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

[MacRumors]

Following yesterday's leak of several screenshots from the next version of Microsoft's Outlook for Mac, Chinese site cnBeta now shares much more information [Google Translate] about the upcoming version of Microsoft's productivity suite for Mac.

The report shares several presentation slides outlining some of the features of the next Office for Mac, as well as a timeline showing a planned release sometime in the first half of 2015. Microsoft team members had previously suggested the suite would launch this year.

The slides point to four key focus areas for Microsoft during the development cycle of the next Office for Mac, including a modernized look with full Retina support to match the OS X aesthetic while still aligning the experience with Office for Windows, improved connectivity with cloud services including Office 365 and SkyDrive (OneDrive), significant improvements to Outlook, and the addition of OneNote, which appeared as a standalone release earlier this year.

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Taking a quick look at some of the changes to the core Office apps, the slides address the addition of the Quick Access Toolbar from the Windows version throughout the upcoming Mac suite, improved organization of tools and formatting, new support for Excel 2013 functions, Threaded Comments and improved Presenter View for PowerPoint, and enhanced Reply Comments and "Expand and Collapse" paragraph view toggles in Word.

Microsoft Office for Mac has not seen a major update since late 2010, when Office for Mac 2011 was released as a comparable version of Office 2010 for Windows. But while Windows saw the release of Office 2013 early last year, no corresponding version of Office for Mac has yet been released. The next version of Office for Windows is similarly expected in the spring of next year.

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

 

[iHEARTcartoons]

Release date: when Hell freezes over

 

[ASKendrew]

Release date: when Hell freezes over

Seems that way.

 

[goonie4life9]

Finally!

I'm very happy to see more concrete evidence of an update! On a side note, did anyone else chuckle when they saw the "support for new Office 2013 features and capabilities."? I guess "new" is completely in the eyes of the beholder....

 

[phillipduran]

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

 

[tazinlwfl]

Better function support - that is the kicker for me.

 

[philipk]

The main thing I need is better OneDrive Intergration!

I use a Windows machine at work and the OneDrive integration is superior to any other cloud system.

On the Mac it is as clunky as using Dropbox, iCloud, or others with Office 365.

 

[mrbyu]

About damn time. Office for Mac was really getting long in the tooth. Unfortunately, no matter how much I love Pages, I just can't rely on it exclusively, because I can never ever be sure that if I finish something in Pages and export it to doc it will look like exactly the same in MS Word... and yeah, there are documents that you are kind of obliged to send in .doc (not in PDF), that is the sad truth...

 

[DVNIEL]

Really glad I have Office 365 so I can get this update. Found a guy who was peddling activated 365 subscription cards for half the price so I'm paid off until 2017.

 

[philipk]

BTW

The only reason I use Office 365 over Pages is it is a requirement at work.

iWork iCloud integration on the Mac is better than Office 365 OneDrive integration on a Windows machine.

 

[DeanL]

Tired... Tired...

I'm really tired of waiting for Microsoft to update their damn software! But at the same time, I tried Pages and its lack of important features prevents me from using it!

I don't know what the Mac division of Microsoft is doing but damn. I'm not paying every month to use a four years old software!

 

[ryanasimov]

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?

 

[Michael Goff]

I'm really tired of waiting for Microsoft to update their damn software! But at the same time, I tried Pages and its lack of important features prevents me from using it!

I don't know what the Mac division of Microsoft is doing but damn. I'm not paying every month to use a four years old software!

Catering to the iPads, then using that to help make a better (and Cocoa apparently) Office?

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

Will it freeze up when copying several Excel cells at a time like the current version does even on high end Mac Pros? Gee I hope so.

 

[Mark-Technology]

Winter is coming before this does.

 

[HotIce]

I bought Office 365 for students. Hoping I get this update. The fuzziness on my RMBP is annoying.

 

[lparsons21]

BTW



The only reason I use Office 365 over Pages is it is a requirement at work.



iWork iCloud integration on the Mac is better than Office 365 OneDrive integration on a Windows machine.

In what way is that true?



With OneDrive on Windows I can save to the cloud and not have it take up local storage.

With iCloud it is always on my local drive as well as in the cloud. That is not good as many of the machines these days have SSDs in them so getting iCloud storage beyond the capacity of the SSD is a total waste of space and money.

 

[VulchR]

Let us hope they update the spell-checker so that it spans words. I get tired of manually correcting 'tot he' to 'to the'....

 

[TallGuyGT]

This can't come soon enough! I need Office for work, and this looks like Mac users will finally get what they deserve: a first class Office on Mac.

I'm probably in the minority here, but I think Microsoft is slowly turning in the right direction under Satya Nadella. It's a big ship and there's a lot of Ballmer to undo, but I am hopeful.

 

[Hastings101]

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

 

[dagamer34]

This can't come soon enough! I need Office for work, and this looks like Mac users will finally get what they deserve: a first class Office on Mac.

I'm probably in the minority here, but I think Microsoft is slowly turning in the right direction under Satya Nadella. It's a big ship and there's a lot of Ballmer to undo, but I am hopeful.

A lot of this stuff was started under Ballmer, you know that right? 6 months is not enough for this level of change.

 

[markgpearse]

Readers' Comments

I always enjoy reading our comments whenever Microsoft is mentioned!

 

[shareef777]

Really glad I have Office 365 so I can get this update. Found a guy who was peddling activated 365 subscription cards for half the price so I'm paid off until 2017.

At the rate they're going, you'll need another renewal to get the update.

 

[GrabASnookie]

Been so long without office

Since I purchased my iMac in January of 2013, I've learned to use pages and numbers and I prefer Pages over Word. To me, pages acts like Word and Publisher together on steroids and has so many more productive features. Apple's mail app has been awesome and I'm happy to end my relationship with outlook. As for numbers, I really don't use excel much to make an opinion.

Maybe office will help more people to convert to apple computer - and that would be a good thing.

 

[MH01]

Let us hope they update the spell-checker so that it spans words. I get tired of manually correcting 'tot he' to 'to the'....

I thought "tot he" was Scottish for "to the" it's how it sounds

sorry could not resit.