Earlier this year, Microsoft unveiled the entirely redesigned Office for Mac 2016 preview and introduced a variety of new features to go along with the fresh appearance. Today, Microsoft has released the official public build of Office for Mac 2016. In order to use the software, you must have an Office 365 subscription, which runs $99.99 per year or $9.99 per month.
A few months back, we went hands-on with Microsoft’s Office for Mac 2016. The software very much takes a “cloud first” approach and looks to compete almost directly with services like Google Drive. For instance, multiple users can collaborate on documents in real time when using the same app on different platform, including Mac, iPad, or PC.
Each individual app in the suite also has received its share of enhancements. Word, for instance, now includes a design tab for managing and creating style and layout preferences for documents. PowerPoint includes a new brand presentation mode, as well. Excel also has its fair share of enhancements, including new keyboard shortcuts, new functions, and a new PivotTable Slicer that allows you to set parameters for data to quickly find new data points from existing numbers.
All three apps in Office have new open and create windows that show documents saved to OneDrive across all platforms. All three apps also can now take advantage of OS X’s full screen mode.
Office for Mac 2016 is available now with an Office 365 subscription. Office 2016 for Mac will become available as a one-time purchase option this September
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Will there also be a standalone version without Office 365? I’m currently running the Office Mac 2016 Beta besides the Office Mac 2011 version. It would be nice to finally switch to Office Mac 2016 Final, but I’ve got no Office 365 subscription.
See the linked page [https://blogs.office.com/2015/07/09/office-2016-for-mac-is-here/]: “Office 2016 for Mac will become available as a one-time purchase option this September.”
Standalone version ships this Fall.
Still no MAC Skype for Business App :-(
Yeah that’s irritating to be stuck on Lync 2011 which is awful.
Q1 2016, apparently… :/
I’ll never pay Microsoft for any subscription. I paid full price for Office 2011 for Mac. Now I can’t get the new version without subscription. Pitiful. Microsoft will never be like Apple. Too greedy.
You can. It will be available in September. Check your facts before giving out.
You can’t. Not until the Fall. Nothing he said was incorrect.
I haven’t tested it, but I was very disappointed with Outlook 2016 for Mac when it didn’t carry support for Outlook.com syncing for Calendar, Contacts. Only IMAP for Email. It also doesn’t do Contact Picture syncing for Office365 accounts. There was also issues accessing corporate email over EWS and even basic Kerberos. This was all still true in the latest beta. I’ll give the finished product a spin, but if these still fail, I feel Microsoft is still only half-hearting the “cross platform” mantra.
IMAP is better then POP for email so it makes sense that they would do that.
IMAP may be better; but lack of POP support is problematic when your ISP doesn’t offer IMAP. Our office utilizes Time Warner BusinessClass to host our services and they still do not offer IMAP. I don’t get to choose how our email service is hosted; so lack of POP support means that I can’t use the software.
It isn’t POP I was setting my sights on. On Windows 7/8.x/10, if you use Outlook (2013 or 2016) full client, you can connect to Outlook.com over EAS. Office365 supports EWS. These are full feature protocol with support for Push updates for Email/Contacts/Calendar.
Sadly, after testing, I can confirm the very same issues that I noticed when it was first released back some 7 months ago are still here. Outlook.com (Hotmail) support on Mac is IMAP or POP only (no contact or calendar sync). For Office365, Contact pictures do not sync back to the server, while they do sync back if on Windows using Outlook full client. To me, its baffling they would cripple it in such a way.
Even the EWS issues on a private exchange server are still there. Sad, and completely inexcusable :(
@bwulfe: POP support is there – you have to uncheck Configure Automatically if the account wants to create as IMAP and you need POP (or vice versa – Comcast automatically does POP but manually supports IMAP fine).
1) Pity to see the infuriating ribbon is still there.
2) I wonder what the standalone price will be
3) I wonder how many copies/subs they’ll sell, and if it’s a decline or increase over the previous version
It apparently only works on Yosemite, and in the process they broke the O365 license authentication for Office 2011, particularly Outlook. Also- no heads-up for IT?! Thanks Microsoft!
i have Yosemite, syncing of calendar and contacts does not work. disappointing
“in the process they broke the O365 license authentication for Office 2011, particularly Outlook”… What do you mean by that?
