Excel Reader For Mac 2016
You may not have noticed, but of late there’s been a mind shift at Microsoft. First with the introduction of Office for iPad in 2014, then the addition of OneNote for Mac and iOS and an updated and useful version of Office for iPhone. Then, just a few weeks ago, Outlook for iOS, which may just be the best email app you’ll find for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. Today? The preview release of Office 2016.
Excel for Office 365 for Mac Excel 2019 for Mac Excel 2016 for Mac More. Less This article is for people who use a screen reader program with the Office. Learn everything you need to master the Mac 2016 version of the world's most popular spreadsheet program. Curt Frye provides a comprehensive overview of Excel for Mac 2016, including manipulating workbook and cell data, using functions, printing worksheets, and collaborating with others.
What’s key about all of these releases is what seems to be a significant philosophical shift at Microsoft. What was once a “PC first. Mac? Whatever…” way of thinking has now become, “All features, all platforms, all at once.” No half measures. No, “Our studies show that Mac users aren’t interested in those features.” Quite simply, Office 2016 is Office on the Mac, as it should be, without compromising Office’s features or requiring Mac users to conform to a Windows way of working.
A Preview of Office is free for anyone starting today, but Microsoft is quick to note that Office 2016 will not follow the same model that Office for iOS has. Which is to say that while the Preview is free, when the suite ships for real a little later this year, it will require an Office 365 subscription or the purchase of a standalone copy for anything more than read/print-only access to Office documents.
This is a Preview (née beta) release and, thus, this is not a review. So, while I’ll take a deep dive First Look at the Office for Mac 2016 Preview, I’ll save any critical assessments for the final release. (Hey you! Yeah, you! I see your finger poised over the comments section ready to chew me out for schilling for Microsoft. Save it for the review, pal! I know who you are…)
The suite
The Office 2016 Preview updates all five apps in Microsoft’s office suite: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook. The suite requires that your Mac is running Yosemite and, while the interface remains familiar, every application has a softer Yosemite-like look and feel. All the apps designed to work with Microsoft’s OneDrive services, including OneDrive for Business and private SharePoints, and are optimized for retina displays.
According to Microsoft, Office 2016 is designed to unify the look and feel of the applications across all platforms, so that no matter where you use Office—Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Web—the way you work remains the same. To that end, Microsoft has updated the “ribbon,” that tabbed toolbar running across the top of every Office document, so it looks like Office 2013 for Windows, and according to Microsoft, the user interface is now the same across all versions. Looking at the Windows and Mac versions side-by-side I’d say that’s accurate, although, to my somewhat biased eye, Office 2016 is easier on the eyes.
If you want a little more workspace, the ribbon can be hidden with a single click on the currently active tab or by clicking a small arrow appearing at the ribbon’s far right side. Microsoft has also added a new “Help Improve Office?” button to the ribbon, which you can use to send feedback. According to the rep I spoke with, this isn’t a beta-only feature that will disappear once the product ships. It’s designed to let you tell Microsoft about the things you do or don’t love about a particular product.
True story: The Microsoft rep I spoke with said that this feature is no joke. He acknowledged that there is a public perception that any feedback of this sort gets sent directly to the bit bucket, but he assured me that he sees “telemetry reports” from these submissions on a daily basis. The aim of this feature is to help eliminate that public perception by proactively responding to reported issues.
Office now supports Yosemite’s native full-screen mode, but does not support Yosemite’s native auto-save features nor does it support renaming, moving, tagging, or locking documents using the document title bar. And it should be noted that it’s unlikely you’ll see support for these features in any future versions of Office, as, according to Microsoft, Yosemite’s autosave feature and OneDrive don’t play well together. The one notable autosave exception is (pun intended) OneNote, which has had its own version of autosave and synchronization since it was first released.
Word
Word and PowerPoint share two new collaboration features: co-authoring and threaded comments. Co-authoring allows several people to work on the same document at the same time. The Microsoft rep wouldn’t commit to a specific number of total editors that could simultaneously make changes to a document, but did state that they’d seen it handle at least 10 collaborators at once. (A number that’s quite a bit north of what I’d hope to see working on any one document.) While editing, you can see who is working alongside you and also see the changes those users are making in real time.
