Microsoft Office 2015 (2016?)

[grahamperrin]

Microsoft's confusing statements; wondering about running on Mavericks

… Office:2011 supports OS X back to SL, so I assumed that new Office would go back few versions as well. …

From Microsoft's blog post, 2015-03-05:

"… The recently released Outlook for Mac is also a part of the preview suite …"​

In Microsoft's screenshot (attached), the first things that I noticed were nonstandard items in the title bar (Undo, Redo, Save, Search). Also the full screen button was missing, so I assumed that it was a shot of Yosemite. Then I realised, the other title bar items appeared unlike Yosemite, so I wondered whether Microsoft had done something to make Yosemite appear less like Yosemite.

I dug a little and discovered that Outlook for Mac for Office 365 runs on OS X Mavericks 10.9.3 or greater.

However –

… on Mavericks. As expected, the application icons had the 'no entry' appearance. …

– and that included the icon for Outlook. So whilst Microsoft suggested that "… The recently released Outlook for Mac is also a part of the preview suite …" it appears that the Outlook for Mac in the preview suite is not the same as the recently released Outlook for Mac.

Confusing. Don't shoot me, I'm only the messenger.

----

Optimistically: whilst Microsoft suggests that the new Office for Mac is officially supported on machines running Yosemite (10.10), I guess that there's a possibility of a future prerelease, or the release:

• running on Mavericks or greater
• but not running on Mountain Lion or less.

 

[Traverse]

In Microsoft's screenshot (attached), the first things that I noticed were nonstandard items in the title bar (Undo, Redo, Save, Search). Also the full screen button was missing, so I assumed that it was a shot of Yosemite. Then I realised, the other title bar items appeared unlike Yosemite, so I wondered whether Microsoft had done something to make Yosemite appear less like Yosemite.

No, the new Outlook did not follow OS X's standards (at the time), but I assumed that was their attempt to create "one Office everywhere." Unless it's utilizing behind the scenes APIs, I really don't know why it won't support OS X Mavericks.

And honestly, if it's released Yosemite only I'll bet anything it will stay OS X 10.10+ only.

 

[iCletus]

However –
– and that included the icon for Outlook. So whilst Microsoft suggested that "… The recently released Outlook for Mac is also a part of the preview suite …" it appears that the Outlook for Mac in the preview suite is not the same as the recently released Outlook for Mac.

Confusing. Don't shoot me, I'm only the messenger.

----

Hello Graham;
I am not following what you say above? SO yes it appears confusing. Is there two new versions of Outlook floating around??? You imply Outlook from the full preview suite, and "recently released" Outlook for Mac— which one is that?

 

[grahamperrin]

… yes it appears confusing. Is there two new versions of Outlook floating around? …

In The Office 2016 Mac Preview is here! – Office Blogs (2015-03-05) Microsoft states:

"… The recently released Outlook for Mac is also a part of the preview suite …"​

That 'recently released' version was 'Outlook for Mac for Office 365' so (according to Microsoft's statement) that's the version we should expect to find as a part of the preview suite.

In Outlook for Mac for Office 365 - January 2015 Update Microsoft states:

"… You must be running OS X Mavericks 10.9.3 or a later version …"​

To the best of my knowledge, Outlook in the preview suite can not run on Mavericks. So (confusingly) what Microsoft describes as part of the preview suite seems to differ from what's truly in the suite.

 

[iCletus]

Ah.... Ok I see what you are saying. Thank you. Those announcements are definitely in conflict with each other!

 

[grahamperrin]

Outlook 15.x

… a page not found error. Was wondering what the actual release notes say.

The one bug that seems fixed is the Outlook calendar bug where it shows events in the time zone of the other user when scheduling a meeting. Events that myself and another were both invited to were showing at different times.

Office 2016 for Mac Preview – March 31, 2015 Hotfix Update

Probably consistent with what was noted by heathpitts, Microsoft states

'… Outlook

Fixes an issue in which the Free/Busy availability of others may be shifted by an hour after the start of daylight saving time. …"​

Versions

MicrosoftOutlook15.6.dmg would not allow installation of Outlook on a Mavericks system. Maybe because that system had no prior installation of Outlook 15.x.

Whilst MicrosoftOutlook15.6.dmg is described as an update, on Yosemite it appears to install a full Outlook without requiring any prior installation of Outlook 15.x. However my attempts to connect to an Exchange server failed.

