This, too, has been around on the Windows side since Office 2013. When you make comments in Word or PowerPoint, they now appear as threaded discussions, instead of there being a chat bubble for each person's contribution. That said, if you have lots of windows open at once, you might like the option of being able to find each one at a glance just based on the color scheme.Ī couple other new features permeate the new apps. If you prefer, you can also opt for a so-called Classic theme, whose gray menu bar is more in line with the minimal design of OS X Yosemite and El Capitan. As on Office for Mac 2011, you can use the apps at full-screen, except Microsoft switched to a different set of APIs, which - long story short - should make these transitions feel smoother than they used to.Īs on Office for iPad, you can choose a colorful theme that has - you guessed it - a brightly colored menu bar for each app (e.g., blue for Word, green for Excel, red for PowerPoint). Throughout, Microsoft also redesigned the various Office apps so that they're optimized for Retina displays. Windows users have been able to do this since Office 2013 came out. For the first time on a Mac too, Office is integrated with Microsoft's own cloud services (who'da thunk?), which means you can also open files stored on either OneDrive or a SharePoint site.

That means a generally flatter aesthetic, with a launch page for each app that lets you create a new document, open a local file or pick from a list of stuff you've worked on recently. Microsoft likes to say that its new Mac software is 'unmistakably Office.' This is true: Office for Mac keeps the trademark Ribbon stretching across the top of the screen, except this time, it's been reimagined to match the layout of Office for iPad. What's that, you say? You'd rather use Google Docs or OneDrive? You prefer Pages?! You can have a peek anyway at the screenshot gallery below, and then read on for a summary of what's new. The final version is out today, and you can download it now for free - with an Office 365 subscription, or if you're a student.

Finally, earlier this year, Microsoft released a preview of Office for Mac 2016, which brings feature parity with the Windows version ( Office 2013) and also better matches OS X's current aesthetic. Until recently, though, Mac for Office looked the same as it did when it first came out on OS X Snow Leopard.

A lot has changed since then: OS X looks a little different Windows looks a lot different and believe it or not, people actually want to use Office on that weird iPad thing. Microsoft had recently released the Kin our favorite e-reader had a QWERTY keyboard and people were still snickering at some awkwardly named gadget called the iPad. The last time a new version of Office for Mac came out, the year was 2010.

Office 2016 vs office 2011 for mac