Microsoft has officially launched its Office 2016 for Mac productivity suite, including new versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. The first major Mac release since Office 2011 brings redesigned interfaces and new features, including those focusing on cloud integration and collaboration. The new office suite had been in beta testing since March.
If you already use Office on a PC or iPad, you will find yourself right at home in Office 2016 for Mac. It works the way you expect, with the familiar ribbon interface and powerful task panes. Mac users will appreciate the modernized Office experience and the integration of Mac capabilities like Full Screen view and Multi-TouchTM gestures. With full Retina® display support, your Office documents look sharper and more vibrant than ever.
Office for Mac is cloud-connected, so you can quickly get to the documents you’ve recently used on other devices and pick up where you left off. New, built-in document sharing tools make it easy to invite teammates to work on a document together. When sharing documents, you won’t have to worry about losing content or formatting, as Office for Mac offers unparalleled compatibility with Office on PCs, tablets, phones and online.
Office 2016 for Mac now includes a Yosemite-inspired design, and offers full screen support, Retina display support, and multi-touch gestures.
Word offers a new Design tab that allows users to easily apply designer-quality layouts, colors and fonts throughout their documents. Collaboration features mean users can work on the same document simultaneously with their teammates, using threaded comments to have a conversation right next to the corresponding text.
The new Excel for Mac will recommend charts best suited for the data the user is working with with chart previews. Keyboard shortcuts, autocomplete and an improved formula builder save time when users are creating spreadsheets or entering data. The new PivotTable Slicers aid with deeper analysis, help users filter large volumes of data and discover patterns.
PowerPoint for Mac 2016 offers an improved Presenter View that gives users full control when presenting by showing the current slide, next slide, speaker notes and a timer on the user’s screen, while the audience only sees the presentation on the big screen. PowerPoint offers new templates, and slide transitions. A new animation pane helps users design and fine-tune animations.
Outlook for Mac was released last October, and works alongside today’s release, offering push mail support, an improved conversation mode, and message previews. An improved mail merge to work with Word, and Propose a New Time capabilities for appointments have been added to Outlook.
OneNote offers users the ability to capture ideas in digital notebooks and access them on any device. The OneNote search engine that tracks your tags, indexes your typed notes and recognizes text in images and handwritten notes. Bold, italicize, underline or highlight notes, insert files, pictures and tables and organize your notes however you want. You can also share notebooks with friends, family or colleagues so everyone can work together on travel plans, household tasks or work projects.
Microsoft Office for Mac 2016 is available for all Office 365 subscribers today, and can be installed by logging into your Office account and following the directions found there. It’s a little over 1.6 GB of a download, and installation proved to be a matter of a few clicks and a two-minute wait on my 2011 MacBook Pro with SSD. Office is officially supported on Macs running OS X Yosemite. The suite will be available as a one-time purchase in the fall.
Office subscriptions come in a number of levels: Office 365 Personal, offers Office access for 1 computer, 1 phone, and 1 tablet, is priced at $69.99 per year or $6.99 per month. Office 365 Home, offers access for 5 computers, 5 tablets, and 5 phones is priced at $99.99 per year or $9.99 per month. Microsoft also offers plans for students and businesses at various price levels.
