Microsoft Office remainsthe gold standard of productivity suites, but there are several different versions/editions of Office available for users of Apple hardware. Together with Parallels Desktop and Parallels Access, the Apple user can access just about any of these versions/editions on each of their hardware platforms.

• Microsoft Office For Mac
• Microsoft Office Mac Vs Windows
• Microsoft Office For Mac Versus Windows Operating System
• Microsoft Office For Mac Versus Windows Cartoon

While Microsoft produces all of these suites and the suites have a very high degree of similar functionality and visual fidelity, they are not identical, and no single suite has all the features of the entire group.

See and discover other items: Best microsoft office for pc, Best office software for pc, microsoft office mac 2019, Best windows software for pc, On Back, Explore set passwords for purchases There's a problem loading this menu right now. Aug 28, 2015  Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac vs Office 2016 for Mac. Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac review. See the image above for a comparative shot of. Jun 23, 2019 Microsoft Office 365 is available for Windows and Mac, with mobile apps for iOS and Android (the latter of which will also work with ChromeOS). LibreOffice is available for Windows, Mac. Compare Windows 10 Home vs. Pro with Microsoft’s comprehensive checklist and feel confident in your choice! Get reassurance on which Windows 10 version to buy. Compare Windows 10 Home vs. Pro with Microsoft’s comprehensive checklist and feel confident in your choice! Employees can use a single login across Windows 10, Office 365. Jun 23, 2019  Microsoft Office 365 is available for Windows and Mac, with mobile apps for iOS and Android (the latter of which will also work with ChromeOS). LibreOffice is.

This blog post will enumerate most of the differences between the following suites and their apps:

• Office 2016 for Windows (“WinOffice 2016”)
• Office 2016 for Mac (“MacOffice 2016”)
• Office 2013 for Windows (“WinOffice 2013”)
• Office 2011 for Mac (“MacOffice 2011”)
• Office for iPad (“iPad Office”)

The vast bulk of the content in this post is in the following five tables, which list the differences I found. Note that because the tables lists differences, no row of the table will be all checkmarks (since this would mean that all the suites had this feature, and thus this wasn’t a difference) nor will any row be all “X”s (since this would mean that no suite had this feature, and thus it isn’t a difference either). I am listing the differences because listing the similarities would take much too much room—the suites are that identical.

Hopefully, this will assist you in choosing the best version/edition for your use. In addition, I will describe my personal Office setup.

Here are the five tables (click on each thumbnail for an enlarged view):

Table 1: Suite-wide differences

Table 2: Word differences

Table 2

Table 3: Excel differences

Table 4: PowerPoint differences

Microsoft Office For Mac

Table 4

Table 5: Outlook differences

What differences surprised me the most? These two:

Right-to-left language support in iPad Office:

WinOffice has had support for right-to-left languages like Arabic and Hebrew for many years. While Mac users have been asking for such support, no version of MacOffice, even the latest MacOffice 2016, has had such support. Therefore, I was quite pleasantly surprised when iPad Office added support for Arabic, Hebrew, and Thai.(See Figure 1.)

Figure 1: Arabic text in iPad Word on iPad Pro

No multiple selection support in iPad PowerPoint:

All Office programs provide some way to select content in a document (text, cells, or shapes, for example). This is needed so that the user can apply some operation on just that content (change the color, for example). The Windows or Mac Office applications also provide for “advanced” types of selections. In Word, this is non-contiguous text selections; in Excel this is non-contiguous cell selections; and in PowerPoint this is the simultaneous selection of multiple objects. In Word and Excel, these really are advanced types of selections that are rarely needed by even sophisticated users of Word or Excel. (See Figures 2 and 3.)

Figure 2: Non-contiguous cell selection in MacExcel 2011.

Microsoft Office Mac Vs Windows

Figure 3: Non-contiguous text selection in MacWord 2011.

But in PowerPoint, the ability to select multiple objects is a pretty basic capability. (See Figure 4.)

Figure 4: Multiple selections in MacPowerPoint 2011.

I wasn’t surprised to learn that non-contiguous selections were not supported in iPad Word or iPad Excel, but I was astonished and very disappointed to learn that multiple selections were not supported in iPad PowerPoint.

My Use of Office

So, which do I use? The short answer is that I use all of them.

I worked on the MacOffice team at Microsoft for several years, and at that time I also worked closely with colleagues on the WinOffice teams. Because of this background, I am often able to pick just the right Office app that will make a given task the easiest to do. One task might be particularly well suited to MacWord 2011 because Publishing Layout View—a feature only in that one Word version—will make this task easy. Another task might be suited to WinPPT because of the Animation Painter, which is not in any MacPPT version. Yet another task might be best suited to WinPPT 2013 because it needs an Office extension not available in other Office suites.

Having all the versions of Office at your fingertips used to be rather hard to setup, not to mention very expensive. Luckily, that is no longer the case.

With a single Office 365 Home subscription, you get five installs of the Office suite and you can pick which versions make up this set of five. Since I have Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition on my Mac, I can run any version of Windows without rebooting. Because I have different versions of Windows running on my Mac, I can also run different versions of WinOffice on my Mac and have everything I need on one computer. (You can download a free trial of Parallels Desktop for Mac here.) Here’s my setup:

• MacOffice 2011 is my main productivity suite and is installed on my El Capitan MacBook Pro. MacOutlook 2016 came out long before the entire MacOffice 2016 suite, and because of the vastly improved performance of MacOutlook 2016, I use it as my main email client, instead of MacOutlook 2011.
• WinOffice 2013 is installed in a Windows 7 virtual machine (VM) (under Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition) on my MacBook Pro.
• iPad Office is installed on my iPad. As you saw in the tables above, iPad Office is lacking many of the features of WinOffice and MacOffice, so I also haveParallels Accesson my iPad which lets me access and run the full featured versions of any Office suite (or any other application) on my computers and use them with natural iPad gestures. (You can download a free trial of Parallels Access for iOS and Android to access your Mac and/or PC atwww.parallels.com/access).
• MacOffice 2016 is installed in an El Capitan VM (under Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition) on my MacBook Pro.
• WinOffice 2016 is installed in a Windows 10 VM (under Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition) on my MacBook Pro.

