Microsoft Office 2015 (2016?)

[shandyman]

Oh, I never meant to imply that MS was "flipping the bird to people," but I am disappointed and a little surprised. Office:2011 supports OS X back to SL, so I assumed that new Office would go back few versions as well. I know nothing about the coding process or API's that may inhibit it.

I didn't upgrade because I personally had usability issues that I didn't want to deal with. This is just another side-effect of the annual releases, but that's off topic. I'm not mad at Microsoft, just disappointed since I've waiting so long for this.

The reason Office 11 supported Snow Leopard is most likely due to it still being updated when Office 2011 was released.

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Why would they make it only for Yosemite only.

There's already a few posts in this thread suggesting why this is the case.

 

[sracer]

Why would they make it only for Yosemite only.

Only Microsoft knows, and they're not saying.

It might be a technical reason. It could be a business reason.

 

[cheesyappleuser]

I know this has been pointed before, but the similarities between, say, Word 2013 and 2016 are immense! The UI is very similar, the ribbon is absolutely the same thing.
This might be good or bad news, depending on how many additions MS will do until the final release, and how different Office 2016 for Windows will be from the Mac version.
Either way, I'm pretty excited for it; it really performs as it should!

 

[skaertus]

I know this has been pointed before, but the similarities between, say, Word 2013 and 2016 are immense! The UI is very similar, the ribbon is absolutely the same thing.

This might be good or bad news, depending on how many additions MS will do until the final release, and how different Office 2016 for Windows will be from the Mac version.

Either way, I'm pretty excited for it; it really performs as it should!

The interface is really nice. However, I did not find a way to open PDF files in Word, nor to embed fonts into documents. I guess the interface may have changed, but the features (or the lack of them) are the same.

 

[maflynn]

The interface is really nice. However, I did not find a way to open PDF files in Word, nor to embed fonts into documents. I guess the interface may have changed, but the features (or the lack of them) are the same.

From what I've read, everyone is talking about the stream lined interface and I've not seen too much written up about new or updated features.

 

[Traverse]

From what I've read, everyone is talking about the stream lined interface and I've not seen too much written up about new or updated features.

That's all I've been able to find as well. New interface is nice and all, but I just wanted better performance and closer feature parity.

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The interface is really nice. However, I did not find a way to open PDF files in Word, nor to embed fonts into documents. I guess the interface may have changed, but the features (or the lack of them) are the same.

Does it still have the bug where if you have a word document full screen and open a second one form the Finder, that second open opens onto of the existing one and then goes full screen? I hate that.

I also had bugs in Office 2011 where document toolbars would be cut off above the menu and I couldn't drag them so I had to close it and reopen it.

 

[Joe323]

Looks like there is still no alt-e-s shortcut available in Excel to bring up the Paste Special panel? Command-control-v still works to bring it up but it still doesn't allow you to use another shortcut to specify the type of way to paste (i.e. v for values, f for formulas) like in the Windows version. Looks like the Customize Keyboard menu item is not available here either (although I could never get alt-e-s mapped properly in previous versions either). Also annoying is that they haven't fixed the pivot table filters field to allow you to select only specific items all at once instead of one-by-one like they have on the windows side.

Hope I'm wrong but it doesn't look like they made many improvements to close the gap on feature parity between the Mac and Windows versions (at least with the features that I use) in Excel.

Also it's confusing that there are two menus, one within Excel and the regular Mac OS X menu with duplicate menu items for Insert and Data (that don't do the same thing).

 

[davidlv]

I don't know if this is a bug, but I noticed that the font list in Word 2015 is huge, as it includes all of the fonts installed on my system, even the ones I have disabled using Font Book! Next, I will try deleting all of the fonts I will never use, the ones you can disable in Font Book (leaving the ones that have the disable button greyed out) in an effort to make it easy to select fonts that start with a letter way down the alphabet. Scrolling down to Times New Roman takes forever!
Just tested this using Word 2011 and it does the same thing so this may be an Office-Yosemite thing, but I don't remember having that issue running Mavericks.
Can anyone confirm this? Makes me wonder what the Font Book disable function is for!

 

[shandyman]

I don't know if this is a bug, but I noticed that the font list in Word 2015 is huge, as it includes all of the fonts installed on my system, even the ones I have disabled using Font Book! Next, I will try deleting all of the fonts I will never use, the ones you can disable in Font Book (leaving the ones that have the disable button greyed out) in an effort to make it easy to select fonts that start with a letter way down the alphabet. Scrolling down to Times New Roman takes forever!

