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Microsoft Launches Office 2024 for Mac and PC

I'm using Microsoft 365 and I'm confused if this is any different?

"For Mac users, Office 2024 brings several notable improvements, according to Microsoft. Excel now boasts faster performance, particularly when working with multiple open workbooks. Meanwhile, Outlook for Mac introduces customizable swipe gestures that are designed to enhance email management and work with Magic Trackpad and Magic Mouse."

Improvements over what version exactly?
 
asgeirtj said:
I'm using Microsoft 365 and I'm confused if this is any different?
Click to expand...

It’s not.

asgeirtj said:
"For Mac users, Office 2024 brings several notable improvements, according to Microsoft. Excel now boasts faster performance, particularly when working with multiple open workbooks. Meanwhile, Outlook for Mac introduces customizable swipe gestures that are designed to enhance email management and work with Magic Trackpad and Magic Mouse."

Improvements over what version exactly?
Click to expand...

Over 2021.

If you have 365, you already have this version. If you don’t have 365, you get one major upgrade every 2-5 years.
 
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Considering I get it free from work I upgraded from 2019 to 2024.
I only bothered because it was free, otherwise I would have stuck with my previous version.
Its installed (I only install Word/Excel/PowerPoint and nothing more), working, and will now just sit on my dock for the very odd occasion I actually need to use Word. lol

Launches a bit faster, a some more integration with online services, but otherwise more of the same.

I don't like how it always wants autoupdate running in the background - but otherwise you keep getting annoying banners when using any of the MS applications so I just leave it running.
 
asgeirtj said:
I'm using Microsoft 365 and I'm confused if this is any different?

"For Mac users, Office 2024 brings several notable improvements, according to Microsoft. Excel now boasts faster performance, particularly when working with multiple open workbooks. Meanwhile, Outlook for Mac introduces customizable swipe gestures that are designed to enhance email management and work with Magic Trackpad and Magic Mouse."

Improvements over what version exactly?
Click to expand...


LibreOffice is even better, non-bloated, and FREE. No need to pay for office software.
Personally I have been using LibreOffice for years, it even supports ancient file formats.
 
celtics said:
LibreOffice is even better, non-bloated, and FREE. No need to pay for office software.
Personally I have been using LibreOffice for years, it even supports ancient file formats.
Click to expand...

I mean… if you enjoy it, good for you.

Personally, if I had the choice between iWork, MS Office and LibreOffice, I'd never pick LibreOffice. It always feels very "what if MS Office but twenty years ago" to me. Especially on macOS, where it doesn't look Mac-like at all.
 
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jasperj8 said:
Anyone who purchased this or have it installed through other channels? I was told the “about” still says Office Home and Business 2021 despite with 2024 copyright. Version 16.91

Thank you.
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Same here. I bought it from AGM at 50% off, installed and registered it, and while Word says 16.89 (which is Office 2024), the License says Home & Business 2021. Any ideas anyone?
 
wonderings said:
I can't stand how OneDrive works so I just stick with my Dropbox account that has 2TB, works so much nicer then OnceDrive.
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OneDrive is, by far, the worst piece of software I know. It destroys my battery life and it's incredibly erratic. BUT it's the only way to have several people working on the same Office document at the same time. Now THAT is a walled garden.
 
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jbattan said:
Same here. I bought it from AGM at 50% off, installed and registered it, and while Word says 16.89 (which is Office 2024), the License says Home & Business 2021. Any ideas anyone?
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The apps are all the same. The features you get depend on the license you're paying for. It sounds like the license you got was a 2021 license, not a 2024 license. When 2021 reaches the end of support, it'll stop being able to be updated unless you get a new license.
 
Truben said:
I would love to maintain everything within the Apple ecosystem, but unfortunately, Pages lacks a decent dark mode to work with. Moreover, I am too old to switch back to white pages.
Click to expand...
You can make a page template with black background color, white text :)
 
eduardodfj said:
OneDrive is, by far, the worst piece of software I know. It destroys my battery life and it's incredibly erratic. BUT it's the only way to have several people working on the same Office document at the same time. Now THAT is a walled garden.
Click to expand...
Office 365 if you want real time cloud collaboration.
 
Anyone know how to transfer or import Word 2016's customized toolbar — aka the Ribbon — into Word 2024 or Word 365?

I've already taken my old Custom Dictionary and overwritten the default 2024/365 one. I've done the same thing with Normal.dotm — and that nicely brings in all my customized keystrokes.

But the Ribbon remains the default 2024/365 one. On the Windows side of life (Earth 2), I've read there is an import-export option for the Ribbon in Preferences but, alas, that’s curiously missing on the Mac.

I'd just as soon not have customize the ribbon and its various tabs again!
 
It is worth mentioning that Microsoft removed the option to revert back to the Legacy Outlook in Microsoft 2024 Home and Business. They removed the option in the menu bar to switch back to the previous design. It is only possible in Mac Outlook 2021 and previous versions. At this point using Mac Office 2024 version 16.90, the new Outlook design still does not support Microsoft Exchange. Only the Legacy Outlook version supports Exchange accounts. Microsoft forces you to use the new, crippled Outlook version and O365 cloud without providing a solution for Exchange on premise users.
 
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howdytom said:
It is worth mentioning that Microsoft removed the option to revert back to the Legacy Outlook in Microsoft 2024 Home and Business. They removed the option in the menu bar to switch back to the previous design. It is only possible in Mac Outlook 2021 and previous versions. At this point using Mac Office 2024 version 16.90, the new Outlook design still does not support Microsoft Exchange. Only the Legacy Outlook version supports Exchange accounts. Microsoft forces you to use the new, crippled Outlook version and O365 cloud without providing a solution for Exchange on premise users.
Click to expand...

