Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint for professional usage on M1 MBP 14''?

[alexlind]

Hi everyone,

Just ordered my M1 MBP 14'' after my old 13'' MBP from 2015 died on me.

I am studying my last year at University and do some occasional consultancy work as well. This means I use PowerPoint and Excel quite extensively.

I will not rely on my MBP 14'' for this as I have access to a windows operated PC but I am wondering how well M1 native office performs and if all functionality is present on the M1 version as is present on the windows version? It would be convenient if I would be able to use my M1 MBP when travelling for those tasks as well without having it be radically worse or less convenient.

My previous experience from my old intel MacBook is that it is was quite much worse with short cuts being different (or missing) and a lot of key functionality missing.

Would love to hear your experience since I know that M1 macs and M1 Office 365 have been out for a while now.

All the best,
Alex

 

[usagora]

I've been using Office 365 on my M1 MBA with absolutely no issues or crashes, and I know of no "key functionality" missing from the Mac versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (the three I use constantly).

 

[Aggedor]

We're in the same boat we were before - M1 Office 365 runs natively on M1 Macs. Unfortunately, this also means all the bugs in Mac Office also run natively

Just today, I had to boot up my PC as Word was either crashing or choking on a huge document with thousands of tracked changes. In Windows, it was butter smooth and stable.

Functionality - Mac Office is a step or two behind Windows Office, and always has been, sadly. For some Office apps it is worse than others - PowerPoint for example, is horrible on the Mac.

 

[alexlind]

We're in the same boat we were before - M1 Office 365 runs natively on M1 Macs. Unfortunately, this also means all the bugs in Mac Office also run natively

Just today, I had to boot up my PC as Word was either crashing or choking on a huge document with thousands of tracked changes. In Windows, it was butter smooth and stable.

Functionality - Mac Office is a step or two behind Windows Office, and always has been, sadly. For some Office apps it is worse than others - PowerPoint for example, is horrible on the Mac.

Thank you so much for the reply!

Ah sad to hear about PowerPoint, probably the app I would use the most of the Office 365 apps. I guess that will keep all my professional work the PC as it has been.

 

[Aggedor]

Thank you so much for the reply!

Ah sad to hear about PowerPoint, probably the app I would use the most of the Office 365 apps. I guess that will keep all my professional work the PC as it has been.

As @usagora pointed out, there isn't actually any key functionality missing (unless you need Visual Basic or something, which the Mac version can't use), but sometimes the Mac version makes it rather difficult - in PowerPoint, some basic Windows functions require 2-3 extra actions to perform on the Mac version.

My problem with crashing and/or choking is to do with tracked changes, so if that's not a function you use, I don't think you'll find stability to be much of an issue.

Having said that, switching to my Windows machine, I realised just how fast and responsive the Windows version of Office is.

 

[usagora]

I honestly can't relate to some of the comments being made. I use PowerPoint as an animation tool, often with up to 100 animations on a slide (many overlapping), and the ONLY time it slows down or hangs is when I try to insert a very large image (e.g. 3x the width of the slide), but that's only when I'm trying to edit or maniuplate said large image. I used to have more frequent hangs and crashes in PowerPoint on my 2012 iMac, but absolutely none at all on my 2019 Intel iMac or 2020 M1 MBA.

Also, I find working with animations much more intuitive and easier on the Mac version of PowerPoint.

 

[svenmany]

Excel on Windows has the "Name Manager". I use this all the time since my spreadsheets have tons of named cells and ranges. Excel on Mac has the old-fashioned "Define Name" dialog; it's not resizable, not sortable, and very awkward to use. I just don't use Excel on my Mac because of this missing feature.

One of my co-workers was using ActiveX Controls rather than Form Controls to trigger their VBA code. These ActiveX controls don't work on the Mac. I did convince my co-worker to stop doing that.

 

[mmkerc]

I have used the Mac and Windows files interchangeably for years (20+) with the only issue being with Visual Basic/active X scripts. Some keystones commands are different, but I have not have any issues. I much prefer working in the Mac environment but that is likely more familiarity with the system than actually differences between the software.

 

[Aggedor]

I honestly can't relate to some of the comments being made. I use PowerPoint as an animation tool, often with up to 100 animations on a slide (many overlapping), and the ONLY time it slows down or hangs is when I try to insert a very large image (e.g. 3x the width of the slide), but that's only when I'm trying to edit or maniuplate said large image. I used to have more frequent hangs and crashes in PowerPoint on my 2012 iMac, but absolutely none at all on my 2019 Intel iMac or 2020 M1 MBA.

Also, I find working with animations much more intuitive and easier on the Mac version of PowerPoint.

Do you use PowerPoint with comments? I've found any deck of more than 100 slides will usually crash if there are comments on it. There's also this issue when trying to add slides from other decks, which I do quite a lot.

Same with Word and tracked changes. If it wasn't for these issues, there really wouldn't be a problem for my use. It's just that my use involves... thousands of tracked changes!

