Microsoft Office: Office For Mac

Microsoft has finally released a new version of its Office for Mac software, Office for Mac 2016. The new software is available for those willing to purchase an Office 365 subscription, or can be bought by itself. It’s been a whopping five years since the last Office for Mac release, being called Office for Mac 2011. But what’s different about the new software? Is it worth subscribing and having to pay money every month for? Or is Office for Mac 2011 still up to the task? For the purpose of this review we will be discussing Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and not other apps like Outlook and Publisher.

Having said that, many of the principles such as having an updated design and new features are likely true across all Office 2016 apps. User Interface. Toolbar Hidden Apart from the theme, there seems to be fewer buttons in the toolbars, which is really a good thing. What it means is that Microsoft has chosen to present the most-used features so that they’re right there and take the not-so-used features and hidden them away. Users can make the already-clean interface look even cleaner by clicking on the already open toolbar tab, which will hide the main toolbar away. This is perfect for those who simply need to type and who use shortcuts for making text bold or italic. One nice touch to Word is the new Style pane, which replaces the floating panel (although the pane can be dragged out to float).

The Excel equivalent is the Formula-building pane, and PowerPoint has an animation pane. Speaking of animations, each of the apps feature more animations for things like showing and hiding toolbars and changing cells in Excel (I may have spent a good 10-20 seconds simply changing cells and watching the rectangular box move around the screen). In general, all three apps offer little to no learning curve, with only the real power users having to get used to a slightly tweaked interface. The interface is a little different, however the changes are a good thing, and they really bring Office into 2015. Performance And Features I would be hard pressed to say that Office for Mac 2016 is a lot faster than Office 2011, or that it offers “better performance”. However, every document I have opened up so far has opened perfectly without any issues.

There is only an Office 2011 for the Mac. M/S is not planning to release Office 2013 for the Mac. If you work for a company that has a M/S relationship you might be able to get a heavily discounted (Home Use version) Office for the Mac thru your IT department.

Be sure to update to the latest version of iPhoto '11 before you launch iPhoto for the first time. Apple ilife 11 for mac.

It might open slightly faster, but this is barely discernible. Since 2011, Microsoft has come up with a number of new products, including more cloud offerings and collaboration options. Word, Excel and PowerPoint offer much better integration with OneDrive, allowing users to open and save apps straight from their OneDrive accounts. It’s important to note that it might take a few seconds for some to get used to OneDrive integration with Office.

When a user is opening or saving a file to or from OneDrive, the interface looks like a Windows interface, and falls in line with the rest of the Office interface. When the user decides to switch to saving or opening a file from the Mac, the interface switches to an Apple Finder-like interface. The two different interfaces take a little getting used to, but it’s really not a big issue and is pretty easy to navigate. Collaboration has also been a focus of Office, allowing two users to work on the same document at the same time. Unfortunately, this feature seems a little awkward and underdeveloped, especially in comparison to the likes of Google Docs. This is especially true considering the fact that the other person will not see changes made until you save the the document, while Google Docs allows for real-time collaboration. For those who frequently send and receive documents with co-workers, it doesn’t seem as though there are any issues with backwards compatibility.

The Styles pane isn’t just different in terms of how it looks, it also offers a much easier way to pre-set text, paragraphs, and so on. It can be found on the right side of the home tab. Excel also features a few important changes, now recognizing many Windows shortcuts – of course, considering we’re looking at Office for Mac, most users will probably be more used to their Mac shortcuts, and thankfully the software recognizes these as well. When it comes to PowerPoint, the same collaboration features have been added as Word.

Microsoft has also added a Presenter view, enabling the presenter to see their notes while the audience will see the current slide. This is a feature that has been in Google Slides for some time now, so it’s nice to see Microsoft taking note.

The animations panel has also been altered to now allow users to preview animations in their presentations and edit them to fit what they want. Conclusions There’s really no argument for Office for Mac 2011 being better than the 2016 version, however there is some question as to whether or not upgrading is worth subscribing to Office 365. For those that really only need to type a few documents every now and then and who don’t really need anything beyond that, you’re probably going to be fine with Office for Mac 2011.

If you really like the new interface and could use the added features, then Office for Mac 2016 will be great for you. Office 365 for Home will cost $9.99 per month, and allows users to use the software on up to five computers, five tablets, and five phones. Office 365 Personal is also an option, costing $6.99 and allowing for use of the software on one computer, one tablet, and one phone. If you don’t want to pay a subscription fee, however, you can buy Office 2016 Home or Student for $149.99. Another reason for subscribing to Office 365 is the fact that users will receive upgrades as part of the subscription at no extra cost. Microsoft should be releasing updates as often as it does on Windows, meaning that Mac users won’t have to lag behind as much as they have in the past. In general, Office for Mac 2016 is a substantially better Office suite, that brings the software into modern times.

While it’s been five years since the last release of Office for Mac, it was well worth the wait. Have you already upgraded to Office 2016 or would you consider upgrading? Lets us know your thoughts in the comments below, or by starting a new discussion in our.