Let’s hope this version isn’t as crash-prone as the preview builds. Had to go back to using the older version just so I could get stuff done.
Word is great but PowerPoint still pales in comparison to Keynote. Not even a contest.
I’m a student and signed up for Office365 for free. Use your college email and it will work. Just an FYI.
doesn’t seem to work for german unis. Besides I have a student/university subscription, dunno why i can’t update..
I’ve got a office 365 university subscription. Is that not included for the update?
Is it available on the Mac App Store?
No. Go to the O
What I TRIED to write was: go to Office365.com.
I’ve bee using the beta and I’ve found it to be MUCH faster than the abysmal Office 2011.
Unfortunately Outlook still doesn’t support CalDAV and CardDAV so you can’t use Google or iCloud calendar and contacts. I really wished Microsoft would have added this by now.
Has Microsoft addressed this lack of support in the Office for Mac 2016 box edition to be released on September 22? The ability to sync Google and iCloud calendar and contacts is critical.
This is the most ridiculous thing ever. i just bought a MacBoook Air and and wasted money on Outlook. It does not sync contacts or calendar. There is zero point to own office for a Mac if you are a business user or run your own business. I can’t stand Microsoft anymore. Their technical support is also horrific. I wasted 3 hours figuring this out tonight with an incompetent rep.
I don’t and won’t do subscription software. Are you listening Microsoft and Adobe?
Why won’t you?
If you purchased Lightroom and Photoshop as a standalone package it would of cost about $1200. That is the equivalent of about TEN YEARS of subscriptions to Adobe CC, and you get updated software as and when it arrives.
Yup, it’s a real rip-off isn’t it.
A few years back I paid 1200 € for a CS 5.5 bundle of PH, IL, PR, AE and some extra apps like media encoder.
The cost to use the same software now is 840 € each year.
Not exactly a great deal either is it?
Plus, where exactly can one get adobe software as a standalone package these days?
The only negative I’ve noticed so far is Excel graphs get replaced by placeholders while scrolling. They take an annoyingly long time to re display. I noticed that during bets, but hoped they’re fix it.
Plus there seems to be a very long read/write to/from OneDrive.
The subscription has always confused me…
What is the benefit of the subscription over a standalone version???
I’ve been using the 2011 version, and i started using the preview version — but i rarely ever saved to the skydirve — so why would i keep paying $100 a year when i could just buy the home/student edition???
When i used windows i was so confused about all the different options, and worried what would happen if i stopped paying etc…
I am running the beta and got an update notification right now. I am updating, but not sure if this is the automatic switching to the final stable version or I need to remove the beta first. I have an Office 365 subscription for students.
Thank you!
No Contacts and Calendar support AGAIN….Still not enough reason to switch to Outlook….What a waste…dashed hopes again!
No, thank you. I was using the preview the offered it was so bad, like really really bad. It gave me so many errors. Even if I didn’t knew it’s from Microsoft, I would know that it is. iWork is much, much, much better ;)
Never pay. I am using office 2011, Photoshop and Adobe Acrobat pro, all cracked and updatable thanks to hackers :)
Has anyone been able to download the 64 bit version of the 2016 Office 365 for Mac
When checkin the version Office 2016 still shows 2015 Version. Anyone knows about this please ?
I updated last night to build 15.12 via the auto-update and it immediately crashed, over and over. Is that the new final release? How do we get this resolved so its usable for more than one minute at a time?
While Microsoft updated to Version 2016 on Windows but for Mac the version remains 2015 ! What a shame !!
I purchased 3 box copies of office 2011 with the promise of a free upgrade to 2013. As we all now know 2013 never happened nor much else! So will I have to now pay for my upgrade and if so will I have a case against Apple/MS for non-complience with the UK Sales of Goods Act?
I use Office for Mac 2011. If I want to change to subscription (I don’t really want to, LOL), how do I best move my data and uninstall 2011?