Top 10 questions about Office 2016 for Mac answered

1. Where do I get Office 2016 for Mac?

Office 2016 for Mac is currently only available for Office 365 subscription customers. It will be available via one-time purchase in late September. In the meantime, here are the instructions on how you can get Office 2016 for Mac today:

• Office 365 subscribers—On your Mac, browse to your account page (office.com/myaccount), sign in and follow the installation instructions. If you have Office 365 through your organization, go to portal.office.com/OLS/MySoftware.aspx.
• Non-Office 365 subscribers—Visit office.com/mac to learn about ways to purchase an Office 365 subscription, either for you or your organization.
• Students—You may get Office 2016 for Mac for free or at a substantial discount. You can find out at office.com/student.

2. When will Office 2016 for Mac be available for people and businesses who don’t want a subscription?

For businesses, Volume Licensing customers will be able to download Office 2016 for Mac from their Volume Licensing Service Center in early August.

For consumers, Office 2016 for Mac will become available as a one-time purchase option in late September.

Additionally, MSDN subscribers will also be able to get the new Office for Mac in September.

3. When will the Office 2016 for Mac preview stop working?

We are extending the use of the Office 2016 for Mac preview until the end of October, in large part based on your feedback.

Originally, we planned to let the Office for Mac preview expire on August 9, 2015, 30 days after launch. However, several customers commented that this was before the availability of the one-time purchase version in September, leaving some preview participants without Office 2016 for weeks. As a result of this feedback, we are extending the life of the preview until the end of October. This will give preview participants about one month to move to Office 2016 as a one-time purchase, or over three months for those who want an Office 365 subscription.

4. Can I use Office 2016 for Mac and Office for Mac 2011 on the same Mac?

Yes, you can use them side-by-side on the same Mac. And by the way, here’s how you add the app icons for Office 2016 to the dock.

5. When will Skype for Business and OneDrive for Business for Mac be available?

Both will be available before the end of the year. Stay tuned to the Office Blog if you want to participate in the preview of Skype and OneDrive this fall.

6. I have a technical problem. Where do I go?

The best place to start is support.office.com/home/contact. Otherwise you can let us know if there is something you like or don’t like by clicking the “send a smile/frown” right from within Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote or Outlook.

7. How can I request a new feature?

You can submit your feature request on the new suggestion box service for each application:word.uservoice.com, excel.uservoice.com, powerpoint.uservoice.com, outlook.uservoice.com andonenote.uservoice.com.

8. I’m having problems with Outlook connectivity and reliability. What’s happening?

A number of customers reported hangs or crashes in Outlook 2016 for Mac. The Outlook team is aware of these issues and has identified two specific issues along with their root cause. In one, a small subset of customers saw frequent crashes due to some optimization work that the Outlook team was performing. The other involved hangs for customers with multiple IMAP or POP accounts. Fixes for both issues will be released this week, and customers will be automatically notified by Microsoft AutoUpdate.

We’ve also heard the requests for Gmail and iCloud calendar and contacts sync. We’ll be adding these and other feature requests through monthly updates. Stay tuned to the Office Blog for further updates as we finalize our plans here.

9. What are your plans for Visual Basic support?

Existing macros continue to work in Office 2016 for Mac. When accessing local files, you may encounter permission prompts due to Mac OS X sandboxing. We’ve added methods to the object model to allow you to update macros to minimize the number of prompts.

Office 2016 for Mac provides a simplified Visual Basic Editor (VBE) for viewing/debugging existing macros. We recommend that customers develop macros or VB add-ins in Office for Windows and use Office for Mac to debug if needed. We will continue to ensure compatibility of existing macros and make improvements to the IDE. In the future, we will include the new web-based add-in model in Office for Mac products, which work across devices and platforms, giving add-in developers a modern web development experience. These new add-ins are already available in Outlook for Mac today and will come to the rest of Office for Mac over time. They are available today for Office for Windows for Word and Excel on iPad.

10. When will Office 2016 for Mac be available in Arabic, Hebrew and other right-to-left languages? What about other languages?

