Office 2021 has been a Train Wreck for me!

[Fubar1977]

Has anyone else had serious issues with Office 2021 for Mac?
After spending £119.99 all I get are constant Beachballs, crashes and constant requests to Activate it. An hour on Chat with Microsoft got me nowhere other than the Rep telling me I needed the latest version of MacOS which he said was 15.0!

Odd as I'm running a fresh out of the box 14" M1 Pro with 12.0.1 Monterey!

I've just had to reinstall Office 2016 as, unlike 2021 it does actually run just fine.

 

[FloridaScrubJay]

Yea, that’s MicroSoft. I wii; stay on the older version. It’s stable and although their are no upgrades, it just works.

 

[MacGizmo]

It has been my experience that pretty much everything from Microsoft (both on the Mac and Windows) is either a train wreck, or one waiting to happen. If you really want to see a digital disaster, try using MS Teams in a corporate environment. It's absolutely shocking how bad it is.

 

[MikeDr206]

Hmm. I’m running Office 365 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams) on Mac Mini 2018 and rMB 2917 latest version of Big Sur, without issues, for more than a year now. Just as smooth as prior versions.

 

[johnkree]

Microsoft products on Windows are meh. Microsoft products on MacOS or iOS are just battery draining memory leaks. It gets worse every year. Let me tell you, I was using Office 2016 and although I had my issues it was ok. But now everything is a ********.
Microsoft Teams: it's a Electron app, meaning that it is a wrapped website without website buttons. It uses more memory than all other apps together... I need it for work so I'm using it just on my iPhone. Every time we have a conference I habe to plug my power cord in and the phone gets really hot.

Microsoft Outlook: I'm from Austria so my native language is German. Microsoft is the only Email provider that won't use standard folder names on its servers. This isn't a problem as long as you use the English language. If you use any other language other Email clients won't recognize the existing folders creating new ones. For trash, sent, archive.
This gets even worse: Even if I use the Mac Outlook client it does this. But just on Mac. Not on iOS. Meaning I have every folder except the Inbox duplicated and each app using its own folders. AND: You can't point the mail client to the right folder because Microsoft decided that this function is useless.
Adding to this mess they force folders for services on you that you don't even use. You got a RSS reader folder, a conversation history folder and a sync error folder. And although they know that almost no one is using RSS email services in 2021 guess what: you can't delete or hide those folders.

Microsoft Word: Word is a clunky hell on Windows. If you have your typical 2 page housewife letter there is no problem. But don't try to edit a 100+ page document. It will spinball to death.

I won't even start with onedrive.

 

[vooke]

I followed this

 

[Boyd01]

Have been running Office 365 on my 2018 Mini under Catalina with no problems here. My use of the Office apps is pretty light these days however. As long as everything works, I'm very reluctant update MacOS until I absolutely have to.

Of course, the M1 and the new Macs are something else completely...

 

[Tagbert]

At this point, is there any reason to continue with whatever the non-365 version is? I've been using office 365 for several years now and it has been stable. always getting the latest features (it would be nice if they addressed some of the things still missing from the Mac version). My husband uses the same license.

 

[grandM]

At this point, is there any reason to continue with whatever the non-365 version is? I've been using office 365 for several years now and it has been stable. always getting the latest features (it would be nice if they addressed some of the things still missing from the Mac version). My husband uses the same license.

Cash?

 

[Tagbert]

Cash?

Subscription for Office 365. With multiple licenses, multiple devices, compared to the cost of annual software updates, the subscription is not so bad. Always have the current version. I’ve thought about setting my parents up on my same license.

 

[Fubar1977]

I just object to the subscription model for software on principal. I'd rather just buy it outright in one go than be paying constant subs to half a dozen different companies. What I'd like most though is if the software I paid for actually worked. I'm back on Office 2016 for now as I`ve just given up trying to get this, or MS Support to actually work. Next time I`ll just go with LibreOffice.

 

[grandM]

I just object to the subscription model for software on principal. I'd rather just buy it outright in one go than be paying constant subs to half a dozen different companies. What I'd like most though is if the software I paid for actually worked. I'm back on Office 2016 for now as I`ve just given up trying to get this, or MS Support to actually work. Next time I`ll just go with LibreOffice.

For personal use LibreOffice is probably as good.

 

[nortonandreev]

I've been using Office on the Mac since 2015, including beta builds - haven't had any issues.

 

[jlc1978]

For personal use LibreOffice is probably as good.

LibreOfficeis fine if you don’t have to collaborate with others with anything but basic formatted files. I’ve recommended it to friends if they just need a basic office suite.

 

[RonPNW]

There was a $50 deal on Office 2021. So I did it in anticipation of transitioning to a new M1 MacBook Pro.
What a mistake!
I had been using Office 2011, very old but it worked, easy to use once you got over the learning curve, good enough for most home and professional uses. It was still inferior to the then current windows version and I eventually started running a Windows version (in Parallels) about 5 years ago. Now 5 years after my Windows install and 10 years after Office 2011, it was clearly time to upgrade, if for no other reason but compatibility with the new OS and M1 macs.

Don't do it if you can avoid it!

I haven't found any improvements and generally the look and feel is worse, much worse. Every application (Excel, Powerpoint, Word, Outlook) is more wasteful of screen space. All but Outlook can be configured (with a fair amount of effort) to a workable screen efficient configuration at much reduced usefulness compared to Office 2011. All the icons in the quick access toolbar (you need to move your most often used functions here to get rid of the gross non configurable ribbon) no longer have the useful info from 2011. No current font colors, fill colors, function symbols are difficult to identify, all the symbols in the quick toolbar are monochrome. It would not be so bad if you could configure the ribbon, but you can't.
Outlook is the worst. There is no way to configure the ribbon and there is no quick access toolbar. Both things that could be done in 2011.
Had I known, I would have put in the effort to convert away from Outlook and the other Office applications for something that at least matches the performance of Office 2011. In 2022 that does not seem like a high bar. There may be some other improvements that I am not aware of but the only obvious reason to use 2021 is if you must use an office product and you must be on the latest OS. I am ultra disappointed.

Is it that hard to port the Windows version of Office over to the Mac? All of the items above are resolved in the Windows version.
End of Rant
Ron