Why is Excel 2016 for Mac so bad?

I just upgraded to High Sierra and Office 2016 and I can't believe how horrible Excel is. It barely functions at all. I have a huge list of things that don't work or work at the speed of a slug, but I'm pessimistic that Microsoft technical support can help. 

I agree that the pressure needs to be kept on them to get this product to actually do what the older versions could easily do. I just came off of Office for Mac 2004 and that worked fine. I'm having to keep my old computer set up so I can do work in Excel. Microsoft should be ashamed of itself. 

I have not upgraded to the latest version, which I think is 16.9, because I would lose some of my fonts in Word (don't get me started about how badly that works.) But I'd like to hear from others who are at that version to see if Excel is any better. Maybe there's a way I can update just Excel and leave Word, and my fonts, alone.

Thanks for whatever help you can give.  

   Marki

I am finding the upgrade is unworthy. They have messed with little things that make it more difficult to use. This includes no more quick key to get to the first cell in a worksheet. Second, inserting a cell now defaults to down instead of bring up options. You now have to right click to get it. Third, If I want to move a series of columns down, I would select the cells above and then just insert. Now it just pastes another two columns in, rather than move down by a row at a time. 

Just a pain for simple things.

Hi

Since I wrote that a couple years ago, Microsoft has put a major push on getting Office for Mac closer to Office for Windows. There is still a feature gap, but it is narrowing quickly. I would not be surprised if sandbox complications are what led to the current font issues.

Regarding signatures, perhaps you might vote for this feature suggestion, or start a new one if this isn't exactly what you had in mind:

Fix the HTML Formatting for Signatures

Well, I love the conspiracy theories you have postulated. I suspect the problems are the result of much more mundane realities. What follows is my own private conjecture about the situation.

MVPs get to meet the Microsoft Office for Mac team occasionally, along with the Office for Windows teams. Size matters. There are thousands of Office for Windows employees and a relative handful of Office for Mac employees. I think the #1 core problem is there simply aren't enough programmers and program managers at Microsoft who know how to write code for Macs. The door is always open. They ask us to encourage anyone who wants to work for the Office for Mac team to apply to Microsoft. There is a world-wide shortage of programmers in general, and there's a critical shortage of programmers who know how to program on the Mac. Finding and keeping (especially keeping) programmers and good managers seems to me to be the #1 problem.

Then there's the general opinion that the web and mobile devices rule and the desktop is dead. No one wants to program for desktop applications any more. iOS and Android is where the action is. You would think Windows Phone would be attractive to developers who know Windows, but not so much.

Email is considered a dinosaur. Who wants to have on their resume they helped write Microsoft Outlook? Sure, it's used by millions of people every day, but text messages are the rule today.

I can't rank #2 #3 #4, etc. There are just some other factors that seem to come into play.

* Mac OS. It changes like the wind. Trying to keep Office running on each and every update that comes down the pike is a huge problem. Sometimes I think Apple deliberately messes with Mac OS to screw Microsoft. For example, the next item in my list...

* Sandboxing. Microsoft adopted sandboxing to keep Office for Mac "Mac-like" and because Apple won't let Microsoft sell Microsoft Office in the App store unless Microsoft goes along with Sandboxing. Sandboxing crippled Microsoft Office. If I were looking for criminal behavior of a monopolist, I'd be going after Apple about sandboxing and their strong-arm tactics about getting apps into the App store.

* Cost containment. In a sense, maintaining Office for Mac and Office for Windows is duplication. You have to invent everything twice. Since Office for Mac sales are less than Office for Windows, Microsoft is keen on keeping the cost as low as possible. This, combined with not enough staff, is a big problem. Expensive to make features that don't get a lot of use are left out of Office for Mac. For example, Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) is very limited on the Mac. 

Which results in a very weak version of Excel for Mac. I consider it to be only about 1/3 done. If and when the promised Visual Basic Editor ever comes along, then I'll consider it to be 2/3 of the way. When the missing SQL and data components finally make their way to the Mac, then I'll say it's complete.

I seriously DO not think that you need to be a genius to write a code to Fix the fonts six e on Mac once for all ..as well as having an automatic change of signature with a different email address  use ( like ENTOURAGE product used to do systematically) there was no need to go in your folder signature  choose an email  then copyy and then pas on your email Body  you cannot seriously expect someone to do that 50 time a day specially when you work with clients

it is impossible to think that an engineer "forgot" this code set up ..( 12 years ago it already existed for entourage ..for are going  Backward  sorry but I think IT IS NOT PROFFESIONNAL

office for Mac 2016 is rubbish that does not work, would you like a car that would NOT work I guess no !!