I actually find Office 2016 and 2013 on Windows quite nice, they're fast even on slow mechanical hard drives, its a shame the Mac version is so poor. I don't use giant Word files but for normal use I found Office 2011 for mac and the newer Office 2016 for mac perfectly acceptable.

Microsoft is releasing the final version of Office 2016 for Mac today. After to testers for the past four months, Office 2016 for Mac is ready and available immediately to Office 365 subscribers.

Office 2016 for Mac marks nearly five years since the last release of Office for Mac back in 2011, and Microsoft has made some modern changes to support how Office and OS X have changed over the years. There's a new user interface that feels like a mix of the fresh Windows design and Office for Mac 2011. The result is the familiar Ribbon user interface that fits in with the OS X theme and features like sandboxed apps, fullscreen view, and Retina screen optimization. A lot of improvements over Office for Mac 2011 Microsoft has also integrated its OneDrive cloud storage into Office 2016 for Mac, meaning you can quickly access recent documents you may have been editing on your smartphone, tablet, or Windows PC. There's even co-authoring support to allow several people to simultaneously edit a document. Microsoft has also added the familiar Windows shortcuts to its Office 2016 for Mac apps so you can can use ctrl + shift instead of cmd + shift and others to navigate around. That's particularly helpful if you're someone who regularly switches between a Windows PC and Mac. Office 2016 for Mac ships with five apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote.

They all feel like they've finally caught up to the Windows equivalents, making this a significant release for Microsoft. Office 365 Home and Personal subscribers can download Office 2016 for Mac today, and a standalone version will be released in September.

For many years, Office for Mac has played second fiddle to its Windows cousin. If you’ve been struggling with Office for Mac 2011 and suffering from Windows envy, your time has finally come. Last week, Microsoft made a available to the masses, runnable on any OS X Yosemite computer. Surprisingly, the feature set of Office 2016 for Mac is nearly on par with that of the Windows version, with the gaps lying mainly in Excel and PowerPoint. Naturally, we’ll have to wait for the final, shipping products to draw detailed conclusions. This preview edition includes new beta versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, as well as the previously released.

(Outlook 2016 has been updated precious little in the past year and not at all since January; it’s.) If you already have Office 2011 installed, the new Office 2016 will run side by side on the same Mac with no interference. How to download git for mac. [ Looking to run office productivity apps on the go?

Check out InfoWorld's comparisons of. Editing in the cloud? Check out our. Keep up on key mobile developments and insights with the. ] Note that the preview ain’t tiny. In this beta incarnation, Word 2016 alone is bigger than the entire Office for Mac 2011 suite.

You’ll need 5.6GB of disk space and up to 10 minutes for installation, depending on the speed of your Mac. As to be expected, we have no idea how much Microsoft will charge for the standalone version by the time it ships later this year.

As: “Office 365 commercial and consumer subscribers will get the next version [of Office for Mac] at no additional cost.” Across-the-board changes If you’re an Office for Mac 2011 user, you’ll be struck immediately by the updated interface. If you have a Retina screen, wow -- the interface adjusts itself automatically, and the high resolution comes shining through everywhere, thanks to Microsoft switching over (almost) completely to Apple’s Cocoa APIs. I’ve never seen Office look so good on any platform (see Figure 1). Unsplash.com Figure 1.

Office 2016 for Mac takes full advantage of the Retina screen. If you’re coming from Office for iPad, Android or Windows 10, the Mac interface is completely different. Office 2016 for Mac unabashedly embraces the traditional keyboard-and-mouse/trackpad paradigm and doesn’t make any awkward trade-offs for touch-driven operation,. Remarkably, if you currently use Office 2011, most of the interface will feel comfortable. If you use Office 2013 for Windows, you’ll be right at home.