If anything, Office 2016 is almost too much of a Mac application, because instead of putting everything on the ribbon the way Office does on Windows, it both splits and duplicates features between the ribbon and the menus.That’s not just the file management tools on the File menu where you’d expect them (there’s a File menu in Office 2013 too, which has the options for each program, whereas Office 2016 keeps Preferences on the Apple menu where Mac users will look for them). Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac at Amazon for $149.99At any rate, all the features sit inside a true Mac interface, from the Retina graphics and high resolution document themes to the familiar scroll bounce. Microsoft already told us Office 2016 for Mac was coming, but the public preview is out now as a free download, without any Office 365 subscription required. The updated software includes support for Retina displays, as well as iCloud syncing, and has a look and feel more in tune with the versions of Office currently available on Windows and mobile.Office 2016 for Mac includes redesigned versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook for Mac users, and can be installed and used right alongside Office for Mac 2011 for anyone hesitant to switch entirely to pre-release software for their productivity needs. The preview will be updated on an ongoing basis and includes an auto-update feature, and while each new build will expire 60 days after its release, the preview will remain freely available to download until the official launch.Unless we’re talking about using iCloud…Office 2016 for Mac does the best job we’ve seen so far of integrating OneDrive – better than Office 2013 or even Windows 8.1. (If you’re having difficulty tracking down a command, use the search bar on the Help menu and it will pop up the menu you need with the command highlighted a handy option from Office Online.)Microsoft is thinking more of Mac users than visiting Windows users, but it’s also far easier to switch between the Windows, macOS and iPad versions of Office without having to hunt for how to do things. Again, OneNote has nearly all of the ribbon features in the menus, but there are menu options – for example, related to managing notebooks – that you can’t do from the ribbon. The Protect Document command is on both the Tools menu and the Review tab – but the Restrict Permission tool from the Review tab is on the File menu instead.Similarly, the commands from the View tab are split between the View and Window menus.This gives menu fans the option of minimising the ribbon and ignoring it, but there are a few things ribbon users will have to go look for in the menu.
![]() ![]() Microsoft Office 2016 Mac Users WillDocuments you’ve opened from websites show up in the Recent Documents list, which includes documents from cloud services that you’ve edited on other computers but there isn’t a central place to look back at them.If you want to open or save a document on your Mac, or on a network or external drive, click the On My Mac button in the dialog to switch to a standard macOS file dialog (although there’s an Online Locations button to get back to the cloud file dialog).Perhaps confusingly, the On My Mac dialog is the way you can save and open iCloud files – that’s the same as any other Mac application, so it makes sense that Microsoft hasn’t tried to duplicate it, but it makes Apple’s cloud service feel less integrated than OneDrive, which feels odd on a Mac. You can see your own cloud files, and files that other people have shared with you, which is a big time saver. Windows users will be envious, especially since Microsoft stripped out the OneDrive integration in the Office 2016 dialogs on Windows in a recent update.OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint are all in the Open and Save dialogs (and just as on Windows, Add a Service doesn’t list any other cloud services, particularly not iCloud). ![]() Click the icon to see more information about who’s editing the document (if they haven’t signed into OneDrive, they show up as guest) and you can email, chat or FaceTime with them. A change your co-editor makes to a document gets uploaded when they save it you see an icon next to the section of the document they’re working on, to warn you against making changes that might conflict with theirs, and the status bar tells you there are updates you can add to the document.Click the status bar or just save the document and it implements the changes, highlighted so you can see them quickly. The idea is that you want the ability to choose when your document gets updated rather than just having sections of it appear, disappear or change without you noticing. Top mac system cleanerBut with so many updates each month, it’s entirely possible this functionality will arrive on the Mac in time. If you try to mail a Word, Excel or PowerPoint document with a credit card number in it, and your IT team has set up a rule in Exchange, you’ll see a warning in the Windows apps that you shouldn’t be doing this. In Word, Excel and PowerPoint you use the Restrict Permissions options in the File menu (this is another place where splitting features between the ribbon and the menus might be confusing).What’s missing is the Data Loss Prevention options in Office 2016 for Windows that let administrators set warnings if you’re trying to share information that might be confidential or against regulations. In Outlook you set these restrictions from the Options tab on the ribbon in the message you’re writing. Microsoft already added RMS support to Office for iPad and it’s in Office 2016 for Mac as well, so you can send an email that someone can’t forward, or set a Word, PowerPoint, or Excel document so that it expires on a certain date and can’t be printed or copied. Now it’s clearer and easier to use, and more like the experience in Office on Microsoft’s OS.On Windows, the option of limiting what people can do with the documents you share with them, and even the emails you send, has been in Office for years – as long as you had Rights Management Services on Windows Server or the new Azure Rights Management Service.
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