 

[mmkerc]

I use comments, and track changes all the time with no issue. To be clear I use those features both on local files that are shared independently, and on files that are kept on shared sites (like Teams, or OneDrive) and worked on simultaneously. While I do not ever recall working on a 100+ slide deck file the 30-40 slides files with heavy graphic use that drives the file size up to 100Mbs. Similar story with word those those files can equal be very large (700+ pages, and 100Mbs.

The only time I have had the problems you state are when using a computer without enough ram or processing power which has not happened in years. (my base config is 16 Gb RAM, and a M1 Mini).

 

[RUGERMAN]

I use comments, and track changes all the time with no issue. To be clear I use those features both on local files that are shared independently, and on files that are kept on shared sites (like Teams, or OneDrive) and worked on simultaneously. While I do not ever recall working on a 100+ slide deck file the 30-40 slides files with heavy graphic use that drives the file size up to 100Mbs. Similar story with word those those files can equal be very large (700+ pages, and 100Mbs.

The only time I have had the problems you state are when using a computer without enough ram or processing power which has not happened in years. (my base config is 16 Gb RAM, and a M1 Mini).

has anyone tried using windows with Parallels VM on an m1 Mac and MS office?

 

[Aggedor]

has anyone tried using windows with Parallels VM on an m1 Mac and MS office?

I need to try this - I used to run Windows Office in Parallels on my Intel Macs... but what's the deal? You need to get the ARM version of Windows and of Office? Is that even downloadable if you have a 365 subscription?

 

[jlc1978]

My take:

1. I've been using Office on Macs for nearly 20 years. Unless you are using a feature in Windows taht is not on the Mac, such as some plugins, it works fine for 99% of the work done on either machine. Edge cases can be challenging, such as when I created a Word doc that auto imported Excel graphs; it would work in OS X but not in Windows. Biggest issue I have had is with formatting - it doesn't always look the same on both versions.

Comments sometimes act funky as well.

I need to try this - I used to run Windows Office in Parallels on my Intel Macs... but what's the deal? You need to get the ARM version of Windows and of Office? Is that even downloadable if you have a 365 subscription?

No, it runs just fine on Rosetta2. It's downloadable.

 

[hmmallen]

We're in the same boat we were before - M1 Office 365 runs natively on M1 Macs. Unfortunately, this also means all the bugs in Mac Office also run natively

Just today, I had to boot up my PC as Word was either crashing or choking on a huge document with thousands of tracked changes. In Windows, it was butter smooth and stable.

Functionality - Mac Office is a step or two behind Windows Office, and always has been, sadly. For some Office apps it is worse than others - PowerPoint for example, is horrible on the Mac.

That's disappointing. I have the problem with tracked changes all the time on my 2015 MBA. I was hoping that the speed increases of the M1 would overcome the poorly optimized apps, but I guess that is not the case. Maybe I should consider getting a Windows laptop. It's hard to imagine Word being buttery smooth and stable on any machine ?

 

[mmkerc]

That's disappointing. I have the problem with tracked changes all the time on my 2015 MBA. I was hoping that the speed increases of the M1 would overcome the poorly optimized apps, but I guess that is not the case. Maybe I should consider getting a Windows laptop. It's hard to imagine Word being buttery smooth and stable on any machine ?

I maybe a black swan here, but my company uses Windows, at home I use Mac, and as I tend to work from home a lot due to need to interact with folks all over the world I am constantly swapping Office files between the two systems without problem (mainly through a onedrive server). While I rarely have Powerpoints files with more than 50 slides, they are frequently well over 100mb with a few being bigger than 500mb. As far as word documents, almost all the files are jointly authored with track changes, and comments throughout. When I have had a problem of freezes, and sluggishness its been on the PC side not the Mac side which is why I think the issue may not be software but hardware related. Excel is the only one that I have had to make accommodations for in that we do tend to use Marcos, and scripts which do not always translates. As folks have mentioned there are some functionally differences, but in my uses this have not been an issue.

 

[Aggedor]

Okay, experimenting with Parallels. Installing was a breeze, so now I have the M1 Parallels running the ARM version of Windows 11, with the ARM version of Windows office.

So far, so good. It's a little slow, but seems to be stable. I'll try and use it for my main workflow today and will post updates.

 

[SRQrws]

I, too, have been successfully running Microsoft 365 on several M1s for months with no significant issues. My concern is how will it run on Monterey, which the new MBPs will have. I tried an early Monterey Beta and one thing that I noticed right away was the Microsoft Remote Desktop app would crash immediately when trying to connect. I ended up going back to Big Sur. Not sure what, if any, issues will exist for Word, Excel, PPT, etc.

 

[johannnn]

I've used Office for Mac for +10 years.
In the beginning it was like two different products. Compatibility was a huge problem.
Nowadays Microsoft it doing an awesome job at merging the code base. The Mac apps are better than ever, and even the online version (office.com) is great. Heck, I can even create pivot tables from my iPad.

Yes, it's not one-hundred-percent compatibility. Maybe 99.9%. But it's better than ever. And you don't have to use a ****** PC.