Office 2016 for MAC has been released and is now available for Office 365 customers! One of the great benefits of an Office 365 ProPlus or Office 365 Business subscription is that it gives your users access to Office for up to 5 workstations. This includes Office for MAC. Sep 27, 2018 - That means that there are now three versions of Microsoft Office out in the. And replaces the 2016 versions of Word, Excel, etc. And includes many of the new. “When a new version of macOS is released, Office 2019 for Mac's. And businesses who do not have the necessary internet access required to.
Microsoft Office remainsthe gold standard of productivity suites, but there are several different versions/editions of Office available for users of Apple hardware. Together with Parallels Desktop and Parallels Access, the Apple user can access just about any of these versions/editions on each of their hardware platforms.
While Microsoft produces all of these suites and the suites have a very high degree of similar functionality and visual fidelity, they are not identical, and no single suite has all the features of the entire group.
This blog post will enumerate most of the differences between the following suites and their apps:
- Office 2016 for Windows (“WinOffice 2016”)
- Office 2016 for Mac (“MacOffice 2016”)
- Office 2013 for Windows (“WinOffice 2013”)
- Office 2011 for Mac (“MacOffice 2011”)
- Office for iPad (“iPad Office”)
The vast bulk of the content in this post is in the following five tables, which list the differences I found. Note that because the tables lists differences, no row of the table will be all checkmarks (since this would mean that all the suites had this feature, and thus this wasn’t a difference) nor will any row be all “X”s (since this would mean that no suite had this feature, and thus it isn’t a difference either). I am listing the differences because listing the similarities would take much too much room—the suites are that identical.
Hopefully, this will assist you in choosing the best version/edition for your use. In addition, I will describe my personal Office setup.
Here are the five tables (click on each thumbnail for an enlarged view):
Table 1: Suite-wide differences
Table 2: Word differences
Table 2
Table 3: Excel differences
Table 4: PowerPoint differences
Table 4
Table 5: Outlook differences
What differences surprised me the most? These two:
Right-to-left language support in iPad Office:
WinOffice has had support for right-to-left languages like Arabic and Hebrew for many years. While Mac users have been asking for such support, no version of MacOffice, even the latest MacOffice 2016, has had such support. Therefore, I was quite pleasantly surprised when iPad Office added support for Arabic, Hebrew, and Thai.(See Figure 1.)
Figure 1: Arabic text in iPad Word on iPad Pro
No multiple selection support in iPad PowerPoint:
All Office programs provide some way to select content in a document (text, cells, or shapes, for example). This is needed so that the user can apply some operation on just that content (change the color, for example). The Windows or Mac Office applications also provide for “advanced” types of selections. In Word, this is non-contiguous text selections; in Excel this is non-contiguous cell selections; and in PowerPoint this is the simultaneous selection of multiple objects. In Word and Excel, these really are advanced types of selections that are rarely needed by even sophisticated users of Word or Excel. (See Figures 2 and 3.)
Figure 2: Non-contiguous cell selection in MacExcel 2011.
Figure 3: Non-contiguous text selection in MacWord 2011.
But in PowerPoint, the ability to select multiple objects is a pretty basic capability. (See Figure 4.)
Figure 4: Multiple selections in MacPowerPoint 2011.
I wasn’t surprised to learn that non-contiguous selections were not supported in iPad Word or iPad Excel, but I was astonished and very disappointed to learn that multiple selections were not supported in iPad PowerPoint.
My Use of Office
So, which do I use? The short answer is that I use all of them.
I worked on the MacOffice team at Microsoft for several years, and at that time I also worked closely with colleagues on the WinOffice teams. Because of this background, I am often able to pick just the right Office app that will make a given task the easiest to do. One task might be particularly well suited to MacWord 2011 because Publishing Layout View—a feature only in that one Word version—will make this task easy. Another task might be suited to WinPPT because of the Animation Painter, which is not in any MacPPT version. Yet another task might be best suited to WinPPT 2013 because it needs an Office extension not available in other Office suites.
Having all the versions of Office at your fingertips used to be rather hard to setup, not to mention very expensive. Luckily, that is no longer the case.
