Starting today, Office 365 Groups in Outlook for Mac will be rolling out gradually to Insider Fast over the new few days! With the first update, you can view your top 10 groups in the folder pane and read/compose/reply to group conversations. I've been relying on the Office 365 Midsize Business subscription for just over a year now. After a baker's dozen of months, I thought it would be a good time to review the good and bad of this. Excel for Office 365 for Mac Word for Office 365 for Mac Outlook for Office 365 for Mac PowerPoint for Office 365 for Mac Office 2019 for Mac Excel 2019 for Mac OneNote for Mac PowerPoint 2019 for Mac Word 2019 for Mac Office for business Office 365 for home Office 365. Click the arrow next to the Update button and review the apps, versions.
Introduction
If you are a Mac user, you are most likely looking for different ways to do things better. Therefore, anytime new features are added to your software and operating systems like Microsoft, you are probably anxiously waiting to see what is available.
Having said this, as of September 2018, Microsoft is releasing new features for Microsoft Office for Mac too. The changes referenced will include Windows, Excel, Outlook, and Powerpoint. Here is an overview of what you can expect.
Roll-out to Customers — Mac Users
Just like any other release that comes from Microsoft, you can expect to see these new versions coming out as scheduled. As these changes roll out, however, it is important to note that the commercial volume licenses are being made available first, and then, a few weeks after, businesses and the general consumer can expect their access to the new features too. So, if you want to be one of the first to check out or buy office 2019 for yourself, you should keep these dates in mind.
New Features Across All Office Apps
The focus for this new 2019 Microsoft version is on several different enhancements that people can use to make their lives much easier and efficient with the office products that they use. In particular, you may be interested in roaming pencil case and ribbon customizations.
Roaming pencil case and ribbon customizations
The changes Microsoft has made to the applications within have been made much easier and user-friendly. So, when you are using your roaming pencil case and ribbon customization features, you have the flexibility that is needed to perform a variety of different functionalities. For instance, you can use the roaming pencil to start creating multiple shapes and designs. Like the stylus on a touchscreen, you can create the shapes that you have in your head with a lot more ease. Because of the roaming pencil feature, the capabilities that you need to complete the task or project that you are working on can be done seamlessly when you are moving from Word to Excel. For instance, if you are making any changes in Excel, you will have the same pencil case following you around from one app to the next so that you can also reduce the time that it takes to create your innovative and unique displays.
If you want to find out more about how to you roaming pencil case and ribbon customizations effectively, you can find tutorials on this topic that will walk you through the entire process. You can find this information on the site. The information that you need to reduce the learning curve is also available in written form so that you can have access to this information in more than one format.
Microsoft 365 Review
Incorporate New Features Into Your Workflow with Professional Presentation Enhancements
The new features can be used for a number of different reasons and purposes. So, when you want to make changes to your current processes, you can begin to incorporate these new features into your workflow. For instance, if you do a lot of reports and analysis to support your business operations, you need to review the updates that have been made to Excel 2019. These new enhancements will give the mac user the capability of creating new charts that can be used for professional presentations. Also, there is a new enhancement that involves the use of new formulas, and they are available in PowerPivot.
Gopro editing software for mac. SVG and 3D Model Support
If you like to create SVGs and 3D models, you can appreciate the new features and support that Microsoft is providing to MAC users. Since these types of software projects can be challenging to complete, individuals and business owners will often value anything that they can get to do an exceptional job with their creations. Therefore, with this in mind, the new release that comes along with the Mac version of 2019 Windows enhancements includes model support for the users who need it.
Focus Mode is Added as an Enhancement
Another enhancement that Windows has added for Mac User is the focus mode. The focus mode is a very useful feature for those of you who want to see your documents up close without any interference from other types of data, menus, toolbars and etc. The user can use this feature to view the documents that they want to see and they can also make modifications in focus too. Therefore, if you want to get rid of any distractions that can prevent you from closely scrutinizing data, word documents or excel spreadsheets, this can be a very valuable tool to take advantage of when you need it.
4K Video Export Capabilities and Powerpoint —- for Mac Users Command for strikethrough mac.
If you are a MAC user that likes to make videos, you will most likely like to share them with others. For personal or business reasons, the need to have the capabilities to export them to others is not really a luxury but a necessity for those that can use these features productively. Skype applications for mac. That said, you may be one of the ones that need the capability to export 4K videos from Windows. Therefore, this is one of the essential features that you can expect in the 2019 version.
Verdict
Microsoft 2019 for Mac has a lot of great changes that can be used to enhance the MAC users overall experience across applications in Windows. These enhancements are being made strategically in order to provide more functionality and capabilities for the users when they are performing various kinds of tasks in Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook and in Windows. Some of the most notable changes and additional include giving users the capability to export 4K videos in powerpoint, use the focus mode to eliminate distractions from other documents and tools, using roaming pencil case features across apps and much more. So, for those of you who have an interest in making your life easier and efficient, you can look to see these changes as early as September 2018.
