Office on mac

Just for heck of it recently I started trying to use pages / sheets n mail on my macbook I know maybe it’s because I’m Microsoft guy but they seem like un usable compared to office not as smooth as office jumping between mail n pages pain

Outlook has more features

Sheets can’t hold candle to excel

I really love my Mac but to get work done I need office

Even open office on mac better then pages n sheets

Conversation 23 comments

  • xperiencewindows

    20 April, 2018 - 8:59 am

    <p>I agree. Office is arguably Microsoft's strongest product. Use pages or sheets if you have no other choice.</p>

  • Bob Shutts

    20 April, 2018 - 10:09 am

    <p>Apple office suite: mostly unusable. Keynote is pretty good, though.</p>

    • helix2301

      Premium Member
      21 April, 2018 - 7:39 am

      <blockquote><a href="#264573"><em>In reply to Bob_Shutts:</em></a></blockquote><p>When I use it just feels like one those things apple puts out but never updates they used charge for it now it's free to me that means they were making no money with it so let's give it away </p><p><br></p><p>They would never give away something they were making lots Money on </p>

  • wright_is

    Premium Member
    20 April, 2018 - 11:22 am

    <p>The biggest problem I had at my previous job, was that the CEO decided to get a Mac and then put MS Office for Mac on it…</p><p>Then the fun started,<em> "how do I do X?"</em></p><p>"You can't, it isn't implemented in Office for Mac"</p><p><em>"That can't be true, I've been doing that for over a decade! Find out how!"</em></p><p>"Yes, but not on a Mac! On Windows!"</p><p><em>"Doesn't make any difference, it's Office!"</em></p><p>"According to the Microsoft Office Team, this is not implemented and they have no short term plans to implement it."</p><p><em>"You are incompetent. You must be able to do it, so come back to me with an answer, not an excuse!"</em></p>

    • helix2301

      Premium Member
      21 April, 2018 - 7:37 am

      <blockquote><a href="#264611"><em>In reply to wright_is:</em></a></blockquote><p>Now that the releases are on the same track is that still an issue ?</p>

      • wright_is

        Premium Member
        21 April, 2018 - 8:13 am

        <blockquote><a href="#264834"><em>In reply to helix2301:</em></a></blockquote><p>It is no longer an issue, at least for me. I now work at a place that uses Linux and Libre Office… ?</p>

    • wunderbar

      Premium Member
      21 April, 2018 - 7:32 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#264611"><em>In reply to wright_is:</em></a></blockquote><p>This was true years ago, but since the release of Office 2016 is no longer true. There are a copule platform specific things that are unique to each version of office, but functionally they are the same.</p>

      • hrlngrv

        Premium Member
        21 April, 2018 - 8:53 pm

        <p><a href="#264942"><em>In reply to wunderbar:</em></a></p><blockquote>. . . functionally they are the same.</blockquote><p>You spend no time in Excel user-to-user support forums, do you?</p><p>There's no PowerPivot for Mac Excel.</p><p>There's no PowerQuery for Mac Excel.</p><p>There's no PowerBI for Mac Excel.</p><p>Workbook and worksheet events won't trigger.</p><p>Mac VBA Editor is pathetic.</p><p>Many Windows-specific DLLs have no bundled Mac equivalents, so no simple references to Windows scripting runtime DLLs for dictionary or regular expression objects.</p><p>And while possible, it's much harder to work with ODBC data sources with Mac Excel than Windows Excel.</p><p>Other than that, Mac Excel has all the same built-in functions as Windows Excel, the same number of worksheet columns and rows, and both can handle the same custom number formats. For many that may be compatible enough, but not for some.</p>

      • wright_is

        Premium Member
        22 April, 2018 - 4:09 am

        <blockquote><a href="#264942"><em>In reply to wunderbar:</em></a></blockquote><p>This was with Office 2016 for Mac – certain filtering and rule options, for example, weren't available in Outlook for Mac and OneNote for Mac is essentially feature parity with UWP and not OneNote 2016 – for example, there were OneNote files on the local Samba share for each project, but OneNote Mac can only open OneDrive based files, so he had to resort to using a Windows VM for certain things.</p>

    • brisonharvey

      Premium Member
      25 April, 2018 - 2:59 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#264611"><em>In reply to wright_is:</em></a><em> Bingo. This is exactly the issue that is pushing my wife away from Macs and back to Windows. </em></blockquote><p><br></p>

  • quackers82

    21 April, 2018 - 8:28 am

    <p>I have never been able to get on with Apples Office software and i really do not like the interface so we use Microsoft Office on our 200 Mac, 500 iPad deployment. I get annoyed when i find Office for Mac is missing a feature i want, but i just go typical Microsoft again, even more annoying when you think Excel came out of Mac first, but it looks like they are trying to get feature parity slowly across the platforms. Luckily we were able to escape Windows and are free from hell but Microsoft Office? Nothing really comes close, and the day it does will be the day Microsoft should be worried. I do wish Microsoft would make Publisher available on the Mac version of Office as we do occasionally get a staff member with a pub file they made 8 years ago that they want to open. While they are at it Office for Linux would be good too. </p>

    • hrlngrv

      Premium Member
      21 April, 2018 - 8:39 pm

      <p><a href="#264838"><em>In reply to quackers82:</em></a></p><p>Office for Android running under Chrome OS and ancient versions of Office running under Crossover are the closest there'll ever be to Office for Linux.</p><p>The Mac version of the VBA Editor is a pathetic joke compared to the Windows VBA Editor. Then there's the absence of Power Query, and a few versions back the complete absence of VBA. MSFT has no love for the Mac version of Office.</p>