So, why don’t I use MacOffice 2016 as my main productivity suite? Four reasons:

• Only MacWord 2011 has Publishing Layout View, a feature I depend on heavily and consider essential.
• To me, MacOffice 2016 has a kind of cartoon-like look to the user interface that just doesn’t appeal to me.
• There was no compelling feature pulling me to MacOffice 2016, and
• Inertia was keeping me in MacOffice 2011.

Those are my five installs, and with this setup, I have easy and immediate access to the best Office app for any particular task. I tend to store all my documents on Dropbox so that I have easy access to them from any of my Office suites or Apple platforms.

Which Office suite(s) do you use, and what’s your setup?

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Microsoft Office For Mac Versus Windows Operating System

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LibreOffice's 5.1 update added support for Windows 10. An unofficial version of LibreOffice was recently uploaded to the Microsoft Store, but now doesn't show up if searched directly in the store. It's still available via LibreOffice's site, though.

While the version of LibreOffice that was available through the Microsoft Store isn't official, it's a quality software suite that begs the question, Is it worth switching from Microsoft Office?

I've used Microsoft Office since Windows 95. But I decided to take a look at LibreOffice after it arrived in the Microsoft Store. It's impressed me, though it's viability as an office suite depends largely on your setup.

Here are some reasons why you should choose LibreOffice over Microsoft Office, and some reasons why you shouldn't.

LibreOffice is available for free on Windows 10, Mac, and Linux through Libre Office's website.

Reason to switch: Value

The first thing that catches the eye about LibreOffice is the price tag, or more specifically the lack of one. LibreOffice originally forked off of OpenOffice and has been regularly maintained and developed over the years. It's one of the best free office suites of applications around and has programs for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and more. It is a versatile and powerful set of programs, though it's worth noting that it emulates the older core set of apps from Microsoft Office and doesn't have equivalents to newer programs like OneNote.

While there are many word processors and cheap or free programs that try to deliver a full office setup, Libre Office is one of the most comprehensive. Its wide range of apps tackles the vast majority of office-related workflows. And it does all of this for free.

It supports open formats that allow you to use documents from other programs so you don't have to isolate yourself or your workflow into a Libre Office world.

The value of LibreOffice is truly impressive. It's practically an advertisement for the open source community because of how great of an app you can legally get for free.

Reason to switch: Dedicated developers

While LibreOffice is free, it's not some half-hearted project. It's regularly maintained and updated to support the latest versions of Windows 10. The suite can also be expanded with extensions to add more power and versatility.

While that might not seem like a big deal, some apps that are built to replicate or directly compete with big names fall away and become abandonware. LibreOffice released updates in the last few months to both its 'Still' and 'Fresh' branches. Because of this, you don't need to worry about LibreOffice falling away. All indicators show that it is alive and well and won't go anywhere anytime soon. Even if it did, you wouldn't have to worry because your documents would be in open formats.

Reasons NOT to switch: Cloud limitations

One of the biggest areas these two suites diverge is in how they approach online and cross-platform workflows. Microsoft invests heavily in the cloud to let you open and save documents anywhere you'd like. It also focuses on having apps on a variety of hardware, ranging from computers to tablets and phones. LibreOffice is available on Windows, macOS, and Linux, but iOS and Android are limited to viewing files only unless you turn on experimental features.

If you need to save something on one device and jump to another and continue editing, you'll be better served by Microsoft Office. You can do online editing with things such as Collabora and ownCloud, but that's more complicated to set up than just signing into your Microsoft account. Microsoft Office also handles collaboration from multiple editors better than LibreOffice.

Much like the rest of this comparison, how much this affects you will vary. I use a personal PC, work MacBook, work iPad, and personal Android phone. I use Office Online often and use two different OneDrive accounts for work and personal use. So, for me, these features are essential, and I could never switch away from Microsoft Office. But you could have a completely different workflow that would be great for you centered on using LibreOffice on select devices and saving them onto a cloud like Dropbox.

Microsoft Office For Mac Versus Windows Cartoon

So should you switch from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice?

Deciding to switch to LibreOffice over Microsoft Office is largely dependent on your specific workflow. While LibreOffice obviously is a better value because you're getting something for free, that isn't a factor to someone who already is happy to pay for Office 365 for things like OneDrive storage or someone that gets Office 365 through their workplace or school.

Comparing the feature sets of the two suites is more complicated. It isn't as simple as saying that one is better. If you scroll through this page comparing the feature sets you'll see that the suites alternate in terms of which is better from section to section. For example, LibreOffice lets you insert more items such as vector graphics and FLAC audio, but Microsoft Office has better touch support and better cross-platform collaboration features. My advice in terms of features it to browse through each suite and see which fits your personal needs best.

LibreOffice is impressive, and because it's free you can try it out while still paying for Microsoft Office. My advice is that if you're interested, give it a try while keeping your Office 365 subscription and then make a more permanent decision. Ultimately, LibreOffice could save you some significant cash.

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