Mar 28, 2019 Microsoft would prefer both Mac and Windows users of Office to move to the online version, Office 365, but it’s still entirely up to you. In fact, you can already use some Microsoft Office.

While Pages is a great word processor, Microsoft Word and other programs available with Microsoft Office are still widely used. It can be frustrating to pass documents between Apple's applications and Microsoft Office. I have dealt with getting Word documents from friends, only to open them in Pages a realize they aren't formatting correctly, or the spacing is off, etc.

The good news is Microsoft Office for Mac is pretty great. If you've ever used a PC before, you're likely familiar with the interface, and personally, I think the design of the Office programs for Mac is stellar. Of course, Microsoft offers two versions of Office for Mac, Microsoft Office 2016 and Microsoft Office 365, so here's a breakdown of each one so you can choose the right one for you.

What Version Of Microsoft Office Works Best On Mac Computer

Users and devices

When deciding what Microsoft Office package you want, you're going to need to know how you intend to use it. Are you one of those people who want to use Office on your Mac, iPad, and iPhone, or do you only need it on your MacBook Pro you use for work or school every day?

  • Office 2016 Home & Student: Installed on one Mac
  • Office 2016 Home & Business: Installed on one Mac
  • Office 365 Personal: Installed on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad with only one user allowed to access the 1TB One Drive storage.
  • Office 365 Personal: Installed on up to five Macs, PCs, iPhones, and iPads with five users allowed to access the 1TB One Drive storage.

Programs

Which programs you need in your Microsoft Office suite will also be a critical deciding factor in which version you buy.

  • Office 2016 Home & Student: Comes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote
  • Office 2016 Home & Business: Comes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook
  • Office 365 Personal: Comes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher (PC only), and Access (PC only).
  • Office 365 Home: Comes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher (PC only), and Access (PC only).

Cloud storage

Microsoft OneDrive is a cloud storage service that you can use to store files, photos, documents, and other data. If you get either version of Microsoft Office 365, you'll get a free TB of OneDrive storage to access and use.

  • Office 365 Personal: 1TB of OneDrive storage for one user, plus 60 minutes per month for Skype calls.
  • Office 365 Home: 1TB of OneDrive storage accessible by up to five users, plus 60 minutes per month for Skype calls.

Neither tier of Microsoft Office 2016 comes with OneDrive storage.

Pricing

The most significant difference by far is pricing and payment model. Microsoft Office 2016 is a one-time payment, while Office 365 is a monthly subscription model.

  • Office 2016 Home & Student: $149.99 and doesn't come with updates.
  • Office 2016 Home & Business: $229.99 and doesn't come with updates.
  • Office 365 Personal: $69.99 per year (or $6.99 per month), includes updates.
  • Office 365 Home: $99.99 per year (or 9.99 per month), includes updates.

The bottom line

Office 365

The enormous benefit to Office 365 is the 1TB of OneDrive storage. This means all your work documents, personal finance spreadsheets, or school presentations can be saved locally and in your OneDrive, keeping all your data safe and accessible to you whenever you need it.

Chances are Office 365 Personal is the best bet for most people, but if you love the free cloud storage and you need Office for your entire family, the Office 365 Home version is your best bet.

Mac

Office 2016

If you're looking for the basic Office program like Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, and don't need OneDrive cloud storage, Office 2016 is perfectly fine for one person.

You'll only have to pay once, meaning you don't have to worry about that yearly subscription fee hitting your credit card every year. Of course, the lack of updates is a little annoying, but for most users, you'll probably not even notice or miss the extra features Office 365 provides anyways.

Office 2016 Home & Student is going to be all the majority of people will need; however, if you do want Outlook your can always get the Home & Business version as well.

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Which Microsoft Office Works Best On Mac

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'Home Before Dark' production designer talks sets, location, and more

'Home Before Dark' is now on Apple TV+ and the show's production designer has been talking about how it all went down.

A new version of Microsoft Office may be ready for the Mac soon. Is it as important as it used to be?

Rumor has it that Microsoft is on the cusp of releasing a new version of Office for Mac. It's been more than three years since the last version of Office came out. Things have changed a lot. Is Microsoft Office still important?

Since Office's last major release on the Mac, Apple made a major strategic move to trump Microsoft: It began to include productivity apps as part of the standard suite of software applications included on all new Macs and iOS devices. You used to have to buy iWork apps — Pages, Keynote and Numbers — separately, but now you get them for free.

Those three apps fill in the gaps for some users who need word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software capabilities. There are certainly some benefits, too, such as iCloud support and binary compatibility for documents, making it simple to edit files on your Mac and use them on your iPad, or vice versa.

Other options have emerged, too. Free software alternatives to Office like LibreOffice may still raise eyebrows, but Google has normalized many people to using Google Docs for their productivity software and collaboration needs, for example.

iWork is good, but it's not that good. As I said back in February, 'Almost' isn't good enough. Despite the advances that Apple has made, Microsoft Office still reigns supreme in corporate environments and elsewhere. Many businesses and institutions continue to rely on Office as their standard.

Like most alternative productivity suites, iWork apps try to be good corporate citizens, offering Office file compatibility for import and export, but there's a difference between file compatibility and native file support, and many users of iWork apps and other tools have run into issues with documents just not looking right when they're translated into Office formats.

As I said at the outset, Apple has changed, but so has Microsoft. Much of their focus has been to make Office a subscription-based service rather than a monolithic software suite that gets updated once every few years.

You can still buy Office in a single user version. But Microsoft is following Adobe's Creative Cloud lead, offering an annual subscription with the promise of regular updates, along with other benefits, such as the ability to share one subscription with multiple devices, a free OneDrive cloud service account with 20 GB of storage, free Skype world minutes and more.

Of course, a new version of Office for Mac is only one tantalizing piece of the puzzle. The other is a version of Office that will run on iPads. Microsoft expert Mary Jo Foley suggested in February that an iPad version is coming sooner than people think, perhaps some time in the first half of 2014. A well-integrated Mac and iPad Microsoft Office ecosystem would certainly be fierce competition for Apple, which is still in a rebuilding year after gutting the iWork apps to get them to work more seamlessly across iOS and OS X.

Download Mac Microsoft Office

Another piece of the puzzle: Microsoft may bring OneNote to the Mac in the next few weeks. Microsoft's note-taking app is a decade old, but it's not available in Mac native form, leaving the market wide open for competitors like Evernote to dominate.

Microsoft Office For Macbook Free

Office remains one of the best selling software packages for the Mac. Lots of Mac users depend on Office to get their work done, and that's unlikely to change. Office is still front and center for many in the corporate and institutional worlds.

The combination of a new version of Microsoft Office for Mac, Office for iPad and OneNote for Mac suggests that Microsoft still thinks that Apple's platforms are still fertile ground. Even if you don't like Microsoft's products, you have to admit that the company's continued support is a net positive: It makes it easier to justify using Macs and iOS devices in enterprise and reduces friction for users who want to effortlessly produce documents that their non-Apple using colleagues can work.

To answer my initial question, Microsoft Office's role has changed. It's no longer irreplaceable - fact is, there are a lot of options people can use if they want to produce word processing docs, spreadsheets and attractive presentations. But Office is still a vital and important tool for many of us, and that won't change.

Are you looking forward to a new version of Office for the Mac? Will you migrate to new Office apps for OS X and iOS? Let me know what you think in the comments.

Scene setter

'Home Before Dark' production designer talks sets, location, and more

Which Microsoft Office Is Best For Mac

'Home Before Dark' is now on Apple TV+ and the show's production designer has been talking about how it all went down.

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