Just tested this using Word 2011 and it does the same thing so this may be an Office-Yosemite thing, but I don't remember having that issue running Mavericks.

Can anyone confirm this? Makes me wonder what the Font Book disable function is for!

Rather than scrolling through the list, have you tried just start typing the name of the font? Should be quicker.

 

[skaertus]

Hope I'm wrong but it doesn't look like they made many improvements to close the gap on feature parity between the Mac and Windows versions (at least with the features that I use) in Excel.

I am feeling the same about Word.

 

[sracer]

Our Office365 subscription is coming due in a few weeks and I was discussing it with my wife... my intention was to let the subscription lapse and switch to LibreOffice (which I've been able to get to work as I needed to in virtually all situations though not as easily).

MS Office and LibreOffice are really the only two viable options for us because of their cross-platform nature. (OSX/Windows) But since we have OSX, Windows, Android, and iOS devices that are all in the mix, MS Office is the only true option. (I never thought that would be the case)

She tells me that she relies on MS Office for document exchange and document collaboration for her activities on the school board. So that's that. We'll be renewing and standardizing on it for our various tasks. In a way that makes things easier.

I'll be sticking with Office 2011 until 2016 goes "gold", and I'll unfortunately need to upgrade my OSX devices to Yosemite. Ugh.

But I'm excited to see how much 2016 has been updated from 2011. I'm hoping that performance will be better when it goes to production.

 

[Agent-J]

There weren't too many "new" features I was after; for my work, I mainly needed the modern equation editor in Word and Powerpoint both, and the new Office has indeed made that happen. I'd also be happy if the list numbering isn't quite so stupid as in older versions, but I don't want to expect too much.

Having to switch to Yosemite, combined with the new UI of Office, has been pretty jarring. There are so many "little things" that have changed that I'm a bit disoriented using the Mac now. It doesn't look or feel like the same machine, and the differences aren't positive ones so far. But that's just me, I suppose.

Having decided to go all-in with OneDrive about 6 weeks ago, and finding that very successful for accessing my work on two Macs and two iOS devices, I'll be getting an Office 365 subscription before the "free preview" for Office ends.

 

[kwijbo]

In your experiences, is the preview good enough to safely remove 2011 and use 2016 full time?

 

[kmaute]

In your experiences, is the preview good enough to safely remove 2011 and use 2016 full time?

I have. I don't use Outlook though.

 

[Traverse]

I'll be sticking with Office 2011 until 2016 goes "gold", and I'll unfortunately need to upgrade my OSX devices to Yosemite. Ugh.

Breaking down hun?

Just kidding. I'm pretty sure I'm going to do the same thing IF performance improves. Anyway, I like how you mentioned "standardizing" because that's what I'm trying to do. Actually, what's keeping me on Office is the fact that it IS available everywhere. I'm taking more and more of my work on the go with my iPad. I can't use Pages because the iOS app isn't compatible with Pages '09. I can't just use Markdown because sometimes I need to work on a document with special formatting. Plus, Microsoft's formats are standards that aren't suddenly going away. And a final bonus is that MS has managed to make a consistent UI across all systems. This makes it really easy to move from platform to platform effortlessly.

I'm thinking of waiting until OS X 10.11 to see if really does bring the refinements rumored, but at least Pages '09 works on Yosemite. I'm actually moving away from Pages because I can't take that work with me and I know it's dying, but it's still an excellent tool to use for certain situations and will keep a fond place in my memory.

But I'm excited to see how much 2016 has been updated from 2011. I'm hoping that performance will be better when it goes to production.

The #1 thing I wanted from Office (aside from Excel functions) was better performance, but sadly it seems like Office:2016 is just Office:2011 with a fresh coat of paint (of less contrast) and a few added features. I know it is a beta, but I was expecting more. Word and Excel are the slowest apps on my system. I know it's a beta, but I would still think it would have improved more. Many review sites like the Verge mentioned that it felt about the same as Office 2011.

 

[maflynn]

In your experiences, is the preview good enough to safely remove 2011 and use 2016 full time?

I'd keep both, but then, I'm a bit conservative. So far for my Excel uses, the beta version has been stable.

 

[philxor]

I've been using the 2016 variants and found them to be stable, except the navigation pane in Word. It will crash almost all the time using it. There isn't really too much new in them, the Onedrive integration is nice since it's what I use for the bulk of my cloud storage now.

