Using "Excel for Windows" on a Mac

Using "Excel for Windows" on a Mac

Windows on a Mac (via Boot Camp) is no different than Windows on a PC. So absolutely it will be identical, speed included.

EDIT: I should add as a disclaimer that if you have a Retina MBP then you will encounter some resolution issues in Windows. If you have a non-retina or use an external monitor you should be OK.

 

Excel on Mac is awful.

I only installed Bootcamp to use Excel in Windows.

 

Guess it's Microsofts revenge for iTunes on Windows.

 

Excel on Mac has improved greatly since it lost VBA in Office 2004, as macros now work in Office 2011, but in general it still stinks compared to the windows version. In particular, calculations take much longer, pull down menus in control boxes / dashboards don't even have side scrollers (whereas the windows version does), and pagination is always different than documents that are saved on a windows version.

 

Office 2011 is horrible but there are alternatives.

a) run Office 2010/2013 in a VM in Windows. Even virtualized it is quite a lot faster.
b) run Windows Office in Crossover for Mac. Just runs the Windows Software on the Mac OSX. It is similar but not the same as a VM. There is in theory no VM overhead but the DLLs and some other stuff of Windows are simply reverse engineered not necessarily as good.
Seems to work quite well though the biggest problem is activating the software inside crossover.

 

I hope the Office:Mac team will make up their minds what interface to use on OS X. Ribbon, toolbar or menu? Personally I'd prefer menu + toolbar, but I wouldn't mind if they ditched the toolbar and placed ALL commands on the ribbon, and made them identical to the Windows version. Not sure about removing the menu bar, it may look unappealing just with the application menu.

Also, too many arcane shortcuts that seem to take "full advantage" of the Mac keyboard, with high reliance on both Command and Control, or the real Enter key (fn-Return)! For example you do Ctrl+Enter on Windows in Word to break the page. In Word:Mac? Shift-fn-Return!

I've noticed some advantages: Excel 2011 keyboard can be customized, whereas 2013 not (IIRC). But the keywords to customize it are all CamelCase and hard to find (still better than how you customize keys globally in OS X system preferences where you have to guess an unused key combination). I also find my way much easier in the menu bar with help, than the help-less ribbon in Windows.