Microsoft Office 365 Personal For Mac Review
Microsoft Office 2016 (for Mac)
Editor Rating: Excellent (4.5)
We review products independently, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use.
$100.00
Pros
Improved performance. Strong OS X integration. Seamless cloud-based sharing with Office for Windows, iOS, and Android. Familiar features and interface for Windows users.Cons
Requires OS X 10.10 or later. A few minor first-release glitches.Bottom Line
Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac is worth the five-year wait it took to get here. It's still by far the most powerful set of productivity apps for Apple computers, fitting more smoothly into OS X than ever, while adding cloud support. And the free preview version is stable enough for most people to use day to day.
Microsoft Office 2016 for the Mac is the kind of upgrade I hope for but rarely get. It took five years from Office 2011's release to get this latest Mac office suite, but it was well worth the wait. Almost everything is improved, with a bright, spacious interface, yet the learning curve is almost flat. That's because all of the suite's essential features work as they always did, though with added options and conveniences. There's nothing so startlingly new that it will get in the way of being productive. In August 2016, Microsoft released an automatic update that replaced the old 32-bit code of Office for the Mac with 64-bit code. The 64-bit version starts up faster, but otherwise it looks and acts like the earlier code, which was already an Editors' Choice for office suites.
Payment Options
Microsoft managed to make using Office for the Mac easy for anyone familiar with Office for Windows, while also integrating it more closely than ever into the OS X ecosystem. Office 365 subscribers can download Office 2016 for as little as $6.99 per month for one license, or $69.99 per year. If you prefer the traditional buy-once-use-forever model, Office Home and Business will run you $229.99 for one license. A stripped-down Office Home and Student is also available for a $149.99 one-time fee. The main difference in Home and Student is that it does not include Outlook or Access. If you can't afford even the $6.99 per month, you might try the free LibreOffice, but you'll be sacrificing some polish and capabilities by doing so.
Microsoft managed to make using Office for the Mac easy for anyone familiar with Office for Windows, while also integrating it more closely than ever into the OS X ecosystem. Office 365 subscribers can download Office 2016 for as little as $6.99 per month for one license, or $69.99 per year. If you prefer the traditional buy-once-use-forever model, Office Home and Business will run you $229.99 for one license. A stripped-down Office Home and Student is also available for a $149.99 one-time fee. The main difference in Home and Student is that it does not include Outlook or Access. If you can't afford even the $6.99 per month, you might try the free LibreOffice, but you'll be sacrificing some polish and capabilities by doing so.
SEE ALSO: 35 Google Drive Tips You Can't Afford to Miss
Improved Everything
Office 2016 looks and acts better than Office 2011—and it closely resembles Office 2016 for Windows. The ribbon interface is redesigned, with the same flat look as the Windows version and the Office mobile apps. The Mac version features a modern task-pane interface for selecting text styles, building formulas, and similar features. Long-term Windows users will rejoice that Windows key assignments, such as Ctrl-O for Open and Ctrl-F for Find, now also work in the Mac version. There's no need to remember to press Cmd instead of Ctrl.
Office 2016 looks and acts better than Office 2011—and it closely resembles Office 2016 for Windows. The ribbon interface is redesigned, with the same flat look as the Windows version and the Office mobile apps. The Mac version features a modern task-pane interface for selecting text styles, building formulas, and similar features. Long-term Windows users will rejoice that Windows key assignments, such as Ctrl-O for Open and Ctrl-F for Find, now also work in the Mac version. There's no need to remember to press Cmd instead of Ctrl.
Mac-Native
The suite also gets Mac-native features like pinch-to-zoom as well as support for Retina displays, so text and graphics have sharper resolution than ever before. Word and PowerPoint allow simultaneous editing by multiple users. Under the hood, the whole suite has been rewritten with up-to-date code, and it runs only on the most recent versions of OS X, specifically Yosemite and El Capitan.
The suite also gets Mac-native features like pinch-to-zoom as well as support for Retina displays, so text and graphics have sharper resolution than ever before. Word and PowerPoint allow simultaneous editing by multiple users. Under the hood, the whole suite has been rewritten with up-to-date code, and it runs only on the most recent versions of OS X, specifically Yosemite and El Capitan.
Online sharing via Microsoft's SharePoint service or its OneDrive cloud-based service is seamless among all Office platforms. You can stop work on one platform and pick up exactly where you left off on another—I tried it with the Mac, Windows, and iPad versions—and you can easily restore earlier versions of files saved to the cloud. It would be nice to have built-in iCloud integration, but I doubt it's going to happen any time soon.
