Microsoft Office Home and Business 2016 for MAC RRP $299.00

Sources:

Jon Honeyball, www.pcandtechauthority.com.au

Upon testing Office for MAC, it is important that users are aware there are two versions of Office; the full version, or as Jon Honeyball reports, the full-fat version, then there is light versions, and finally there are web-based versions, which is free, online, and includes versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.  The free version works in your browser.  With it you can make new files, do light editing of existing files, store and share and collaborate online.  It is supported in browsers Internet Explorer, Edge, and Safari.

The middle tier light versions designed for mobile devices work quite well on Windows 10 mobile devices, and on the iPad pro larger tablet as well.  The normal functions of the Office programs work well on iOS and Android devices.

But the full version of Microsoft Office for MAC is where a lot of common features are missing, which is disappointing and surprising considering it costs $299 per license.  Office for MAC has always been weaker compared to the Windows versions, and this is true for the latest version too.

This is surprising because Excel originally shipped on the MAC, and wasn’t available on PC until Windows 2.0

For years, MAC users have had to struggle with no Macro support as Microsoft didn’t port VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) to the Intel OSX platform.  Macros was introduced into the MAC Office a couple of versions ago, but Excel for the Mac has always been unsatisfactory.

One example is the ability to edit the toolbar buttons, something you can always do on PC.  But on MAC, the ability is just not there.  And say you want to mark an email as junk?  Select all the spam mail in your inbox, then go to the junk button, and Voila, all your spam is given the respect it deserves and sent to your junk folder and the senders email addresses marked as SPAM senders.  But not on the Mac, the process is choosing the email, then going to the drop down menu, and choosing Junk mail again.

Now with customisable menu items, or toolbar, I should be able to choose my own tool bar buttons and solve this dilemma right?  Wrong.  The only “customisable” buttons available are: New, Save, undo and a few others.  Even in Outlook there is no quick access toolbar available.

MadTECH Business I.T. Support has always recommended to clients that they use PC’s for business workstations.  We are not anti-Apple, in fact as far as screens and using Apple products for design works, e.g., Artwork, Graphic design etc. Apple is still the best.  But for business applications like Microsoft office, PC’s are still the master race.  A real life example of this is one client, who is part of a worldwide corporation, and have a local office on the Gold Coast, and factory in Brisbane.

We recommended to them one year ago to replace aged machines with desktop name brand pc’s, backed by a three-year warranty, with all Microsoft licenses installed and configured.  The area manager went against our recommendations and asked us to install MacBook’s.

Now the problem they are having is this company is having new staff starting that didn’t know Apple products as they were used to using Microsoft and desktop pc’s in the office environment.  The other problems we are now facing is that they are being transitioned to Oracle software, and hosted Exchange for Emails.  Their corporate I.T. office in the US only works with PC’s, and recommends their users do the same.

This is because the software is designed to work on the Microsoft and PC platform, not MACS.  The company IT policy is to now replace the machines with PC’s when it is time for renewal, but we face an uphill battle to get software working on the MACs in the meantime.