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Youngferds07

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 18, 2015
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I recently bought the new Macbook 12" (El Capitan, early 2016).

I want to get Microsoft Office for it but the reviews on 2016 are awful. Can anyone recommend a legitimate source to purchase Microsoft Office 2011?

Does anyone have any experience with Office 2016 and El Capitan?
 
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I use MS Office 365 subscription for 5 computers ($10 / mo.) It works fine for me. I am not sure if you will find a legitimate channel for 2011. If you are trying to avoid MS Office you could try Libre Office (free) or King Office, etc...

If I were you I would try Office 365 for a month, and then decide for yourself.
 
I use MS Office 365 subscription for 5 computers ($10 / mo.) It works fine for me. I am not sure if you will find a legitimate channel for 2011. If you are trying to avoid MS Office you could try Libre Office (free) or King Office, etc...

If I were you I would try Office 365 for a month, and then decide for yourself.

I'm looking for a one time purchase option. I mainly use excel.

What is the difference between 2011 & 365?
 
I recently bought the new Macbook 12" (El Capitan, early 2016).

I want to get Microsoft Office for it but the reviews on 2016 are awful. Can anyone recommend a legitimate source to purchase Microsoft Office 2011?

Does anyone have any experience with Office 2016 and El Capitan?


I tried to buy 2011 from Best Buy recently, it was the same day they were taking remaining copies off the shelf. They had probably 150 copies in stock but could not sell any to me because the item "was deleted".

So I was like "If the item doesn't exist and I take it, is that even stealing". They said "Sir, you are not taking any of these".

I would have bought like 10 copies. Oh well.
 
If anything, the 2016 is miles ahead of the 2011 version. I used the 2011 from day one and the 2016 is the biggest update to the Office for Mac series ever, so I would at least give it a try.

Or if you don't do anything complex, the free online version of Excel might be enough for you.
 
If anything, the 2016 is miles ahead of the 2011 version. I used the 2011 from day one and the 2016 is the biggest update to the Office for Mac series ever, so I would at least give it a try.

Or if you don't do anything complex, the free online version of Excel might be enough for you.

I definitely do complex things with Excel. I was reading the reviews on Amazon for 2016 and a lot of people complained about El Capitan and 2016.

So, you have 2016? What's your operating system? Any problems with it crashing or not saving?
 
I installed 2016, then removed it and went back to 2011.
2016 takes more space and seems a lot more sluggish then 2011 - for me anyways. I didn't like it at all.
 
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The company I work for provides free copies of Office 2016 since they've subscribed to Office 365 but I'm sticking with my own copy of Office 2011 because I found 2016 to be horribly slow by comparison. The really sad thing is I still have a copy of Office 2004 and that runs faster in a VM running Snow Leopard on my MacBook than 2011 does natively despite the fact that Office 2004 is PPC so Snow Leopard is using Rosetta PPC emulation to run it. Just how MS has managed to make a native app that slow is beyond me but there you go and with every release it gets worse.
 
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I definitely do complex things with Excel. I was reading the reviews on Amazon for 2016 and a lot of people complained about El Capitan and 2016.

So, you have 2016? What's your operating system? Any problems with it crashing or not saving?

Yes, I have the 2016 version. I'm running it on 2016 MacBook with El Capitan and I haven't had any issues with it so far. On my 2010 MBA it wasn't very smooth, but then again most things weren't and I only used the beta version if I remember correctly. I know there were some issues with it and El Capitan when the latter was launched, but those have been fixed ages ago.

In general Office for Mac is well hated and many people will say it's bad just because it's not as good as the Windows version, and I agree it isn't. However, the 2016 made things a lot better, at least for me. E.g. Excel in 2011 version was awfully slow and simple operations like graph generation could take +5 seconds to complete, whereas the 2016 is nearly as smooth as the Windows version.

Either way, Microsoft offers one-month trial of Office 365, so I would at least give it a try. If you find it slow and unreliable, then hunt for the 2011 version or consider installing Windows and Office in a VM.
 
If anything, the 2016 is miles ahead of the 2011 version. I used the 2011 from day one and the 2016 is the biggest update to the Office for Mac series ever, so I would at least give it a try.

