MacOS and Windows Office

[Labhras]

Hi all,

I've been wondering about the integration between Office for Mac and MacOS itself.
I have a 2014 MBA (not maxed out, 1,4Ghz i5, 8gb RAM) and I never had problems dealing with Excel files. Recently though I've been working with big files - 30MB and up until 100MB and over, with thousands of rows of data. Every action - copy and paste, run formulas, create graphics, etc takes some time, while I've noticed that on Windows machines they take more time to open/save but the normal action aren't that slow.
Is it an Office-Mac integration problem or is it a MBA problem - meaning it's not powerful enough to handle the workload?
I've been thinking about changing it soon - maybe with the next gen of Pros, and I was wondering if a maxed out pro (or with high enough processing power) could change things.
Thanks

 

[06tb06]

I use whatever is native to the OS. iWork for macOS, Office for Windows, Open or Libre Office for Linux, etc...

I know from experience MS Word on Windows is noticeably faster than Word on macOS. Holding down the delete/backspace key to remove multiple words of text is lightning fast in Windows, whereas it's very slow, literally letter by letter slow in macOS.

Microsoft does have a dedicated team that builds macOS versions of Office, but I'm not sure what optimizations they do when it comes down to performance. The last version (Office 2016 I think) did add support for 64-bit.

I have a sub ~$100 ASUS netbook that I use strictly for Microsoft Office and I use my iMac for everything else. It's really basic (Windows 10 Home 32-bit), but it gets the job done, especially when it comes to Office apps.

 

[Labhras]

The only Windows program I really use is Excel, and only because Numbers isn't really up for comparison. It's a simpler version that might work for the "sometimes" need but for dealing with tons of data Excel is the way.
I only have a Mac, and it doesn't really make sense to me to buy a Windows pc, even for 150$ or so, just to use it for one application (adding the cost of an Office license, etc). That's why I asked if the maxing out of processing power could have an impact on the efficiency of Excel or if it is a software integration problem - mainly Excel not being MacOS native.

 

[boppin]

Is it an Office-Mac integration problem or is it a MBA problem - meaning it's not powerful enough to handle the workload?

I think your notebook is more powerful than mine (2012 Retina MBP).

Did you install all updates for Office?

 

[boppin]

there is an update available to version 16.11.0.

 

[mathepac]

Is it an Office-Mac integration problem

or if it is a software integration problem - mainly Excel not being MacOS native.

Labhrás, rest assured that unless you are running an emulator to run a Windoze version of Excel on your MBA, all the Microsoft software you are running on it is both macOS native and well integrated.

My Mac mini (Late 2012),
2.5 GHz Intel Core i5
16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
running 10.13.4 Beta (17E182a) (Beat 5 that is)
and Office 16.10, struggles a bit at times especially if I'm running browsers with extensions added, concurrently with Office apps.

Depending on what version of macOS you have on the MBA, I'd be reluctant to throw extra Office or OS upgrades at it, they may cumulatively decrease performance. I'd suggest you keep going "as is" until the MBA performance becomes a hindrance to your work and then re-invest,

Lá fhéile Pádraig sona dhuit!

 

[vhw]

In the Office update coming later this year there will be a better alignment between the macOS and Windows version. For instance the Outlook app will look the same:
https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-working-beautiful-new-redesign-outlook-desktop-app/
Hopefully this will be the case for the other Office apps and features also.