Why is Excel 2016 for Mac so bad?

Besides, the desktop is dead and everyone wants only mobile apps these days, right?

If you believe that I can get you a great deal for some land with an Ocean view in Arizona.  While I don't necessarily need nor want a Ful on Desktop. I use my MacBook Pro all the time.

I have an iPhone I mostly use it for notes, weather reports, and messenger messages, and making calls. I bought an iPad Pro  I use it very little. I actually wasted money. Also unlike you (or the way you talk0 I wear glasses and even have astigmatism in one eye, so I need as large a print as I can get. Well, it turns out as the size goes down, so does the size of the print. Don't kid your self as the employees get older they will begin to need glasses and with need larger type.  I can see a few areas where notebook phone screens are useful. For instance, I have a visiting nurse come and dress my legs with UNA Boots. And the notebook is ideal for them to document their visits. But for the majority, the laptop or even the desktop still rules.

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Disclaimer:

The questions, discussions, opinions, replies & answers I create, are solely mine and mine alone and do not reflect upon my position as a Community Moderator.

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* 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 like to comment this part of your theory. 

First because of the increased security risk from Malware due to the increasing popularity Apple came up with sandboxing so that any destructive doesn't mess up the entire computer and limits the damage only to the affected area. On the other hand, because the underlying code for Windows is much the same as it was forty years ago and at the very deepest core is still dependent on Ms-DOS. You can Take any windows PC can load any previous system At least back NT. It will run. It may not run right, but it will boot up. That's the reason why Window suffers from a constant barge of Malware daily thousands up thousands. Even Microsoft has introduced a system to control Nasty code. So far only Proof of concept malware has been written for Mac and Apple rewrites code and uploads changes in weeks, not months to overcome. If the computer News Outlets would hold off reporting new malware until after its cured would do a lot to slow down the writing of new malware.

As for the second  Paragraph. If Microsoft adopted Unix as the Base Code for the system, the only differences between Mac and PC would be the Graphical User interface. And that would be much less rewriting to do.

As for the last parts of the last paragraph, starting from OLE on, I agree. Except, you know from answering Forum questions, there is at least one or two question every day or two, asking questions, either asking why OLE doesn't work or asking about subjects which can only answer if OLE was functioning.

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Disclaimer:

The questions, discussions, opinions, replies & answers I create, are solely mine and mine alone and do not reflect upon my position as a Community Moderator.

Omg this post is so hilarious and spot on. Thank you for making my recent excel hell experience a bit more tolerable..

@ Mabi

My first Mac was an Apple ][+ 

I've been using Microsoft Office for Mac since 1985 when it first came out. I have also used Microsoft Office for Windows.

When Microsoft released Office 2016 for Mac I thought it was the worst commercial software I had ever used in my life. It knocked Netscape version 6 off that perch in the abyss. That was 2 years ago. In the intervening time, Microsoft has worked diligently to debug Office 2016 for Mac. It is no longer the worst software I've ever used. With the release of the new Visual Basic Editor and the thousands of bug fixes and feature enhancements made over the past two years, I now consider Office for Mac (the Office 365 rendition) a very good software suite. Is it perfect? Far from it. Is it the best available? Yes, it is, and by a long shot.

The only feature in Excel 2016 for Mac that currently has some troubles is the Solver add-in. Microsoft is working to fix Solver. Some fixes have come with each of the most recent updates: 15.37  15.38  and 15.39. The work on Solver is not finished as of this writing, but I do expect Solver to be glitch-free within a few weeks.

The object model for Office for Mac is version 14 (approximately Windows Office 2010 object model). The object model for Office for Windows is version 16. The Mac version is two full versions behind. While everything we have in Excel works, we don't have everything the Windows version has. Microsoft is on track to deliver the same code base as Office for Windows. No time-frame has been announced. It's a major undertaking. It is my hope they can pull this off sometime late this year or early next year. When this will happen remains to be seen. When it happens, Mac users should have a nearly identical feature set with Office for Windows.

Microsoft is on a path to have all Office platforms use a single code base. It's been a long, slow trek, with the goal still far off in the distance.

To the best of my knowledge, all of the features that are in Excel 2016 do work. The problem I find is that not all of the features of Excel for Windows are in Excel 2016 for Mac.