Or if you don't do anything complex, the free online version of Excel might be enough for you.
Great thread! You mean Office 2016 for Mac is out already? That's excellent news if it means what I think it means.(Namely, there was a rumor that Office 2016 was going to bring back full VBA support). Did that turn out to be true in the end? For me, VBA is the SOLE reason why I still use anything Microsoft anymore, but it seems that all the versions since the ones that work on Windows 7, they tried to do away with it and replace it for something else, which was nowhere near as good. (as a result, most of us still clung onto our windows 7 machines for dear life just for this fact alone, but quite happily moved to Apple for everything else. Now Windows 7 is nearing the end of its life cycle though, this has become very worrying, as most of my work relies on using this technology, so if nothing supported VBA properly anymore, that would be very bad news). However, the one ray o light at the end of the tunnel was that Office for Mac was a project they were currently working on (which would solve alot of these issues). I know though that previous versions were not quite fully functional for VBA though, however the rumor that Office 2016 will fully support VBA again could be the solution! So is there anyone on here who has tried it that can confirm what their experience of it is was like? (I'd especially love to hear from people who used to use the Windows versions but are now using the Mac version, and use it for VBA) Your help would be greatly appreciated. (Because if it works the way I am hoping, I'm literally going to buy this straight away, and will be a very happy bunny!) If there are any issues though, please let me know what your experiences were, and how you got around them. Many thanks in advance.
 
I think I will stick to excel 2008 for use with my El Cap macs, even though the firewall bugs me a bit with it...
 
I think I will stick to excel 2008 for use with my El Cap macs, even though the firewall bugs me a bit with it...
When you use Excel, do you use VBA? (and if so, can you confirm that this combination of EL Captain with Excel 2008 works?)

Reason why I ask is, I've been a bit scared to upgrade Yosemite to EL Captain just yet, for the fact that most things I've read were saying that the most recent version of excel doesn't have VBA working on it properly, and that the previous version works, but only works on Yosemite. (of course, this info may be out of date, and they might have fixed a few things by now) but not being sure, I'm reluctant to make the OS upgrade until I'm sure that I can get a working version of excel on it that has VBA programming capabilities that actually work. (I know that none of the mac versions of Excel VBA are perfect yet, but what I'm trying to find out is which OSX & Excel for Mac Version combinations would be the most reliable option for those of us who, like myself, need the VBA capabilities to be the best that it can be?

(anyone else is welcome to chime in if you've got some valuable input on this question) -The more minds on the case who have had some real world experience with these things, the better. ;)

Many thanks in advance.
 
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Unless you have an older Mac stuck on Snow Leopard/Lion you could use the downgrade rights in the license agreement, the 2016 version is expands upon supporting Yosemite/El Capitan features which boosts performance/speed on newer Macs and OneDrive integration. Mac version of Office has always been a bit more polished/stable vs the Windows version since they re-wrote it from scratch with 2011 to enable better cross-platform support. (Office 2013+ on Windows is an ugly mess in comparison)

I tried to buy 2011 from Best Buy recently, it was the same day they were taking remaining copies off the shelf. They had probably 150 copies in stock but could not sell any to me because the item "was deleted".

So I was like "If the item doesn't exist and I take it, is that even stealing". They said "Sir, you are not taking any of these".

Depending upon how Best Buy boxes are it could be like Staples in which they also have to scan the point of sale "activation" barcode to activate the license inside the box like Gift Cards. Either way the Office 2011 license code wouldn't work once the item is "deleted" from retail inventory and is typically shipped back to a warehouse for disposal/recycling. You can still buy Office 2011 from a few solutions providers and if Amazon(direct from them not fulfillment/3rd party) has remaining old versions.
 
2016 HAS had several updates with features being added since it was released.

I don't use it for much, just a few simple Excel sheets for personal expense tracking, but for $10 I figured why not. Oh yeah, as noted by another poster, check with your employer as some will have employee purchase capabilities for Office. That's how I got mine - my employer is a Software Assurance subscriber with MS which gets them Home Use Program membership for employees, can buy one copy of the current version of Office (one copy of 2016 for Mac OR one copy of 2016 for Windows, can't get one of each) for $10.
 
Office 2016 is working great for me. The new layout is a lot better than 2011 in my opinion. I use it daily without any hiccups. I don't see any reason to run the 2011 suite.
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There are "other means" of obtaining it.
Oh you mean stealing it. I suppose theft is always an option.
 
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Office 2016 is working great for me. The new layout is a lot better than 2011 in my opinion. I use it daily without any hiccups. I don't see any reason to run the 2011 suite.
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Oh you mean stealing it. I suppose theft is always an option.
well..tbh, that would of have been my last resort....if there was no other way to buy it.
 
i'm talking about 2011.

Oh ok since you can't any place to purchase it then I understand...wait what are these?

Disc Version

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003YCOJA8..._m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=08SZ5AEFM5J7EG2M0Z7J

or

Key version + Direct Microsoft Download link

http://www.amazon.com/Office-Home-B...sr=1-2&keywords=microsoft+office+2011+for+mac

https://www7.downloadoffice2010.microsoft.com/macdl/registerkey.aspx?culture=en-US&ref=macdl

Hey the 2011 key version is even cheaper than the 2016 suite ;)
 
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