Microsoft Releases Office 2016 For Mac
by Brandon Chester on July 9, 2015 12:48 AM EST
The last major release of Microsoft Office for Mac was the 2011 edition. Due to Microsoft's naming and release timing, the release of Office 2011 actually took place in late 2010. While Microsoft has made updates to Office 2011 over the years, such as the addition of Retina display support in 2012, the applications in the software suite still look quite dated due to their use of pre-Yosemite OS X interface elements. Today, Microsoft is bringing Office for Mac visually and functionally up to par with the versions on other platforms with the release of Office 2016 for Mac.
Microsoft states that users who use Office on a Windows PC or an iPad will feel right at home with the new apps on OS X, and I'm inclined to agree. The interface doesn't try to fit in with other parts of OS X with transparency like the previous version did with older OS X design principles, but with Office being such a ubiquitous program I appreciate Microsoft keeping the interface mostly the same across all computers, tablets, and smartphones.
In addition to the new interfaces for core Office apps like Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint, Microsoft is now including OneNote as part of the application suite. Since there was such a long gap between the original release of Office 2011 and the release of OneNote for Mac, OneNote has been offered as a separate application up until this point.
Office 2016 for Mac is available now to Office 365 subscribers, and in September it will be available for purchase as a standalone product without the need for a subscription.
Source: Microsoft Office Blog
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
18 Comments
View All Comments
LordConrad - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
I hope you can still disable the Ribbon in Office 2016 for Mac.Max Oscar - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
Thats Great News Every one is waiting for it anspecially the Microsoft Office 2013 Users.And I am one of them.n0nsense - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
Well ... while it might look better than 2011, it still a crap.Outlook:
The search is not working. I have thousands of mails and i can't delete them. So whenever i need to find something, i have to go to web version.
Insert (a table for example) is not there.
And that supposed to be a business tool. Can't imagine anyone sane to use MS for personal things.
OneNote - no support for local files. One of my employees, before she took a maternity leave, left quite a lot of onenote files that supposed to help train new guys. Unfortunately, we switched to full Mac use. So it is possible to upload them to onedrive. I just wonder if anyone at MS have ever tried to do that. The office365 is much less convenient than google's offer.
Basically I can continue to bash them endlessly. But there is no point.
Michael Bay - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
>full mac use>for actual human office work
Well, there is your issue.
idris - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
RE: Search in Outlook:Have a look & see if this will resolve your issue: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2769651
pablo906 - Saturday, July 18, 2015 - link
I'm not having the issues you describe in Outlook. I think your database may be messed up and you need to use the repair tool.OneNote: I'm not sure you understand this version. It has full SharePoint and O365 integration, unless you've moved to O365 and have OneDrive for Business with an admin running it it won't work like you want it to. It's only cloud enabled, though you can point it to an in-house sharepoint server for local'ish support. O365 comes with sharepoint also. you can print notes to PDF, the main competitor in the space - EverNote basically works nearly exactly the same way.
Excel is much faster than the older version especially working with really large spreadsheets or spreadsheets that are hogs due to a huge amount of calculations that need to be done (complex formulas with lookups etc.) Pivot Tables haven't been locking up for me when sorting data which is a giant fix.
Word - well I think we can all agree that typing in 2015 isn't exactly like find the Higgs at this point and Word is still handily the best in this space.
Lord 666 - Saturday, July 11, 2015 - link
One other complaint that was not addressed since the beta of Office 2016 for Mac is the lack of ability to make multiple profiles. For example, the work I am involved in more or less requires separation of email due to conflict of interests.Well, in Windows this is very easy to address and create a separate email profile and have it prompt which one upon opening. Not for Office 2016 for Mac, no such option exists.
Sure, you can add multiple email accounts to the single profile, but that technically creates issues legally.
Dadofamunky - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link
I'm a big fan of Office 365. Much to my surprise, it's my preferred version of Office, well, pretty much ever since the days of Windows 3.0. I really like the subscription model and I think it's priced very reasonably; for the projects I've done, its performance and functionality is the best I've ever seen. Of course I can nitpick about a lot of details (Word remains difficult with longer documents and more complex formatting) but if that version gets to Apple, I think the Office nirvana will be at hand - multiple platforms in harmony, able to share files willy-nilly. Glad to see Office getting a major update on the Mac, though. It should, and sooner than this.