We’ve heard your feedback and questions about right-to-left (RTL) language support. We are committed to doing RTL languages for Office for Mac. We are currently working through timing and will communicate our plans when we have a clearer sense of the timeline.

Note, we already announced support for RTL documents in Word, Excel and PowerPoint for iPad and iPhone coming this summer, and we are on track to deliver it. And we will release additional updates for RTL languages shortly after the iOS 9 release.

More broadly, Office for Mac is currently available in the following 16 languages: Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. And Office 2016 for Mac is available in all countries where Office 365 is available except for Turkey. Office for Mac will be available in Turkey in September when the Turkish language version is ready.

Post was written by Microsoft's Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office Client Applications and Services team.

​Office 2016 for Mac video

Word for Mac—Word’s powerful writing and reviewing tools make it easy to create great-looking documents. The new Design tab lets you easily apply designer-quality layouts, colors and fonts throughout your document. You can work on the same document simultaneously with your teammates and use threaded comments to have a conversation right next to the corresponding text.


Excel for Mac—The new Excel for Mac helps you visualize your information by recommending charts best suited for your data with chart previews. Familiar keyboard shortcuts, autocomplete and an improved formula builder save you time when creating spreadsheets or entering data. For deeper analysis, new PivotTable Slicers help you filter large volumes of data and discover patterns.


PowerPoint for Mac—PowerPoint’s improved Presenter View gives you full control when you present by showing you the current slide, next slide, speaker notes and a timer on your Mac screen, while the audience only sees your presentation on the big screen. The new animation pane helps you design and fine-tune animations, and the latest set of slide transitions add polish to your presentations.


Outlook for Mac—Managing your email, calendar, contacts and tasks has never been easier. The new Outlook for Mac has push mail support so your inbox is always up-to-date. The improved conversation view automatically organizes your inbox around threaded conversations, so you won’t have to hunt for related messages. And the new message preview shows you the first sentence of an email just below the subject line so you can quickly decide if you want to read it now or come back later.


OneNote for Mac—OneNote is the newest addition to Office for Mac. You can capture your ideas in digital notebooks and access them on any device. Find things quickly with the OneNote search engine that tracks your tags, indexes your typed notes and recognizes text in images and handwritten notes. Bold, italicize, underline or highlight notes, insert files, pictures and tables and organize your notes however you want. You can also share notebooks with friends, family or colleagues so everyone can work together on travel plans, household tasks or work projects.

Here are a few different ways to get Office 2016 for Mac today:

• Already an Office 365 customer? On your Mac, just browse to your account page (office.com/myaccount), sign in and follow the installation instructions. If you have Office 365 through your organization, go to portal.office.com/OLS/MySoftware.aspx.
• Are you a student? You may get Office 2016 for Mac for free or at a substantial discount. It takes only 30 seconds to find out at office.com/student.
• Otherwise, go to office.com/mac or buy an Office 365 subscription from us - get in touch!

Office 2016 for Mac is now available

Office 365 subscribers get early access to Office 2016 for Mac Office 2016 for Mac is now available Download Now What's New Unmistakably Office Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac features a redesigned Ribbon menu similar to the Windows and iPad® versions. You can navigate your Word, Excel and PowerPoint files with familiar Mac OS Multi-Touch gestures. And it's all sharper and clearer than ever on your Retina display. Your best work anywhere, any time Access your documents whenever you need them, with OneDrive for Business, SharePoint and Dropbox for Business integration. Use state‑of‑the‑art tools to create great‑looking documents, analyse data and present with confidence. Made for teamwork No more sending attachments back and forth via email. Easily share your files with others, then edit them simultaneously in Word, PowerPoint or OneNote. Plus, Office preserves your content and formatting across all devices for seamless collaboration. Download Now

Microsoft have released new Windows 10 Adverts

Two new adverts have been posted on Microsoft YouTube channel for your enjoyment.

9 days 'til launch....

Document collaboration in Yammer just got better with Office Online!

