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Which version of Office do you use? Mac or Windows?
- Thread starter hajime
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I use it on a Mac, but after a recent PowerPoint fiasco I might have to consider doing a Boot Camp partition or something if I get more paid PPT work.
The issue I ran into was that I designed an entire deck using a specific font that the client uses for their corporate identity. Looked awesome on my end, but every time they opened it up, they were getting the trash default "Cambria" font. I had their IT people make sure the real font was installed on their machine, and obviously it was installed on my machine. I spent a lot of time trying to track this down and it sucked. PowerPoint has gotten a lot better than it used to be, but this was just a rotten experience.
But, aside from the occasional PPT deck I'm fortunate enough to never have to touch Office if I can help it. If someone sends a Word doc I usually just open it in Pages and move on with my life.
The issue I ran into was that I designed an entire deck using a specific font that the client uses for their corporate identity. Looked awesome on my end, but every time they opened it up, they were getting the trash default "Cambria" font. I had their IT people make sure the real font was installed on their machine, and obviously it was installed on my machine. I spent a lot of time trying to track this down and it sucked. PowerPoint has gotten a lot better than it used to be, but this was just a rotten experience.
But, aside from the occasional PPT deck I'm fortunate enough to never have to touch Office if I can help it. If someone sends a Word doc I usually just open it in Pages and move on with my life.
Regretfully, I'm using Office 365/2016 for Mac on Mojave.
Excel 2016 is very buggy. Outlook is OK.
No problems noted with Word, but I don't use its power features.
I should have stuck with Office 2011 for Mac which was very stable.
One of my dumb departures from "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".
If you can get 2011, it all works great.
I don't use Catalina, so can't comment on Office performance thereon.
Excel 2016 is very buggy. Outlook is OK.
No problems noted with Word, but I don't use its power features.
I should have stuck with Office 2011 for Mac which was very stable.
One of my dumb departures from "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".
If you can get 2011, it all works great.
I don't use Catalina, so can't comment on Office performance thereon.
Font compatibility is a real pain. The latest version of PowerPoint Mac lets you embed fonts; I'm not sure if the Mac version will use fonts embedded in a Windows created PP presentation. I'm also not sure if all font types are supported for embedding them . You'd think they'd make the file types 100% compatible at least; especially since a pptx file is really just a zip file. As long as the font type was supported by both systems you ought to be able to keep the look the same; but no.
Yes and no. The Home bundle with six users for $99/year is definitely much better than the Personal bundle for a single user for $79/year. Tough luck if you only need a single license
Personally, I hate software subscriptions with a passion and avoid them wherever possible and prefer one-time purchases that I can use however long I decide to. Until a year ago my wife still used my Office 2007 license on her Windows 10 laptop, and I am still running Adobe Acrobat Professional 9.5 that I purchased as part of Adobe CS4 back in 2008 or 2009. It still does a great job, and its OCR engine beats the living crap out of Acrobat DC. I am, most likely, a dinosaur in this regard though. I would really be interested in the ratio between Office 365 and Office 2016/2019 licenses sold.Anyway, there are rumors (and have been for quite a while) that Office 2019 is going to be the final lifetime license release of Microsoft Office. Most businesses are using Office 365 Business anyways since it is much more aggressively priced priced than an Office 2019 license including software assurance, and private users are more easily enticed by "only $6.99 per month" than "only $149 for a lifetime license". Bad news for dinosaurs like me.
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Yes and no. The Home bundle with six users for $99/year is definitely much better than the Personal bundle for a single user for $79/year. Tough luck if you only need a single license
Anyway, there are rumors (and have been for quite a while) that Office 2019 is going to be the final lifetime license release of Microsoft Office. Most businesses are using Office 365 Business anyways since it is much more aggressively priced priced than an Office 2019 license including software assurance, and private users are more easily enticed by "only $6.99 per month" than "only $149 for a lifetime license". Bad news for dinosaurs like me.
Fortunately, at least for now, my non-profit can purchase Office licenses through Tech Soup... we can get MS Office (Mac) for $39 for the perpetual license... if they move to Office 365 subscription only, it will cost us "$0 to $14/month". Like you, I prefer the perpetual license over the monthly subscription, so I have not done the work to find out what the monthly cost would be for us to go monthly. Frankly, I am not interested at this point.
For professional reasons I have been using Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac for years. It worked and it was relatively stable for an MS program, but I never really liked it. MS Office always feels like a foreign body on a Mac. Since I can't use MS Office 2011 anymore since the upgrade to macOS Catalina, I switched to SoftMaker Office Professional 2018 for Mac. And I really like it so far. I can only recommend it.