To handle synchronization and change commitment, Microsoft uses a technology they call cobalt syncing. Cobalt is able to determine which changes users have made, and in the event that two users edit the same information at the same time, marks those changes and conflicts for human intervention.
Threaded comments let editors interact within document comments, in much the same way as threaded comments work on websites, but hopefully with far less snark.
Word also includes a new document navigation pane that tracks your location within a document and makes it easy to move your way through a document. A new style pane allows you to make quick changes to styles being used in your documents.
Excel
Excel offers several new features, but one in particular really caught my eye, as it’s likely to make the transition from Excel for Windows to Excel for Mac much easier for switchers. Excel for Mac now supports a majority of the Windows version’s keyboard shortcuts. So while all your favorite Mac keyboard commands still work, you don’t have to learn a completely new set of commands if this is your first time using Excel on a Mac. Control-C copies text in a cell, and Control-V pastes it.
You’ll also find that Excel has more sophisticated analysis tools, including advanced statistical functions, slicers for pivot tables, and auto-complete features for inserting functions and filling in cell data.
PowerPoint
In addition to the collaboration features mentioned above, PowerPoint offers a redesigned Presenter View that makes it easy to switch your presentation from one display to another and offers a customizable presenter window where you can view notes, your next slide, and where you are in the current sequence of slides.
There are also several new transitions and a new animation pane that helps you to better see, manage, edit, and update the animations being used on every slide.
Outlook
Outlook for Mac has been available to anyone with an Office 365 account for a few months now, and offers a few interesting features, chief of which is a side-by-side calendar view that lets you look at two different calendars together. Even better, using this side-by-side view, you can drag one calendar on top of the other, merging the view of those calendars so you can easily see conflicts or crossover for specific events.
While I stated earlier that, because this is essentially a beta of Office 2016, I wasn’t going to take a critical look at any of the apps in the suite, I do have to point out that Outlook isn’t quite where it needs to be. While I was able to easily add my personal email account hosted on a private server, Outlook could not add my Gmail or iCloud accounts and, when attempting to connect to my Gmail account I immediately received a message from Google letting me know that someone knew my account password and was using unsecure methods to connect to their mail servers.
OneNote
OneNote remains one of my favorite Microsoft applications for collecting information on the fly. As this app has been regularly updated and remains free on the App Store, there’s not a whole lot more to report here, with one exception: If you’re using OneDrive, OneNote can now provide OCR for documents added to the cloud.
Final thoughts
I’ve only had a few hours to play with the Office 2016 for Mac Preview, which is not enough time to dig deep into each of these applications, but so far, I’m impressed. While this is essentially a beta, with the exception of Outlook’s connection issues, Office 2016 seems like a solid collection of well-designed applications. But more importantly, Office 2016 for Mac shows that Microsoft is no longer treating Mac users as an afterthought. This is Office on your Mac, just like it is everywhere else. Solid, seamless, and ready for work.
Today’s post was written by Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office Client Applications and Services team.
Today we are taking a big step forward for Mac® users—Office 2016 for Mac is now available in 139 countries and 16 languages. Based on feedback from the great Mac Office community, we’ve made major updates to each of the apps, and we couldn’t be more pleased to deliver it first to our Office 365 customers.
Unmistakably Office, designed for Mac
The new versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote provide the best of both worlds for Mac users—the familiar Office experience paired with the best of Mac.
If you already use Office on a PC or iPad, you will find yourself right at home in Office 2016 for Mac. It works the way you expect, with the familiar ribbon interface and powerful task panes. Mac users will appreciate the modernized Office experience and the integration of Mac capabilities like Full Screen view and Multi-TouchTM gestures. With full Retina® display support, your Office documents look sharper and more vibrant than ever.