With a single Office 365 Home subscription, you get five installs of the Office suite and you can pick which versions make up this set of five. Since I have Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition on my Mac, I can run any version of Windows without rebooting. Because I have different versions of Windows running on my Mac, I can also run different versions of WinOffice on my Mac and have everything I need on one computer. (You can download a free trial of Parallels Desktop for Mac here.) Here’s my setup:
- MacOffice 2011 is my main productivity suite and is installed on my El Capitan MacBook Pro. MacOutlook 2016 came out long before the entire MacOffice 2016 suite, and because of the vastly improved performance of MacOutlook 2016, I use it as my main email client, instead of MacOutlook 2011.
- WinOffice 2013 is installed in a Windows 7 virtual machine (VM) (under Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition) on my MacBook Pro.
- iPad Office is installed on my iPad. As you saw in the tables above, iPad Office is lacking many of the features of WinOffice and MacOffice, so I also haveParallels Accesson my iPad which lets me access and run the full featured versions of any Office suite (or any other application) on my computers and use them with natural iPad gestures. (You can download a free trial of Parallels Access for iOS and Android to access your Mac and/or PC atwww.parallels.com/access).
- MacOffice 2016 is installed in an El Capitan VM (under Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition) on my MacBook Pro.
- WinOffice 2016 is installed in a Windows 10 VM (under Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition) on my MacBook Pro.
So, why don’t I use MacOffice 2016 as my main productivity suite? Four reasons:
- Only MacWord 2011 has Publishing Layout View, a feature I depend on heavily and consider essential.
- To me, MacOffice 2016 has a kind of cartoon-like look to the user interface that just doesn’t appeal to me.
- There was no compelling feature pulling me to MacOffice 2016, and
- Inertia was keeping me in MacOffice 2011.
Those are my five installs, and with this setup, I have easy and immediate access to the best Office app for any particular task. I tend to store all my documents on Dropbox so that I have easy access to them from any of my Office suites or Apple platforms.
Which Office suite(s) do you use, and what’s your setup?
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Best Office for mac apps – Draft important data, collate heavy information and manage your documents with these excellent mac office apps.We do a lot of use of office applications every day. From drafting notes to making calculations to creating spread sheets the office applications offer ample features which makes our day-to-day tasks much convenient.
Following are some of the best office for mac apps using which you may conclude various daily tasks with utmost expediency.
Following are some of the best office for mac apps using which you may conclude various daily tasks with utmost expediency.
Apple iWork for mac: Official Office app for mac
Apple iWork for mac is actually Apple’s contender to MS office. Word processing, slide presentation applications, and spreadsheets are some of its best features.
Apple iWork for mac is compatible with Office i.e. one file can be opened and updated with the other. Since this app is much simpler to use as compared to MS office, it is considered to be one of the best Office apps for mac.
BBEdit for mac
BBEdit for mac is an excellent office application for the web developers as it supports more than two dozen programming languages. It comes with a 30-day free trial and helps the developers in writing code in an easy to use and distraction free environment.
This application has the ability to integrate with any web browsers which help in quick preview and website prototyping.
Evernote for mac
Evernote for mac lets you manage all your note-taking requirements. It not only helps you in organizing your information but also lets you collate important data in a sophisticated manner.
With Evernote for mac, you can easily access your important notes as the application syncs your accounts across all the platforms and devices.
Keynote for mac – Best Office app for mac
Keynote for mac is Apple’s flagship presentation program which enables the users to create excellent presentations. Users who are already acquainted with Power point would definitely have a wonderful experience of creating a cinematic presentation. This allows the users to express information in a very creative and dramatical manner.
LibreOffice for mac
LibreOffice for mac is a comprehensive application which can be considered as a professional office productivity and management package for your mac device.
This application has a complete set of office management tools which can actually be termed as a replacement for MS office itself.
LibreOffice for mac has 6 distinct management tools which include: Text document, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Drawing, Formula, and Database.
TextWrangler for mac
TextWrangler for mac can be considered as miniature BBEdit for Mac as it presents some of the features which are similar to it. It is actually a general purpose editor and is said to be UNIX and server editor’s tool.
OpenOffice for mac: Open source Office app for mac
OpenOffice for mac is somewhat similar to Apple’s iWork Suite and can be considered as an alternative to MS Office. Its features constantly improve with every version and therefore it is much better than its other paid counterparts since this is an open source office app for mac.
With these best Office apps for mac, one can easily collate data and perform day-to-day tasks conveniently. These apps are not only easy to install and their straightforward interface makes things much simpler for the users. These office apps for mac have definitely become an important one for the professionals.
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