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Microsoft Security Update Brings 64-Bit Support to All Mac Office Apps
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I had no idea a group of them were available via Slack chat. I'll look into that! But via the usual support channels (web searches), all I really found out there were the official Office 365 support forums. On there, they had a claimed system in place where people posting can "up vote" specific suggested changes, and the ones with the most votes were supposed to get the most consideration for additions/fixes by the Office team.
From everything I observed on there, there wasn't a lot going on to address the bugs and lacking features being reported. I'm not saying the idea of collecting "votes" for ideas was bad, in theory. But in practice, it really felt like no matter how critical a bug you might report, it meant little or nothing to the team unless you managed to get at least 50 others to agree it mattered more to them than other things posted, adding their votes to the total.
As for the email archiving feature -- that's great the Paul Bowden reviewed it himself. But still leaves me pretty "cold" that there's so much more a user can do with the "Auto Archiving" feature found in any of the last few versions of Outlook for Windows.
From everything I observed on there, there wasn't a lot going on to address the bugs and lacking features being reported. I'm not saying the idea of collecting "votes" for ideas was bad, in theory. But in practice, it really felt like no matter how critical a bug you might report, it meant little or nothing to the team unless you managed to get at least 50 others to agree it mattered more to them than other things posted, adding their votes to the total.
As for the email archiving feature -- that's great the Paul Bowden reviewed it himself. But still leaves me pretty "cold" that there's so much more a user can do with the "Auto Archiving" feature found in any of the last few versions of Outlook for Windows.
Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote have all adopted the 64-bit runtime environment to enable better performance and "new innovative features." 64-bit support has previously been available to Microsoft's "Office Insider" beta testers but is rolling out to all users today.
I don't think that part is entirely accurate. If you read this post: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3187505, it states that they will be gradually upgraded. (My MAU is showing no updates.)
I'll piggyback on this and say that the preview Skype for business client is a HUGE improvement in stability and quality vs. Lync. Once they add the missing bits it will be a day vs. night change for people and I can say with all honesty that people will be pretty thrilled to dump Lync 2011 forever.
I would love to know the answer to this. Excel for Mac is unusable for large datasets without multicore support.
Is this update only for Office 2016? or do the early products get the update as well (Excel 2011, etc).
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64 bit is available on Windows but 32bit is the default and recommended for compatibility reasons
Just ran the update and my apps still take way too long to launch. I use Office 365 Business (mainly Excel & Word) on my late 2012 Mac mini (Quad core i7 / 16 RAM / SATA SSD).
The Excel icon bounces 4 times at launch, while the Word icon bounces 5 times. To put this in perspective, iZotope RX is a $1200 professional audio editing and restoration suite and it takes it's icon bounces once at launch.
The Excel icon bounces 4 times at launch, while the Word icon bounces 5 times. To put this in perspective, iZotope RX is a $1200 professional audio editing and restoration suite and it takes it's icon bounces once at launch.
Nope it doesn't. Still using 1 core
Okay I can't tell a slight bit of difference in any application!
Thanks. But compatibility for what? Shouldn't McSft have compatibility worked out at this point?
I work in a fairly small and newish company. We don't have anything on the tech side that is more than a few years old. Should I just tell my IT guy to put the 64bit version on my computer. I mainly just use Outlook, Word, Excel and PDFs. That is the sum total of my workflow. Is there any reason why the 64bit version wouldn't play nicely with the other Mcsft products and PDFs? That would be pathetic if it didn't. I assume I would get some performance advantages. I'm using a 2015 laptop (can't remember if it is an i5 or an i7 CPU but it was a relatively high end laptop as of 2015 and it in my signature), so my CPU has plenty of power. (Side note, for people who complain about Apple's Macbook prices, try to see what you can get for under $1,500 in the PC world. In my case, laptop is kind of a POS; nice specs but a pathetic screen that is much worse than the screen on my $200 Toshiba Chromebook).
You haven't noticed???
There is a tiny button on your monitor (or if laptop, a slightly larger button). Pressing this button activates "Dark Mode".
Compatibility with add-ins. Most of the add-ins don't work on Office for Mac so there is less reason not to go 64-bit on Mac.
Nope it doesn't. Still using 1 core
Okay I can't tell a slight bit of difference in any application!
Yup, just confirmed this as well...
Still taking forever to calculate changes in my 31MB excel file...
Many people use 3rd party add-ins to "add in" additional functionality in the office apps. These 3rd party add-ins are still 32-bit, so the onus is on them, not Microsoft. Because of that, MS recommends people use 32-bit Office apps to minimize issues.
You can always "try" 64-bit. If you have issues, uninstall and reinstall 32-bit. But remember...these are Office apps. The majority of time you are doing what? TYPING. They are INPUT apps. It's kind of a joke people want super fast computers for word processing! How fast can you type, anyways?
If shaving a second or two off the initial launch of an office app is worth the possible issues of running 64-bit, then you have that choice to install 64-bit.Since PC demand is down in general the past few years, the cost is up. People just aren't buying new computers like they did 10 years ago. Tablets and smartphones have eaten into that market, so now a decent laptop (yes there are cheap-o ones to be had) is easily north of $1000. Especially with all the bells and whistles.
[doublepost=1471955704][/doublepost]So how does one get this 15.25 update? I check for updates on my Macbook (currently at 15.24) and it says no updates available.
Oh, FFS… I came here to ask exactly that, before taking the plunge. :\
I checked their forums and found no complaints… yet. Are you absolutely sure it doesn't work at all?
I mean, how can Elsevier, an empire in itself, be such a an incompetent and cheapskate owner/boss? It's a damn shame, really, and makes me seriously consider jumping ship to Zotero (which, being open source, probably has decent support… nay, being supported *at all* makes it better, because oversights like this make Mendeley look like outright abandonware; for crying out loud, wasn't there a 64-bit beta/insider version of Word for Mac out for months now? Shouldn't a [belated] transition to a 64-bit binary be expected from Microsoft at any moment and faced as inevitable by the Mendeley team?).
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