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.

Office 2016 for Mac is a version of Office that’s available as a one-time purchase from a retail store or through a volume licensing agreement. It will be supported with security updates and bug fixes, as needed, until October 13, 2020. Updates for Office 2016 for Mac are available from Microsoft AutoUpdate (MAU). Hoping to make collaboration easier, Microsoft added Skype to Word, Powerpoint and Excel. Now you can click a button to instant message people on your team, or start a voice call while you work on a document or spreadsheet together. Microsoft Office 2016 ushers in many new features, all designed to help you work better together. Today, we are taking a big step forward for Mac users—Office 2016 for Mac is now available in 139 countries and 16 languages. Based on feedback from the great Mac Office community, we’ve made major updates to each of the apps, and we couldn’t be more pleased to deliver it first to our Office 365 customers.

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.

According to Microsoft, Office 2016 is designed to unify the look and feel of the applications across all platforms, so that no matter where you use Office—Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Web—the. The release notes for version 16.16 and earlier also apply to Office 2016 for Mac, which is also a version of Office for Mac that’s available as a one-time purchase. Older versions up to and including 16.16 can be activated with an Office 2016 for Mac volume license. You'll Never Have To Buy Microsoft Office 2016 Again. How to approach a review of a product such as Office 2016? It remains a gargantuan project from Redmond. Office 2016 is of course. At this stage of Microsoft Office 2019 Review, the prices for the Office 2019 aren’t yet clearly known, its only expected that the package has improved value for money. With such features at hand, Office 2019 will not only eclipse all the preceding office packages, but it will be way cheaper than them.

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.

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.

We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more.

STELA for Apple Arcade is a shallow, sadistic, totally fun game

Can you outrun killer dark shadows? Take leaps of faith into the unknown? Traverse a world where nothing is what it seems? STELA will test your mettle.

Today’s post was written by Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office 365 Client Apps and Services team.

Today is a big day for the Mac community–we’re excited to announce that a preview of the new Office 2016 for Mac is now officially available! Click here to give it a try and please send us your feedback.

Office 2016 for Mac is powered by the cloud so you can access your documents on OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint at anytime, anywhere and on any device.

Cloud connected with OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint.

Similar to our recent announcements of universal Office apps for Windows 10 and Office for Android tablet, Office 2016 for Mac shares an unmistakably Office experience–but it is also thoughtfully designed to take advantage of the unique features of the Mac. The new apps offer full retina display support with thousands of retina-optimized graphics, full screen view for native immersive experiences, and even little Mac affordances like scroll bounce. While there are too many new features to cover in a single blog post, here’s a quick overview of a few of the highlights.

Office 2016 for Mac—an exciting step forward

The new Office 2016 for Mac includes updated versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook–and the moment you open any one of the apps, you’ll immediately feel the difference. We’ve modernized the user experience and made it easier to get things done. The redesigned ribbon intuitively organizes features so you can quickly find what you need quickly. A refreshed task pane interface makes positioning, resizing, or rotating graphics easy so you can create exactly the layout you want. And new themes and styles help you pull it all together to produce stunning, professional documents.

Word—create, polish and share beautiful documents

Word’s state of the art editing, reviewing and sharing tools make authoring and polishing documents easy. The design tab allows you to manage layout, colors and fonts across a document, and the navigation pane helps you refine the document structure and efficiently navigate to points of interest. Threaded comments turn editing cycles into conversations, so you spend less time trying to connect the dots.

Navigation pane

Excel—analyze and visualize your data in new and intuitive ways

With the new features in Excel, you’ll be telling your data’s story in no time. Charts, graphs, keyboard shortcuts and data entry enhancements (like formula builder and autocomplete) immediately make you more productive. And support for Excel 2013 (for Windows) functions ensures that you can easily share files across platforms. The new Analysis ToolPak offers a wide range of statistical functions, including moving averages and exponential smoothing, and PivotTable Slicers help you cut through large volumes of data to find patterns that answer questions.

Formula builder

PowerPoint—create, collaborate and effectively present your ideas

Walk into your next presentation with complete confidence. PowerPoint’s new Presenter View is like mission control for your presentation–displaying the current slide, the next slide, notes and a timer on your Mac, while projecting only the presentation to your audience on the big screen. A new animation pane helps you build your presentation faster, and new slide transitions ensures the finished product is polished and professional.

Presenter View

Outlook—enjoy a mail experience that works fast and looks great

Office Home And Business For Mac 2016 Review

Managing your email has never been easier. The recently released Outlook for Mac is also a part of the preview suite and uses push mail support to deliver an always-up-to-date inbox. The improved conversation view automatically organizes your inbox around threaded conversations, so you’ll never hunt for related messages again. And the new message preview gives you the first sentence of an email just below the subject line so you can quickly decide if you want to read it now or come back later.

Conversation view

OneNote—harness your thoughts in your very own digital notebook

Update Office 2016 On Mac

Never forget again with OneNote. Capture, organize and share your ideas with digital notebooks that you can access on any device. Use tags like “To Do” or “Important” or “Question” to add structure to your notes, and find things quickly with a powerful search engine that tracks your tags, indexes your typed notes and uses OCR to recognize text in images and handwritten notes.

Tag your notes.

This March 25th Office Mechanics show includes an end-to-end demo of Office 2016 for Mac Preview.

Download the apps today!

As you can see, there’s a lot packed into this preview release, and we’re excited to share it with the world. It’s not only full of new and improved features, it’s another proof point of our commitment to cross-platform support and a consistent experiences across devices. Unmistakably Office, but thoughtfully designed for the Mac.

But don’t take our word for it: Download the apps today and tell us what you think by sending us a smile from the top right of your app screen! We’re looking forward to hearing from the Mac community and will use the feedback to finalize the product for release later this summer.

Microsoft Office For Mac 2016

Office Home And Student For Mac 2016 Review

— Kirk Koenigsbauer