Office 2016 for Mac Preview installs Outlook 15.8; the released version 15.6 is overwritten (I set aside a copy before the overwrite).

The 2015-03-31 hotfix update installs 15.8.2. With this version I can successfully configure a connection to the Exchange server, and a connection to Gmail, but Outlook remains offline with the following dialogue:

Your account can't sync because your Office 365 subscription hasn't been activated

Do you want to activate your subscription?

[Stay Offline] [[Activate]]​

I guess that the prior installation of 15.6, without activation of an Office 365 subscription, causes Office 2016 for Mac Preview to wrongly require a subscription.

I guess that I could resolve this by using pkgutil(1) with the --forget option, and so on, but it's just a brief wade through the mud of Yosemite, so I'm really not bothered.

I'm more interested in whether the copy of Outlook 15.6, which I copied from the Yosemite system to a Mavericks system, will launch on Mavericks. I hope so; it's intended by Microsoft to run on OS X 10.9.3 and greater.

 

[grahamperrin]

Outlook release 15.6 and lightly hacked pre-release 15.8.2 on Mavericks

Side note: Microsoft Error Reporting stopped responding on Yosemite, I had to force a quit to allow a restart to Mavericks.

… I'm more interested in whether the copy of Outlook 15.6, which I copied from the Yosemite system to a Mavericks system, will launch on Mavericks. …

Yes, it launched but (as on Yosemite) Outlook 15.6 on OS X 10.9.5 reported authentication errors when I tried to configure the Exchange account. Configuration of the Gmail account succeeded but (as expected) Outlook 15.6 remained offline; no Office 365 subscription.

I lazily edited something in 15.8.2 to pretend a lower operating system requirement –

gpes3e-gjp4:~ bbsadmin-l$ defaults read /Volumes/Yosemite/Applications/Microsoft\ Outlook.app/Contents/Info.plist LSMinimumSystemVersion
10.10
gpes3e-gjp4:~ bbsadmin-l$ sudo defaults write /Volumes/Yosemite/Applications/Microsoft\ Outlook.app/Contents/Info.plist LSMinimumSystemVersion 10.9.3
Password:
gpes3e-gjp4:~ bbsadmin-l$

– then copied the hacked .app to the Mavericks system and launched it, but it crashes. No great surprise. http://pastebin.com/wZw2j1cv for anyone who's interested but please note that I don't seek help with this; at a glance, Outlook 15.8.2 for Yosemite requires a library that's simply not present in Mavericks. Or something like that.

15.x compatibility with Mavericks

A guess, Microsoft will:

1. prioritise good behaviour of pre-release 15.8.x on Yosemite; then
2. improve pre-release 15.8.x to also work (as release 15.6 already does) on Mavericks.

Icon for Outlook 15.8.2 – with and (hacked) without the no entry overlay

Three screenshots attached, all on Mavericks. The second and third shots show 15.8.2; the third is the lazily hacked copy.

A simple change to the value of LSMinimumSystemVersion will allow the icon of the app to appear without the no entry overlay but – as noted above – the appearance is deceptive. That simple change is not enough to allow proper running of the app.

 

[TheralSadurns]

Missing Font Styles

Quick question. Is it just me, or is it actually impossible right now to select various Font Styles in Word 2016?

I can, for example, only set Helvetica Neue to Regular, Bold, Italic, Bold + Italic. All other styles such as Light or Thin are not listed. If I paste in some Helvetica Neue Light from e.g. Pages... Word converts it to Regular.

Also, didn't Word 2011 have like a little arrow in the Font menu where you could actually select the styles?

 

[iCletus]

Can someone explain as I never use Windows, but I was looking at screen shots for Windows 10 and the Outlook app is completely different in UI with Outlook for Mac now— images just leaked the other day.
Are there different iterations of Outlook in Windows. It seems Outlook for Mac was just brought into line with similar Windows versions, and now Windows version is changing?

Can someone explain?

 

[MagicBoy]

OS X isn't Windows.

The Apple apps at Microsoft are developed by a different team.

 

[tatty27]

Can someone explain as I never use Windows, but I was looking at screen shots for Windows 10 and the Outlook app is completely different in UI with Outlook for Mac now— images just leaked the other day.
Are there different iterations of Outlook in Windows. It seems Outlook for Mac was just brought into line with similar Windows versions, and now Windows version is changing?

Can someone explain?

