Why is Excel 2016 for Mac so bad?

It's genuinely so awful it shocks me. 

FOR EXAMPLE:

Have you ever tried to edit a combo chart? As in, you want to swap up which data are plotted as a bar chart, and which are plotted as a line? it's ABSURDLY COUNTER INTUITIVE. the process necessitates you watch a several minute youtube tutorial because the path to getting there is shockingly confusing. I think the developers were purposefully understaffed or under qualified in an not-so-subtle effort by management to incentivize people to purchase PCs over Macs. 

This is actually genius, since I am buying a PC this Winter simply so that I can work on Excel from home without having a brain aneurism. Nice move, Satya.

I can add that Version 16.16.11 is unreliable ****! I am a 20 year+ veteran user and the current version regularly fails to save a spreadsheet after indicating it did. The software is so unreliable that I never close a workbook with a close & save command.

My biggest peeve is Microsoft has completely failed with upward layout compatibility. Every workbook built before 2016 has to be reformatted for printing with the first opening under 2016. For me this is hundreds of workbooks.

Why did they do this? I suspect they are screwing with me because I didn't go for the 360 subscription scam!

Will I continue to use it? Yes

Will I bad mouth Microsoft at every opportunity? ABSOLUTELY!

Office 2016 is another new interface on top of the same old code. As in the past, mostly reliable unless things get too big or complex, and still required when you exchange or collaborate on files, since .docx and .xlsx files are used by everyone else.

I don't know whether or not you've seen other discussions, but in the latest Insider Fast build the code base was bumped up about 10 year's worth from version 14.0 to version 16.6. That's a giant step forward.

It's a terrible sham and scam of a product. 

I'm fully up to date on all apps and I even have three Office Business Essentials accounts. 

You can't use third party add-ins on Excel. Plenty of buggy mouse and font problems on Excel too. Try to write auto text headers and footers on Excel, that's a lot of fun, not. Word also has a whole host of problems. Outlook is limited when compared with the PC version. 

How can you sell something for over one hundred pounds sterling that is so utterly crap?

Hi Mactrician,

Let's start with the last comment, first. I don't sell Microsoft Office. I don't make Microsoft Office. I don't work for Microsoft.

Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for Mac support third-party add-ins using:

• Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)
• Excel 4 macro language (you don't come across these very much anymore, but they still work)
• AppleScript
• JavaScript

Add-ins must be constructed to be cross-platform, particularly regarding files and Apple-mandated sandboxing. Office for Mac 2016 is 64-bit only. Add-ins made for 32-bit Office must be updated first.

I moderate the Excel forum daily, and I can't say that I've noticed many complaints of mouse problems with Excel. If you're having problem with your mouse/mice, please ask a new question in the Q&A forum being sure to describe exactly your hardware setup as well as versions of Mac OS and Office that are involved. This sounds likely to be a hardware/RAM/Graphics card issue that will involve your specific setup.

I have seen reports of trouble with certain versions of Times New Roman and some foreign language fonts. To the best of my knowledge these are unresolved, but you can search the Q&A forum for the latest postings.

Since my previous comments, Microsoft has been building a new Visual Basic Editor for the Mac. My hope is that it will appear at least in Insider Fast builds within the next few months. Microsoft has added many missing features to Office for Mac, but there is still more work to do.

Hi,

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