Why is Excel 2016 for Mac so bad?

Anonymous
2016-08-27T19:22:32+00:00

I'm wondering what people think - Excel 2016 for Mac seems to be so bad that it must be intentional. Am I wrong? Is Microsoft still waging a low-grade war on Mac users by making their products subtly awful on a Mac? Is it just that they have really bad developers? Is it that the developers are good but the management somehow makes them do terrible work? Is it that whoever is in charge of designing Excel for Mac has an ex who uses it for his/her job and this person has devoted his/her life to making his/her ex's life bad in confusing ways? Has a nefarious actor infiltrated Microsoft in order to make their products just bad enough that companies will continue to use them but their awfulness will create a small long-term drag on the US economy? Answers would be appreciated. Thanks!

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | MacOS

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  1. Anonymous
    2019-07-11T05:16:23+00:00

    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!

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-07-05T00:06:04+00:00

    Hi, I installed Office 365 last month, and wish I hadn't bothered and just kept going to my old Laptop for Excel 2013.

    Two major things missing, IMO, are creating and editing UserForms, and Evaluate Formula - both of which are missing. How many other functionalities are missing?? 

    My Mac is a MacBook Pro 2012, with the most RAM possible and the latest OS updates. Excel is a bit sluggish, but not much.

    There are differences in operation, such as when swapping Tabs/Workbooks while writing a formula does something funky with the mouse as it is waiting for you to select a cell. Just different, that's all.

    Using the keyboard to navigate is rather clunky, too, such as having the Command button so close to the space bar. Maybe there is a larger keyboard I could get for the MacBook, though.

    Some of the keyboard shortcuts don't seem consistent, as the Control key is not a replacement for the Ctrl key in the Windows Excel. Now I have to remember how and when to use three keys instead of one - then swap between work and home!

    The experience hasn't been comfortable, to say the least.

    Having said that, I do love my MacBook.

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  3. Jim G 134K Reputation points MVP
    2019-06-08T17:46:12+00:00

    As I already mentioned, Office 2016 for Mac will use all your processor cores for calculations if you have current updates installed. My experience is that Excel for Mac is as fast as Excel for Windows in calculations and in data manipulations as Excel for Windows on comparable hardware. This is expected because Excel for Mac and Excel for Windows now use the same code base.

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-05-21T17:24:39+00:00

    Office for the mac will feel sluggish on any mac.  I moved over to an Apple iMac in 2011 after using a 64bit windows XP machine.  I was extremely dissappointed with the poor performance which has never improved with so called “updates”.  Just watching an imac power up is painfull.  It doesn’t appear to. Multitask at all!  I sometimes wonder if the imac actually has a 64 bit cpu in it.

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  5. Jim G 134K Reputation points MVP
    2019-05-20T17:35:54+00:00

    Multi-core calculation was added to Excel for Mac in March 2018

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