to be created from scratch?

Switching languages
Currently I can easily switch from my local language to English, using Microsoft Office Tools-> Language Preferences.
Q: How is that with 365?


Any tips are welcome.

Thanks!

Hi there

if you have Office 2016 I'm not sure why you would gain anything by switching since you already have essentially the same software.

Office 2016/2019 handles languages easily enough - just install language pack from the options-->language
ensure though when you switch languages you change editing options too otherwise you might have say German as language but editing options in English - so nearly every word you type will be flagged as error or something.

It must be the same with Office/365.

One thing to beware of is that email addresses are hard if not impossible to configure manually now in the new screens -- with office2016/2019 you can still manually configure by using the Mail(Ms Office 2016) applet in control panel -- the same applet for office 2019 (shows office 2016 in the applet though). The "Manual option" doesn't work in the new screens "" so if you have non standard mail servers you will be hosed up unless you know about the control panel trick.

I don't know about outlook/365 but I'd imagine it's similar.

Cheers
jimbo