More Details on Next Version of Office for Mac Include Planned Launch in First Half of 2015

[Mac32]

If the next Office version is subscription-based, I will buy get it. Period.

 

[someoneoutthere]

My problem is the fact Microsoft only do Outlook, Powerpoint, One note, Word and Excel.

What about Publisher? Visio? Access? Project?

Access, yes, I definitely agree with that. Although I was mainly concerned with the availability/reliability of Outlook, Word and PP before I quit the Windows platform.

 

[Gudi]

The point I'm making is that not only is the flagging of two spaces useful and possible but it is available on Word today, but not the program I want to use: Pages. This is not a case of something that can't be changed.

Flagging two spaces is useful to you, but others might want to use spaces for easy indentation. Those people would get a lot of annoying error messages. One could alter this behavior with a preference, but that would make the system more complicated and less predictable. Instead Apple likes to choose the one solution that is best for the majority of users and creates the least problems for all the others. Is this really an important feature missing or is it just a difference between Word and Pages? When you used to one app and new to the other, its behavior must feel unfamiliar to you. But once you become accustomed to create bullet point lists with Alt-8, your opinion will start to change. Why don't you use Search & Replace to find all the two spaces in your text and fix them in one step.

 

[octothorpe8]

You point out a lot of what bothers me about it with some things I hadn't considered. Thanks for the list. Bottom line for me: PPT's interface is too cluttered and Keynote's transitions are still smoother than Powerpoints (though they have improved).

There is ONE thing PPT has going for it: near-universal adoption.

I fought hard to get my company to start using Keynote because it produces visibly better results -- but I lost the battle because at the end of the day, nobody on a PC can really view a Keynote presentation unless you turn it into a PDF or something. Converting to PPT just gives you so much cleanup to do that it's not worth it. If Apple introduced a PC-based Keynote viewer you could tell people to download, it would be a different story. But I really don't see that happening.

But hey, at least my work on Keynote presentations means I get to work on a Mac here at my office instead of a Windows machine. :/

 

[tigress666]

Forget it MS. The only reason I cared about having Word (i hated it) was on resumes so that it would show up nicely on a potential employer's computer. Except it never translates well over to PC Word anyways. And then some one gave me a better idea anyways, PDF files.

So, Pages works so much nicer, I like how it transfers between my iPhone and Mac, they don't charge me a sub fee for it to do that (nor are they trying to push me into a subscription model for that matter just to use the software).

Yeah, Excel was nice but Numbers has gotten a lot better.

 

[Chrjy]

Personally I want Microsoft to sink like the Titanic. They have been a cancer on technology since they were founded and should go the way of the Dodo bird.

Feel better now?

 

[skaertus]

Maybe Apple should have told Microsoft that Retina has been on Macs for a while.

Actually Office 2011 was one of the first software to be optimized for retina screens. Not the best, but one of the first.

 

[cjmillsnun]

"Aligned with the look and feel of Office on Windows"

 

[brianvictor7]

Flagging two spaces is useful to you, but others might want to use spaces for easy indentation. Those people would get a lot of annoying error messages. One could alter this behavior with a preference, but that would make the system more complicated and less predictable. Instead Apple likes to choose the one solution that is best for the majority of users and creates the least problems for all the others. Is this really an important feature missing or is it just a difference between Word and Pages?

I get what you are saying. The option still needs to be there. Two-space typing errors is a mark-off in grade-school and a sign of sloppiness for a publisher. There are other ways to indent things besides.

When you used to one app and new to the other, its behavior must feel unfamiliar to you. But once you become accustomed to create bullet point lists with Alt-8, your opinion will start to change. Why don't you use Search & Replace to find all the two spaces in your text and fix them in one step.

Now these are useful suggestions. I'm actually very happy that you told me about the Alt-8 option. I'll definitely use it. Replacing two spaces in one step is another option I'll probably try.

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There is ONE thing PPT has going for it: near-universal adoption.

I fought hard to get my company to start using Keynote because it produces visibly better results -- but I lost the battle because at the end of the day, nobody on a PC can really view a Keynote presentation unless you turn it into a PDF or something. Converting to PPT just gives you so much cleanup to do that it's not worth it. If Apple introduced a PC-based Keynote viewer you could tell people to download, it would be a different story. But I really don't see that happening.

But hey, at least my work on Keynote presentations means I get to work on a Mac here at my office instead of a Windows machine. :/

I suppose the browser version of iWorks comes close to letting us run Keynote presentations on Windows machines, but I personally haven't liked the results so far. Maybe I should give it another try.

 

[Solomani]

I wonder if you need to create a Microsoft account to install Office. Such a frustrating requirement with so many issues.

You probably might need to, since all MS Office apps will need to be registered anyways, otherwise they would be labeled as an unregistered copy.

What I would hate most of all… is if Office 2015 required you to be logged on to an internet connection to use those apps, if it required an always-on Cloud connection. That would be ugly.

 

[Tech198]

What I would hate most of all… is if Office 2015 required you to be logged on to an internet connection to use those apps, if it required an always-on Cloud connection. That would be ugly.

So, i take it then your not an Office 365 user.

 

[mrmarts]

Instant Buy and maybe one day when i pull the plug and buy a 5k iMac it will look better.

 

[Solomani]

So, i take it then your not an Office 365 user.

Nope. I would prefer an outright-buy version.

It's not a bad buy for us people who can buy them with an Educator/Student discount. And some places like Best Buy will have them on sale even cheaper (yes, the already low-priced Student/Education versions).

 

[malexandria]

No Thanks

More subscription nonsense? No thanks. I'll still with 2011 - it ain't broke - yet. Strange how software always mysteriously breaks when new versions come out....