The apps are slow to open however with the new open dialog. Word takes 5+ seconds to open while 2011 takes a couple seconds at most. I'm also used to just using the OSX search bar in the dialog to open documents and now I have to go through an extra step to do that.

The UI looks nice but in Word at least scrolling is much slower as are most of the UI elements. I'm hoping they can make some improvements because Outlook 2015 to me is faster than using 2011 and I use it full time now.

 

[BenTrovato]

In your experiences, is the preview good enough to safely remove 2011 and use 2016 full time?

If you need the space, then go ahead and remove it. I'm keeping it 2011. I don't know if an update to the preview will break something I need, especially if I need to use Office in an emergency and it doesn't work. Also I don't know what MS is planning for purchase price/scheme so I'm not committing to the new office yet but I do like it so far.

 

[mirzank]

questions about animations and the f2 key

two questions about excel 2016:

- anybody figure out how to disable animations (moving cell to cell). I disabled them on excel 2013 for windows and the experience improved DRASTICALLY. faster. less laggy. cpuusage went wayyy down. cant find anything in excel 2016 for mac other than an option to disable animation feedback but thats only for inserting/deleting colums and rows.

- F2 - pressing f2 opens the cell for editing, but using left right arrow keys moves me to adjacent cells instead of moving the cursor within the cell for editing. is this a bug? am i doing something wrong?

 

[shandyman]

two questions about excel 2016:



- anybody figure out how to disable animations (moving cell to cell). I disabled them on excel 2013 for windows and the experience improved DRASTICALLY. faster. less laggy. cpuusage went wayyy down. cant find anything in excel 2016 for mac other than an option to disable animation feedback but thats only for inserting/deleting colums and rows.



- F2 - pressing f2 opens the cell for editing, but using left right arrow keys moves me to adjacent cells instead of moving the cursor within the cell for editing. is this a bug? am i doing something wrong?

When I click on a cell in Excel on windows, arrow keys move. When I double click, then it moves cursor.

 

[jfischer]

Oh, I never meant to imply that MS was "flipping the bird to people," but I am disappointed and a little surprised. Office:2011 supports OS X back to SL, so I assumed that new Office would go back few versions as well.

Office 2011 is so old though, I think SL was the current OS X release in October of 2010 wasn't it?

Office 2016 appears to be the same, targeted at the now-current version of OS X and will be updated to stay compatible with future versions of the OS, at least for a while.

 

[skaertus]

Office 2011 is so old though, I think SL was the current OS X release in October of 2010 wasn't it?



Office 2016 appears to be the same, targeted at the now-current version of OS X and will be updated to stay compatible with future versions of the OS, at least for a while.

Yes. Snow Leopard was released in 2009 and Lion was only released in 2011.

 

[Joe323]

two questions about excel 2016:

- anybody figure out how to disable animations (moving cell to cell). I disabled them on excel 2013 for windows and the experience improved DRASTICALLY. faster. less laggy. cpuusage went wayyy down. cant find anything in excel 2016 for mac other than an option to disable animation feedback but thats only for inserting/deleting colums and rows.

Not totally sure that this works but if you go to Preferences-Edit there's a checkbox that says "Provide feedback with animation." I disabled it but I don't know if it did anything.

 

[mirzank]

Not totally sure that this works but if you go to Preferences-Edit there's a checkbox that says "Provide feedback with animation." I disabled it but I don't know if it did anything.

Yep tried that. Didn't do anything. Either that's the correct option and it just isn't enabled yet. Or the description is accurate which talks about inserting and deleting column animation and nothing about general usage.
Let's see

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When I click on a cell in Excel on windows, arrow keys move. When I double click, then it moves cursor.

Yeah that's the normal behavior. Double click is equivalent to pressing f2. Which means edit within cell. here when you double click/press f2 editing gets enabled. So far so good. But when you press left right arrow keys to move within cell editing gets disabled and the highlight just moves to the next cell over.

 

[ScottNWDW]

Yes. Snow Leopard was released in 2009 and Lion was only released in 2011.

Office 2011 was actually released in late 2010. My MacBook Pro was purchased in early 2011 and it was later in that year that Lion was released. I remember that because Lion was the first MacOS upgrade that I did. So with that being said, if Snow Leopard was the MacOS that was current when Office 2011 came out and was developed on, the reason why it would be compatible with it.

Yosemite is the latest MacOS, and probably has many features that Office may require and therefore is the reason that Microsoft has set Yosemite as the minimum OS requirement.

I just don't understand the reason people complain when they want software that is the latest and greatest yet haven't upgraded the core software that actually runs their computer meaning the operating system.