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Office for Mac is cloud-connected, so you can quickly get to the documents you’ve recently used on other devices and pick up where you left off. New, built-in document sharing tools make it easy to invite teammates to work on a document together. When sharing documents, you won’t have to worry about losing content or formatting, as Office for Mac offers unparalleled compatibility with Office on PCs, tablets, phones and online.
Five modern, first-class applications
Word for Mac—Word’s powerful writing and reviewing tools make it easy to create great-looking documents. The new Design tab lets you easily apply designer-quality layouts, colors and fonts throughout your document. You can work on the same document simultaneously with your teammates and use threaded comments to have a conversation right next to the corresponding text.
Excel for Mac—The new Excel for Mac helps you visualize your information by recommending charts best suited for your data with chart previews. Familiar keyboard shortcuts, autocomplete and an improved formula builder save you time when creating spreadsheets or entering data. For deeper analysis, new PivotTable Slicers help you filter large volumes of data and discover patterns.
PowerPoint for Mac—PowerPoint’s improved Presenter View gives you full control when you present by showing you the current slide, next slide, speaker notes and a timer on your Mac screen, while the audience only sees your presentation on the big screen. The new animation pane helps you design and fine-tune animations, and the latest set of slide transitions add polish to your presentations.
Outlook for Mac—Managing your email, calendar, contacts and tasks has never been easier. The new Outlook for Mac has push mail support so your inbox is always up-to-date. The improved conversation view automatically organizes your inbox around threaded conversations, so you won’t have to hunt for related messages. And the new message preview shows you the first sentence of an email just below the subject line so you can quickly decide if you want to read it now or come back later.
OneNote for Mac—OneNote is the newest addition to Office for Mac. You can capture your ideas in digital notebooks and access them on any device. Find things quickly with the OneNote search engine that tracks your tags, indexes your typed notes and recognizes text in images and handwritten notes. Bold, italicize, underline or highlight notes, insert files, pictures and tables and organize your notes however you want. You can also share notebooks with friends, family or colleagues so everyone can work together on travel plans, household tasks or work projects.
Made better by Mac users
The customer participation in our Office for Mac preview since its launch in March exceeded our expectations, making it our largest Office for Mac beta ever. Many thanks to everyone who participated in the preview program and helped us improve the product.
Mac preview participants provided us with over 100,000 pieces of feedback. Based on this feedback, we released seven updates in four months with significant improvements in performance and stability. We also added features like improved Mail Merge in Word, Propose New Time in Outlook and support for External Data Connections in Excel.
And the best news is that Office for Mac will continue to see ongoing improvements over time. We plan to release updates and new features for Office 365 customers at least once per quarter.
Available today for Office 365 customers
Office 365 subscribers can get the newest version of Office for Mac today. All you need is an Office 365 subscription (Office 365 Home, Personal, Business, Business Premium, E3 or ProPlus), which includes the rights and access to use Office applications on Mac, Windows, iOS and Android devices, along with additional value in OneDrive and Skype.
Here are a few different ways to get Office 2016 for Mac today:
- Already an Office 365 customer? On your Mac, just browse to your account page (office.com/myaccount), sign in and follow the installation instructions. If you have Office 365 through your organization, go to portal.office.com/OLS/MySoftware.aspx.
- Are you a student? You may get Office 2016 for Mac for free or at a substantial discount. It takes only 30 seconds to find out at office.com/student.
- Otherwise, go to office.com/mac or buy an Office 365 subscription at your local retailer.
Office 2016 for Mac will become available as a one-time purchase option this September.
Excel Reader For Mac 2016 Release
We hope you’re as excited as we are about the new Office for Mac. It’s one of many important releases this summer where we are improving the Office experience across devices and platforms. We released Word, Excel and PowerPoint for Android phones just two weeks ago, which join Outlook and OneNote for Android phones, and we are just weeks away from delivering Office Mobile apps for Windows 10.
Excel Reader For Mac 2016 Office
Please keep sending us your feedback and suggestions, and we will continue to improve your Office experience.
—Kirk Koenigsbauer
Excel Reader For Mac 2016 Tutorial
*Apple, Mac, Retina and Multi-Touch are registered trademarks of Apple Inc.