Components
The Mac version of the suite comprises Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote. Microsoft updated Outlook and OneNote prior to this release, so the latest versions of these two components are only a minor, though welcome, upgrade. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are all faster, easier to use, and more elegant. Most features are almost identical those of the Windows versions, but not all. For example, the Mac version can't import PDF files and create editable Office documents from the contents, but the Windows version can. However, PowerPoint for the Mac continues to outclass the Windows version in its Reorder Objects feature. On the Mac, you reorder objects by dragging them forward or back in an animated three-dimensional view, while in Windows you drag objects up and down in a less convenient list format.
The Mac version of the suite comprises Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote. Microsoft updated Outlook and OneNote prior to this release, so the latest versions of these two components are only a minor, though welcome, upgrade. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are all faster, easier to use, and more elegant. Most features are almost identical those of the Windows versions, but not all. For example, the Mac version can't import PDF files and create editable Office documents from the contents, but the Windows version can. However, PowerPoint for the Mac continues to outclass the Windows version in its Reorder Objects feature. On the Mac, you reorder objects by dragging them forward or back in an animated three-dimensional view, while in Windows you drag objects up and down in a less convenient list format.
A few features have disappeared from the previous version. For example, the Publishing Layout option in Word that made Word act more like a page-layout app rather than a word processor is gone, as is the ability to rearrange the tab order on the Ribbon.
Apple's Word competitor Pages simply can't compete on power-user features like advanced typography and footnotes and endnotes. Likewise, Numbers trails Excel when it comes to advanced scientific and technical work. Keynote, on the other hand, is better than PowerPoint in many ways. It lacks some of the technical abilities of Microsoft's offering, but it's impressively powerful and creates amazing-looking presentations, winning it the Editors' Choice for OS X. Overall, Apple's suite is quite good. As a whole, however, Office trumps it.
![Home Home](/uploads/1/3/3/9/133937983/586811065.png)
Interface
The Ribbon interface on the Mac closely matches that of the Windows version, with the same tabs and features on both platforms, though with slight differences to match the operating system—for example, the Mac version supplements the Ribbon with a top-line menu, like the menu in all other OS X apps, though the Windows version has only the Ribbon.
The Ribbon interface on the Mac closely matches that of the Windows version, with the same tabs and features on both platforms, though with slight differences to match the operating system—for example, the Mac version supplements the Ribbon with a top-line menu, like the menu in all other OS X apps, though the Windows version has only the Ribbon.
As in the Windows versions of Office, Word gets a Style pane instead of a floating Inspector panel, Excel gets a Formula-building pane, PowerPoint gets an Animation pane. Word and PowerPoint get threaded comments—comments that can be linked to earlier comments to create collapsible discussion threads. Excel gets the strong Recommended Charts feature from the Windows version—and also PivotTable Slicers and improved AutoComplete. Word for the Mac finally gets the one feature I've wanted forever—the ability to click on the blank space between pages and hide the page header and footer, so that text flows from one page to the next with only a thin line between the pages, not an inch or more of blank space.
I noted one first-release glitch when I originally looked at Office for the Mac when it first released in 2015. When I saved a Word document to PDF, the hyperlinks in the saved PDF didn't work, because an extra character somehow got added to the Web address. The problem has been fixed in the latest update, however.
Mac MVP
Overall, Office 2016 for the Mac is a highly successful update, bringing the best of Office to Apple users. If you're choosing an office suite, the choice is clear for anyone who needs advanced features. Word and Excel surpass Apple's Pages and Numbers, and PowerPoint is close enough to Apple's superb Keynote to keep Office users from envying Keynote users. Office for the Mac is the clear winner of the Editors' Choice award for OS X office suites.
Overall, Office 2016 for the Mac is a highly successful update, bringing the best of Office to Apple users. If you're choosing an office suite, the choice is clear for anyone who needs advanced features. Word and Excel surpass Apple's Pages and Numbers, and PowerPoint is close enough to Apple's superb Keynote to keep Office users from envying Keynote users. Office for the Mac is the clear winner of the Editors' Choice award for OS X office suites.
![Office Office](/uploads/1/3/3/9/133937983/891817313.png)
<a href='http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump/?iu=/4585/zd.pcmag/softwaresection_inflight&sz=1x1&tile=13&c=313577855&t=zdid%3Da332994%26zdtopic%3Dsoftware,software,software,business,edchoice,reviews%26zdaudience%3DConsumer,SMB%26zdcompany%3DMicrosoft+Corporation%26template%3DStandardReview%26cmn%3dzd' target='_blank'> <img src='http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/ad/?iu=/4585/zd.pcmag/softwaresection_inflight&sz=1x1&tile=13&c=313577855&t=zdid%3Da332994%26zdtopic%3Dsoftware,software,software,business,edchoice,reviews%26zdaudience%3DConsumer,SMB%26zdcompany%3DMicrosoft+Corporation%26template%3DStandardReview%26cmn%3dzd' border='0' alt='/> </a>