Note: This article was originally published on 13 July. I have made modifications on 17 July. The big announcement from Microsoft last Thursday was Ed Bott has a glowing review at. We’ve known for months that Microsoft has been working on Office 2016 for both Windows and Mac. I’ve been playing a bit with the Office 2016 for Windows preview for a while, but I haven’t done much with the Mac preview. Highlights Mac Office 2016 User Interface The Office 2016 for Mac user interface is very much like that for Office for Windows.

It no longer feels like a toy program built by an 8th grader in shop class. This is a very good sign. Now Office looks and feels the same across all platforms: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS. New Charts (Windows only, so far) Earlier, Microsoft. The latest Office 2016 preview features a few new chart types, including some that were previously only available to users of add-ins like the.

In Office 2016, Microsoft is bringing a common look and feel to the suite across all platforms, which is why this Mac version looks much like the recently released Windows-based Office 2016 IT Pro. And mentioning Word 2016's issues with Mac El Capitan is a red-herring: that issue will be resolved by Apple in the 10.11.1 update because it's a Mac not Word issue. Somone here said it wasn't quite as intuitive or fully featured as EndNote, but I don't know yet. Maybe it's even better than EndNote.

Microsoft has added waterfalls, histograms, paretos, treemaps, and sunbursts. Lowlights Office 365 The Windows Office 2016 preview has only been available through Office 365 (the kludgy online subscription service). I never can remember which of my umpteen Microsoft logins is valid for Office 365, and even when I look it up, the correct user ID and password don’t work the first time. Updating Windows Office 2016 preview versions has never gone without several major hitches for me, followed by complete uninstallation then reinstallation from scratch. So far, Mac Office 2016 is only available via Office 365, which Microsoft treats as a good thing. In Windows, installing from Office 365 wipes out any older versions of Office, so you can’t run Office 2007, 2010, and 2013 side-by-side to support different clients. On the Mac, I was glad to see that I could install Office 2016 without wiping out the previously installed Office 2011. I did have to rebuild the LaunchPad links to Office 2011 and put the icons back onto the Dock, but that only wasted an hour. Mac Office 2016 VBA This is the painful one.

Mac Office 2016 does still support VBA, of course, and Microsoft has rebuilt the VBA Editor from scratch, which was drastically. Unfortunately the VBA Editor is not really ready to use: you can’t insert new modules or UserForms, and while you can edit existing modules, you can’t even view the UserForms. Microsoft is making small improvements to the VB editor, and these improvements will be part of the monthly updates. But they are not expecting to make the editor as functional as that in Windows. They encourage developers to build their add-ins in Windows versions of Excel or in Excel 2011, then test in Mac Excel 2016. Mac Office 2016 Custom User Interface Elements First, a little background In Office 2003 and earlier, developers and users could construct custom menus and toolbars to access built-in and custom functionality. Starting in Office 2007, Office for Windows has had the ribbon.