  • rameshthanikodi

    21 April, 2018 - 12:54 pm

    <p>Excel is almost irreplaceable, <em>but</em>, eventually people will want to avoid needing Excel at all. Lots of people use Excel to tabulate and interpret data into graphs and stuff. The replacement for things like that won't be Google Sheets, it will instead be a real-time SaaS dashboard that lives on a web service.</p>

  • Paul Thurrott

    Premium Member
    22 April, 2018 - 8:35 am

    <p>My gut feeling is that Pages/Keynotes/Numbers is fine for most people. Just like Google Docs/Sheets/whatever is for most people. </p><p>Outlook and the rest of Office are all feature packed for sure, and meet the needs of even the most extreme users. But they are too much—too many features, too much UI, too much money—for most. This notion that Office is Microsoft's crown jewel is, I think, a mistake. Office productivity software is a commodity now. Virtually anyone can get what they want for free. </p><p><br></p>

    • skane2600

      22 April, 2018 - 5:27 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#265026"><em>In reply to paul-thurrott:</em></a></blockquote><p>Most people don't have any use for most of Office's more sophisticated capabilities, but many people find some of those capabilities to be essential. For some people anything beyond notepad is bloated, it just depends on an individual's needs.</p>

      • hrlngrv

        Premium Member
        25 April, 2018 - 11:51 pm

        <p><a href="#265151"><em>In reply to skane2600:</em></a></p><p>95% of workplace Excel users would be just fine with an Excel runtime to handle large, complex models they're given to use <strong><em>but not modify</em></strong> plus something akin to Numbers for their own use. Poll any random sample of white collar workers, and roughly 5% will be able to explain what the MATCH function's 3rd argument does. In my experience, most people believe they need Excel in order to use 2 dozen different formats to present a half dozen values.</p>

        • skane2600

          26 April, 2018 - 2:38 am

          <blockquote><a href="#266113"><em>In reply to hrlngrv:</em></a></blockquote><p>Your arguments would be more convincing if you actually cited a random sampling of white collar workers rather than just speculating on what the results would be if such a sampling took place.</p>

    • helix2301

      Premium Member
      22 April, 2018 - 7:13 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#265026"><em>In reply to paul-thurrott:</em></a></blockquote><p>I agree that places especially schools have done away with office for google docs but there still at times ends up being that why does this not look right or why does this not work because the document was made in Word or Excel and its missing that little thing. </p><p><br></p><p>The other thing is I see a lot users with powerpoint I don't know anyone one using slides.</p><p><br></p><p>When it comes to Outlook I agree I don't see many users with it anymore.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>

    • jimchamplin

      Premium Member
      23 April, 2018 - 9:05 am

      <blockquote><a href="#265026"><em>In reply to paul-thurrott:</em></a></blockquote><p>They are. In fact, they’re overkill for some. I prefer distraction-free writing apps and even Pages is too busy.</p><p><br></p><p>The problem I see with so many folks dismissing “simpler” productivity apps is their misunderstanding of the needs of others. “Unusable” to someone who works with endless reams of business data every day will not be satisfied with these offerings because they were <em>never intended for that. </em></p><p><br></p><p>They exist so that someone who’s new to the platform can get going without needing to buy more software, and thus step outside the first party ecosystem. People who need more will already know how to get the tools they need.</p>

    • RR

      26 April, 2018 - 12:59 am

      <blockquote><a href="#265026"><em>In reply to paul-thurrott:</em></a></blockquote><p>The main point is the network effect. Its not that everyone who has all these capabilities use them, but that they communicate with those who do, and in order to assure that this communication is always smooth, you need to have what those people have, for the most part. The other side of the equation is once Microsoft or anybody else produces this software for the most sophisticated user, it costs nothing to distribute, so it is an illusion that "I don't need all this stuff in front of me". </p><p>You are part of a(n) (extended) network in which the most extreme users do use it, and they communicate with you through this software now and then. The real "problem" creating the disonance is the pricing model which is also an illusion. As a very rough illustration, if they would give copies of Excel to enterprises, on a value add basis, maybe, they ought to charge their top 1% users $10MM each, and the remaining 99% $1, or something really odd like that, but in order to make it simpler, avoid sticker shock etc, they charge each user $10 or whatever (yes, I know they have add-in pricing too). </p><p>On the margins they find some ways to address this (and respond to competition) by providing education discounts, freeware versions with mobile, etc. </p><p>But no, productivity isn't a commodity. You have a better argument saying the OS is a commodity. Don't make the mistake of thinking companies like Google will be able to hang in there forever subsidizing users while probably losing steadily on products. Every company has their day of reckoning when they will drop stuff that aren't working and focus on things that make sense. Google hasn't really had a real bad patch yet, the internet growth, and later mobile is still carrying them forward, and what usually happens in long periods of prosperity like that is some things that are not really value add will have been carried along (I would bet freeware/low cost on productivity is one of those). </p><p><br></p>

  • Edward Grego

    23 April, 2018 - 9:30 am

    <p>Excel and Word certainly has more functionality than Numbers and Pages, but Numbers and Pages are so easy to use. Creating charts in Numbers is way easier than in Excel, and Pages gives me just what I need, not a bunch of crap that I never use. </p><p>I've already switched to Mac and IOS for daily use, this will also be the last year I pay for an Office subscription, I don't think I miss it much. </p>

    • hrlngrv

      Premium Member
      25 April, 2018 - 11:46 pm

      <p><a href="#265200"><em>In reply to Edward_Grego:</em></a></p><p>Re Word, for 90% of what I write, WordPad is adequate. For the last 10% I need something which works better with LaTeX than Word.</p><p>Excel is in a class by itself except for text processing. Any tabular text transformation is better handled by Google Sheets.</p><p>As for Office 365, subscribe for 1TB OneDrive at lower cost than Google Drive and enjoy the productivity software at no additional cost.</p>

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    04 May, 2018 - 8:14 am

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