Office for Mac 2016

As a Preview tester, I was surprised it was released given the state of the last beta. And as in the preview, Powerpoint 2016 will not open existing .pptx and .ppt files from PPT 2011 on my computer. No error messages result; the files just never open with PowerPoint 2016. They open perfectly well however if I open them with PowerPoint 2011.

Even more odd, all the files will open in PowerPoint 2016 But only if I email them to myself first. I have no idea why that would be. I have been on the tech-support for several hours today and have so far got nowhere.

With Excel, it seems harder to get a cell to drag to populate adjacent cells; was much more reliable in 2011. Word also seems glitchier.  

All these things were reported during the Preview and remain at release. How disappointing. 

I wouldn't be surprised if they rushed it out the door because they didn't have that many Mac testers and wanted to get more people to test it, and Office 365 was just an easy way to get that done since it also makes it pretty trivial for people to either keep their old versions or downgrade back to 2011 if they had issues.

These applications are not optimized.  They take up WAY TOO MUCH SPACE (about 5GB combined due to 400MB+ of fonts duplicated across all the App Packages... That is a lot of space on some people's 120GB SSDs in a MBA/P), the Load Times are just out of this world, the Lag/Sluggishness going from tab to tab is not good at all.

I also don't see a point in using Office for Mac because it doesn't seem like the applications work together in the same way as on Windows.  The way Outlook can work with OneNote on Windows, the way OneNote can work with other Office Apps like Outlook, Excel, etc.  You lose all of that onto Mac - not to mention Outlook doesn't support EAS and cannot sync to Microsoft's own Consumer PIM Services (Outlook.com) and OneNote for Mac is at about a 60% Feature Deficit compared to OneNote on Windows.

At this point it's better to run the Windows Version in a VM or Boot Camp on a Mac than to deal with the Mac Version.

It's hard to be productive on any level with apps that take 30-40 seconds to load, have 5-10 second lag/beach balls when switching ribbon tabs, etc.  Some of the bugs being reported here are not indicative of an RTM-level product.  It should still being preview.  They are not release quality, not yet.

The only reason I'd use these over Office 2011 (which actually performs better) is because the apps are sandboxed and it's a PITA to uninstall Office 2011 never mind the mess it makes of your Fonts due to them dumping them into Fonts->Microsoft (Causes Duplicates in Apps, Performance issues, etc.).  If the Office 2011 Apps were Sandboxed the way these are, I'd use that instead - if they were my only choice.

I just went back to the Windows version, for now.

Installed Office 2016 for Mac today in my Mac Book Pro Retina (mid 2012) with Yosemite 10.10.4. After launching Outlook 2016 (I have it open all day, work all the time with it) and importing data from Outlook 2011, I started using it. It crashes after a while (not immediately). I have restarted my Mac and reopened Outlook 2016 several times, same results. I did erase saved preferences and cache using terminal (as advised by someone in the MS community), but the problem persists. I switched back to my 2011 version.

Seems like the time invested was a loss. Will there be a more stable version at some point?

Hello Pablo, are you reporting the crash when it happens? Also, would you be able to share your crash stack with us?

Thanks!

Faisal J.

PM / Mac Outlook

I was using the beta Preview, but downloaded the updated version yesterday. Now, in order to use the Office suite, it appears that I need to purchase an Office 365 account.  I was hoping to use the beta until the standalone version is available, at which time I will be able to install Office 2016 from my company's server. A colleague posted a question on this blog (possibly some other Microsoft blog), and was told:

"The preview will work until August 9 and we will release Office for Mac to corporate customers in August before that date. Volume licensing customers will be able to download Office 2016 for Mac from their Volume Licensing Service Center. We should have called that out in the blog post.”  

Please help me get the preview version working again. I don't want to pay $100 for the 1-year Office 365 subscription for the one month until August 9.

Thank you

Hi Faisal.

I have reported the crash to Apple a couple of times, yes.

I sent the crash stack you requested attached to my email reply.

Best,

Pablo