But as free and cheap competitors came to the market, Word was starting to lag behind in terms of relevance. Fortunately, the is a return to form, bringing with it some smart updates and features that make it worth checking out by lapsed customers. But just because Word has seen a significant update doesn't mean that veteran users will have to learn a new interface. In practical everyday terms, this is the same old Word.
The menus and navigation interface are functionally the same, and you can expect to be able to find functions exactly where you remember them to be and rely on the old trusted keyboard shortcuts that have been a part of the product for years. But learning how to more efficiently use the platform is easier than ever before. A new search tool gives users the ability to quickly look up all the available commands.
There's also improved protections built in to avoid data loss. The ribbon was a controversial addition to the Office interface when it was first introduced, but it's since become a hallmark of the Word experience, and it works as well as ever.
By condensing the most common tools that you're likely to use in a small but accessible menu bar, the ribbon gives more real estate to the document you're writing while allowing you to reach a variety of tools without having to dig deeply into menus. But the big changes are reserved for collaboration.
Word has always worked best as part of the largest Microsoft Office ecosystem, but Word brings this to a whole new level. Integration with the various components of the Office suite are tighter than everything before, and a major shift towards cloud based sharing has changed the way that professionals can use Word in some pretty major ways. Through the use of OneDrive, users can quickly share their Word documents with anyone they've given the proper privileges.
But that's not the only way you can share files. Through integration with Outlook, you can attach a document via email and allow your recipients to go in and edit it at their discretion.
An additional commenting feature allows you to mark up documents without changing their basic content. Write review. What customer like User Experience. Microsoft Office qualities Value. Write your thoughts in our old-fashioned comment. MacUpdate Comment Policy.
We strongly recommend leaving comments, however comments with abusive words, bullying, personal attacks of any type will be moderated. Email me when someone replies to this comment Post comment. Macsmurf Jun 16 I think you will find that this update, , is actually for Office , not ; as detailed elsewhere on this page, "Support for Office for Mac ended on October 13, ".
Why is this titled "popular productivity suite? The interface is basically flawed. The computer screen is wider than it is tall. So why is so much space at the top of the document taken by this ridiculous ribbon? Also it's unstable and unnecessarily complicated. Even some very simple operations need a visit to "help. Word was good right up until version 5.
Thereafter it lost it. When I install, the documents cannot be saved as it asks for activation. Please help how to solve this issue. If you've used the Windows version of Office or any Office edition, really , you'll find the Mac version both usable and barely tolerable.
It's lacking many features, the layout and functions are different, and your Mac will not be able to open Outlook MSG files at all. David-Kallman Jun 1 Excel came for free as part while downloading a new operating system. OK, if they're doing this, I'll go along. I figured out there had to be a "but. Then I downloaded the "free" excel and ran it, I discovered the but. The free excel could not save files. Fortunately, I hadn't spent any time creating a file. Show more. App requirements:.
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