 

[MacAddict1978]

Years after iCloud's introduction and Microsoft never updated their Mac version of Office to support it. At least iCloud Drive has now made that moot, but the omission by Microsoft was glaring. I remember when iCloud first came out Microsoft put out a statement that said something to the effect of, "We want to support the features of iCloud in our Office products, but it could take up to a year." Whatever happened to that?

Let's have an honest conversation here.
iCloud has sucked until this last iteration.
iCloud is brought to you by the biggest control freak company in history.
iCloud before they brought back the iDisk (er, iCloud Drive) tried to sell the whole time machine esque documents auto save thing as a reason to use macs and iWork, not macs and MS Office....

The versions feature was a failed feature because it really only played nice with iWork and not third party, including microsoft

Versions was far different than what you are suggesting. I think you are confusing versions with letting third parties toss your docs into iCloud... There is a reason many of us have loathed the loss of iDisk and why there is excitement about it's return (even if you want to give it a new name). Versions was a piss poor execution of auto save that iWork lacked for years, but was spun off as being something really cool. (Because hwo often do you really need to go back to when a document was one paragraph?)

 

[sir1963nz]

Office for Mac 2011 is probably the best version of Office software I've used, hope they don't screw it up in the new version

Wow, you have set your standards low.
Word crashes, lots, particularly if you have lots of equations.

Outlook is so crap on the Mac that our secretaries run Win7+Outlook under parallels , everything else they do is Mac based.

I have given up where they are with scripting... VB,Applescript...VB again ? ...Macros not porting...BLAH

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Access, yes, I definitely agree with that. Although I was mainly concerned with the availability/reliability of Outlook, Word and PP before I quit the Windows platform.

Outlook on the Mac is so bad our secretarial staff run the windows version in a parallels VM.

I would say this is MS policy to keep Macs out of corporates which use exchange, the one area where MS is still tops. Most people can get away with Open Office or the Apple suite of software, or Latex. Corporate comms though requires Outlook (Apple mail/calendar/etc is NOT good enough) and by making sure the Mac version sucks dog balls they can keep Windows the Main platform.

 

[JazzyGB1]

It's not on a par with PC's until it get Publisher

I think it's poor form for Microsoft to purposely cripple the Mac version of office by refusing to include a Mac version of Publisher.
For years it has been pretty much the only document type a Mac can't use properly and that Microsoft should ensures this remains so even in 2015 is petty IMO.
Until they offer a like for like package to Mac users we are basically being offered an inferior product.

PS: LibreOffice can at least open publisher files, but with very degrees of success...
http://donate.libreoffice.org/home/dl/mac-x86/4.3.2/en-GB/LibreOffice_4.3.2_MacOS_x86.dmg

 

[Rigby]

You probably might need to, since all MS Office apps will need to be registered anyways, otherwise they would be labeled as an unregistered copy.

You mean product activation? That has never required a Microsoft account so far. You will of course need an account if you want to work with documents in the cloud.

What I would hate most of all… is if Office 2015 required you to be logged on to an internet connection to use those apps, if it required an always-on Cloud connection. That would be ugly.

Extremely unlikely. That would prevent a lot of travelers from being able to do their work.

 

[Michael Goff]

Yeah, thanks for not reading the post I quoted. If you did you'd see that person stated that One Drive saves only to the cloud and iCloud saves to the cloud and locally which they found to be a hindrance due to taking up hard drive space. Typical reaction from this forum. Gotta love it.

Except anything saved locally on a computer to the One Drive folder stays local as well. I don't think you've used modern Windows, OneDrive, or Office.

Edit: Even on an older one, it will still be local as well. So I have no clue where you're getting your info from.

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You probably might need to, since all MS Office apps will need to be registered anyways, otherwise they would be labeled as an unregistered copy.

What I would hate most of all… is if Office 2015 required you to be logged on to an internet connection to use those apps, if it required an always-on Cloud connection. That would be ugly.

Why throw up a nonsensical what if?

 

[HenryDJP]

Except anything saved locally on a computer to the One Drive folder stays local as well. I don't think you've used modern Windows, OneDrive, or Office.

Edit: Even on an older one, it will still be local as well. So I have no clue where you're getting your info from.

You're right. You don't have a clue where I got my information from because you didn't read the previous post that I quoted earlier. Had you taken the time to read it you wouldn't be replying to me this way.

 

[phoenixsan]

Indeed....

good news. I suppose MS powers get forced to talk about the upcoming Office because the leaked screen captures.....

Next on wish list: Truly Office version on par with Windows counterpart...

 

[Bill Killer]

Personally I want Microsoft to sink like the Titanic. They have been a cancer on technology since they were founded and should go the way of the Dodo bird.

I personally don't care for Windows much, but Microsoft's DirectX has done great things for PC gaming.

 

[roadbloc]

Yey. My body is ready for this update Microsoft!

 

[Michael Goff]

You're right. You don't have a clue where I got my information from because you didn't read the previous post that I quoted earlier. Had you taken the time to read it you wouldn't be replying to me this way.

Ah, right, my bad. The only thing I could think of, why somebody wouldn't want a local copy, is if they are on a device that has extremely limited storage.

 

[BDIs]

As someone who is forced to live through the hell using of Powerpoint at work, I am begrudgingly "looking forward" to this release.

What I'd really be looking forward to would be a Windows-based viewer for Keynote presentations so I could sell my employer on using better presentation tools, but it really looks like that will never ever happen.

What you would have to "Sell" your employer on is switching to a MAC because unless I am wrong, the iWork suite only runs on a MAC. I wonder if Apple has plans for iWork to run on a Windows machine??

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I personally don't care for Windows much, but Microsoft's DirectX has done great things for PC gaming.

You do know that without competing venders pioneering new technology slows down and consumer choice goes out the Window right?