There are two different versions of Outlook for Windows, one is the free one that is accessed via an internet browser and I believe is now integrated within Windows as an app (replaced Hotmail and Outlook express) and the second is part of the Microsoft Office suite. The Outlook for Mac is meant to emulate the Office suite version.

 

[iCletus]

There are two different versions of Outlook for Windows, one is the free one that is accessed via an internet browser and I believe is now integrated within Windows as an app (replaced Hotmail and Outlook express) and the second is part of the Microsoft Office suite. The Outlook for Mac is meant to emulate the Office suite version.

Tatty27;
Thank you. that makes sense... and helps what I was seeing make sense.

 

[Traverse]

I just loaded a 61 page document on my Yosemite partition and was very disappointed in the performance. Scrolling was still laggy

 

[ButteryScrollin]

Optimistically: whilst Microsoft suggests that the new Office for Mac is officially supported on machines running Yosemite (10.10), I guess that there's a possibility of a future prerelease, or the release:

• running on Mavericks or greater
• but not running on Mountain Lion or less.

Absolutely no chance the new Office runs on anything below 10.10.

Early previews run on anything 10.9.3 or up, but now only 10.10.

----------

Why would they make it only for Yosemite only.

why make it for anything below Yosemite?

 

[Traverse]

why make it for anything below Yosemite?

Because there is still a sizable portion of Mac users on Mavericks, but I do understand the logic behind not developing software for an outdated OS.

 

[snifferdogx]

Office 2016 Beta release - very slow on my MBP

Well, I just downloaded the Office 2016 beta release (aka "Review) and I cannot believe how slow and crash-prone it is.

I have a 13" mid-2010 MacBook Pro, Yosemite 10.10.3, with 256GB hard disk (154GB unused), and 4GB RAM.

I can barely even get Word or Excel to open. It takes about 2 minutes to open each program, and don't even bother trying to open more than 1 file at a time: the entire program gets the spinning wheel of death.

Has anyone else had a similar experience with it?

 

[maflynn]

Has anyone else had a similar experience with it?

No not at all, I found word and excel to be very stable., I don't get the spinning wheel and while I would't qualify it a speed demon the performance is much better then you describe

 

[snifferdogx]

No not at all, I found word and excel to be very stable., I don't get the spinning wheel and while I would't qualify it a speed demon the performance is much better then you describe

Could it be just that my laptop is too old? It's gotten a tad slower more frequent spinning wheels since Yosemite.

 

[maflynn]

Could it be just that my laptop is too old? It's gotten a tad slower more frequent spinning wheels since Yosemite.

Perhaps, I run the beta version of Office on my 2012 rMBP which has 16gb of ram, so It has gobs of memory at its disposal and a good processor.

 

[snifferdogx]

Perhaps, I run the beta version of Office on my 2012 rMBP which has 16gb of ram, so It has gobs of memory at its disposal and a good processor.

Bugger.

Does anyone else have the same or similar MBP to mine so I can compare notes with?

 

[pdutta2000]

Bugger.

Does anyone else have the same or similar MBP to mine so I can compare notes with?

I think you need to buy more RAM. I have a 2010. 13" MacBook Pro as well but I have 16GB RAM and a1TB drive and have no issues. Yosemite as well. Everything loads and runs fine. I load up all the office app at once as I'm doing this as a test to move from my thinkpad to a MacBook. So far this machine is passing with flying colors.

 

[Traverse]

No not at all, I found word and excel to be very stable., I don't get the spinning wheel and while I would't qualify it a speed demon the performance is much better then you describe

How is scrolling performance in large Word and Excel documents for you?

I opened a 62 page document in Word 2016 and while scrolling through was slightly improved from 2011, it wasn't close to what I'd consider "smooth."

 

[skaertus]

How is scrolling performance in large Word and Excel documents for you?

I opened a 62 page document in Word 2016 and while scrolling through was slightly improved from 2011, it wasn't close to what I'd consider "smooth."

It's laggy in Word 2016. Worse than Word 2011. And I use a 15-inch retina MacBook Pro, which should be more than enough to run a word processor.

 

[grahamperrin]

… Early previews …

Which versions/builds?

 

[Traverse]

It's laggy in Word 2016. Worse than Word 2011. And I use a 15-inch retina MacBook Pro, which should be more than enough to run a word processor.

To be honest, the more I use it on my test partition, the more it just seems like Office: 2011 with a new interface.

It does have more Excel functions and better fullscreen support, but the core performance is unchanged.