Whether it’s drafting a proposal, updating the quarterly budget, or putting the finishing touches on a presentation, creating great content requires teams to stay on the same page.

Document collaboration in Yammer just got better with Office Online!

How to install Office from your Office 365 portal - you get 5 copies each

If you have an Office 365 account which includes Microsoft Office

• Business
• Business Premium, 
• E2
• E3
• E4
• E5

Then you will be entitled to install Office on up to 5 devices including PC's and MAC's.

It is Microsoft's intention that customers allow thier staff to install this software at work and at home to help drive adoption of the latest technology, however if the following instructions do not work for you, you may want to check with your IT team.

HOW?

So log into your Office 365 Account:

https://portal.office.com

1. Look for the cog in the top right - Click

2. Find 'Office 365 Settings' in the list - Click

3. Find 'Software: Install and manage Software' - Click

4. Find the relevant version and click 'install' 

DONE!

Using Office 365 and Moodle or Open edX? Things just got interesting....

Office 365 has been integrated with popular educational open source software such as Moodle and Open edX. Office’s open REST APIs make it possible for teachers and students to take advantage of Office’s rich authoring capabilities to create content, submit assignments, provide feedback, and manage class schedules, all within a single sign-on (SSO) experience enabled by Azure Active Directory.



Office 365 now offers seamless integration with educational open source software:

Allow Email through Office 365 Quarantine

How to stop Office 365 Blocking email from a specific sender

1. Visit the Office 365 end user quarantine: https://admin.protection.outlook.com/quarantine
2. Find the specific message(s) you wish to release.
3. Click the small envelope icon.
4. Click "release message(s) and report as not junk..."

The message will now be released to your inbox.  When it arrives:

5. Right click the email and find the junk options
6. Select "never Block Sender" and or "never block senders domain"

All done.

End User Office 365 Quarantine URL

Looking for the Office 365 quarantine URL?

https://admin.protection.outlook.com/quarantine

If you have problems accessing the website try the following:

> Log into your Office 365 account before clicking the link
> Try using a different browser, IE seems stable, but I have had issues with Google Chrome

Windows 10 on its way!

According to Paul Thurrott, of Thurrott.com, Windows 10 is due to reach RTM this week.  Which is good news for the suggested late July release date.

https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/4481/windows-10-rtm-is-reportedly-imminent

What does RTM mean?
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/47323f15-c0e1-4b26-bb24-9fb84ffd7d75/what-do-the-letters-rtm-means-as-they-are-used-like-windows-me-rtm-cd-or-windows-7-rtm?forum=w7itproinstall

Announcing preview of new Skype for Business services in Office 365

Announcing preview of new Skype for Business services in Office 365: When Microsoft launched Skype for Business earlier this year, we said we’d deliver new Skype for Business voice and meetings capabilities in Office 365 that will enhance the existing Skype for Business experience, and allow us to offer a complete, enterprise-grade communications solution at global scale as part of Office 365. We’re pleased to announce technical previews starting today: Skype Meeting Broadcast, PSTN Conferencing and Cloud PBX with PSTN Calling.

Office 365 with RDS (Remote Desktop Services)

If you are running an RDS environment for remote application delivery or remote desktop sessions, and you are looking to deploy Office 365 with the full Office suite, you may be confused regarding the correct licensing path.

To cut to the chase, The Office 365 Business suites, are not for you.

With Office 365 licensing, to use Office in RDS it must support Shared Activation. 

As you can see below, only the E3 and E4 plans support Shared Activation: 

Taken from: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office-applications-service-description.aspx

In Summary 

To use Office 365 in an RDS environment, you need to purchase E3 or E4 licenses for these specific users.

Remember, only the RDS users need to have Enterprise licenses.  The new Office 365 plans allow you to mix and match between license plans.  So you can still buy Business plan licenses for non-RDS users.

Office 2016 Preview—update

Office 2016 Preview—update: When Microsoft launched the Office 2016 Preview in early May, they said that they would share regular updates on new features as they became available. Here’s a quick update on what has been delivered in the last month.