This doesn't impact me directly as I don't use Outlook but I am curious for the OP: can one run an older version of Office with an Office 2024 license (i.e. buy the new license but install the slightly older version)?

Personally I'm done with tech companies telling me which version of software to run, forced upgrades, and holding my data hostage for non-compliance.

For the OP, I recommend switching to IMAP. By its very nature e-mail already starts "in the cloud" and it's only a matter of where it transitions to your computer and who controls it where it sits otherwise. Downloading it from Gmail via POP into Outlook locks you into Outlook but it's not like Google didn't see it along the way. Otherwise I have 10s thousands of e-mails accessible from IMAP and no issues performance-issues.

If you want more control, get your own domain and pay for an IMAP service (or host your IMAP server but I don't recommend this). I also have a Gmail account for situations where a Gmail address makes people more comfortable but in both cases I use IMAP. IMAP is designed for exactly what you are trying to do (with sister protocols like CalDav and CardDav for addressbook and calendar sync if you want that part of your Outlook sync'd too).

The difference between a hosted IMAP service and general cloud services is that IMAP is standard and commodity. It actually frees your data and your control. MS gets squirly with Outlook like howdytom mentions, switch mail clients. No migration necessary. Not sure, try out a different e-mail client and if you don't like it, switch back in 5 minutes. I was using Apple Mail for personal e-mails but it annoyed me for something so I've been trying out Thunderbird on one computer. Another computer runs Apple Mail for all my e-mail. And in the end if I wanted all my e-mails off the server, I can just drag them down locally anytime I want.
 
Ifti said:
Considering I get it free from work I upgraded from 2019 to 2024.
I only bothered because it was free, otherwise I would have stuck with my previous version.
Its installed (I only install Word/Excel/PowerPoint and nothing more), working, and will now just sit on my dock for the very odd occasion I actually need to use Word. lol

Launches a bit faster, a some more integration with online services, but otherwise more of the same.

I don't like how it always wants autoupdate running in the background - but otherwise you keep getting annoying banners when using any of the MS applications so I just leave it running.
Click to expand...
Yup, older versions of office still work absolutely fine. You do miss out on some, (but very few), new features.
 
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I've notice dit actually launches much faster than previous generations.
Literally how it should have been from the start!
 
celtics said:

LibreOffice is even better, non-bloated, and FREE. No need to pay for office software.
Personally I have been using LibreOffice for years, it even supports ancient file formats.
Click to expand...

LibreOffice is not nearly as optimized as MS Office. I tried using it both at work (for the documents that I didn't have to share with others) and at home on three different machines, and I had lags and slowdowns on all of them. It doesn't seem to like large spreadsheets with charts and 600-800 rows of data.

There's also very little support for its native format on iOS / iPadOS. I found many apps that work with MS Office formats, but only a few that reliably work with LibreOffice / OpenOffice. Collabora Office is the best, and it's still laggy and feels unrefined.

LO did work much better for me on Linux than either Windows or MacOS.

I also tried to use Numbers. It's nowhere near as powerful and versatile as Excel, but good enough for personal use. The free placement of tables on a sheet is a nice feature. However, I wasn't able to find any app on Windows or Linux that can read Numbers. There's a LibreOffice plugin but it doesn't work. Which means that if I use Numbers, I am stuck with MacOS and can no longer keep my crossplatform setup. And if at some point in the future I decide to switch my main ecosystems (which I have done at least three times in the past 15 years), I am stuck with a bunch of spreadsheets which can't be read in their native format, and look horrible when exported to Excel. MSO files on the other hand are truly cross platform.
 
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Does anyone know what Apple uses on their company devices? Numbers or Excel? Hard to imagine any large, global, complex corporation using Numbers over Excel.
 
SpanishAppleNerd said:
I got the 365 subscription and it works fantastically. Do you people prefer thar or the one time purchase?
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If I needed MS Office, I would buy the one time purchase, done and dusted, no more payouts.
If people have a use for the 1TB of online storage, then yes, go for the subscription, it is pretty good value, but not as good as it was, since MS stuck the price up to include their AI rubbish.

But I don't require MS Office and the free alternatives do what I need.
 
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Ad47uk said:
If I needed MS Office, I would buy the one time purchase, done and dusted, no more payouts.
If people have a use for the 1TB of online storage, then yes, go for the subscription, it is pretty good value, but not as good as it was, since MS stuck the price up to include their AI rubbish.

But I don't require MS Office and the free alternatives do what I need.
Click to expand...
you know, my case is kinda weird in that MS Office with AI is cheaper for me that without Copilot. I asked a Microsoft representative a couple of weeks ago, and apparently I can get the half priced subscription for being a uni professor with Copilot only, so a whole year of Office with Copilot (€5x12 = €60), costs less than a year without Copilot (€69, the old price). Before Copilot I paid €3/month for MS Office.
Though I totally get your point, before knowing about the reduced price I too thought about buying Office 2024
 
Ad47uk said:
If I needed MS Office, I would buy the one time purchase, done and dusted, no more payouts.
If people have a use for the 1TB of online storage, then yes, go for the subscription, it is pretty good value, but not as good as it was, since MS stuck the price up to include their AI rubbish.

But I don't require MS Office and the free alternatives do what I need.
Click to expand...
I assume the price in pounds also got up from 7 to. 10, like down here in Spain?
 
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