Yes and no. The Home bundle with six users for $99/year is definitely much better than the Personal bundle for a single user for $79/year. Tough luck if you only need a single license
Anyway, there are rumors (and have been for quite a while) that Office 2019 is going to be the final lifetime license release of Microsoft Office. Most businesses are using Office 365 Business anyways since it is much more aggressively priced priced than an Office 2019 license including software assurance, and private users are more easily enticed by "only $6.99 per month" than "only $149 for a lifetime license". Bad news for dinosaurs like me.
For a single home user or two who has basic needs, the lifetime license was undoubtedly cheaper. However as soon as you add the desire to use the product across multiple platforms, and even more so, have multiple users in a business environment, the subscription model which ensures everyone is always on the same version with the same capabilities is a huge improvement.
Agreed, for a business it makes sense to go the Office 365 route, and even more so for an enterprise. An office 365 subscription is much cheaper than an Office license plus Exchange server plus yearly software assurance. Heck, an Office 365 subscription is even cheaper than just the software assurance for Exchange.
However, I consider software subscriptions a dangerous fad for home users as it will present many of them wit huge monthly bills now that everybody is jumping on board and thinks their software is worth a monthly subscription. $9 for office + $5 for 1Password + $10 for Lightroom + $2.50 for Postbox + $2.99 for iCloud + ...
You get the point
However, I consider software subscriptions a dangerous fad for home users as it will present many of them wit huge monthly bills now that everybody is jumping on board and thinks their software is worth a monthly subscription. $9 for office + $5 for 1Password + $10 for Lightroom + $2.50 for Postbox + $2.99 for iCloud + ...
You get the point
I use Mac version 2011 provided to me from work. Excel is the only part of office I use and only at work. Since retiring my personal use of office is nil. Numbers is very different than Excel. I have been using Excel since version 1 on a mac.
I use Office 2001, 2004, and 2008. Most of my needs are fufilled by AppleWorks though. I use Google Drive for document sharing.
was using Office 2011 on Sierra on my 2016 NTB
Have a 2020 Air now with Catalina... evaluating options since its not 32-bit compatible.
Maybe LibreOffice is the way to go? Mostly after Word-like functionality and compatibility with people who use boiler plate Office for Windows in business settings / 2011 Office handled this gracefully
is 2016 Office for Mac that bad? I am very open to alternatives too
Have a 2020 Air now with Catalina... evaluating options since its not 32-bit compatible.
Maybe LibreOffice is the way to go? Mostly after Word-like functionality and compatibility with people who use boiler plate Office for Windows in business settings / 2011 Office handled this gracefully
is 2016 Office for Mac that bad? I am very open to alternatives too
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I haven't really used LibreOffice since getting my Power Mac G4 (like I said in my post, a lot of my needs are fufilled by AppleWorks and Google Drive), but I do recall that LibreOffice is pretty good about compatibility as long as you don't have too many Office-specific features in documents (the things that come to mind are primarily custom graphics things, which it sounds like you likely won't be dealing with).
I'd say it's worth a shot, especially because it's free so you won't be out anything if you need something more.
I haven't really used LibreOffice since getting my Power Mac G4 (like I said in my post, a lot of my needs are fufilled by AppleWorks and Google Drive), but I do recall that LibreOffice is pretty good about compatibility as long as you don't have too many Office-specific features in documents (the things that come to mind are primarily custom graphics things, which it sounds like you likely won't be dealing with).
I'd say it's worth a shot, especially because it's free so you won't be out anything if you need something more.
very true, the price is right
is Pages really good in this regard with compatibility?
I'll be honest, I haven't used Pages all that much. You could try it though. It should have come with your Mac I believe, so it wouldn't cost you anything to take it for a spin.
I'll be honest, as a very heavy Office user, the Mac versions are the #1 reason I have been tepid with my Mac use over the years. I just got my 2020 MBA yesterday and first thing I did was install the latest Office build from 0365 and while it's better than previous versions, it is still feature lacking from the Windows version, most noticeably in Outlook.
I have purchased and returned MBP's and MBA's a few times over the years, each time finding that Office for Mac just can't compare to the Windows version. I'm going to spend the next week diving deep into my normal work routine using exclusively the MBA with the latest version of Office and I'm really hopeful that it'll work for me!
I have purchased and returned MBP's and MBA's a few times over the years, each time finding that Office for Mac just can't compare to the Windows version. I'm going to spend the next week diving deep into my normal work routine using exclusively the MBA with the latest version of Office and I'm really hopeful that it'll work for me!