For now, use the download link above to activate a free 30-day trial of the Office 365 service using your Microsoft Account. Verdict: It’s not as beautiful or well integrated as the iPad version, but Office for Mac 2016 is a major leap forward from previous versions and scores where it counts: in functionality and power. Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing tool offered by Microsoft. It is a paid tool that was initially released in the year 1983 and has gone through a lot of modifications to gain the features that it possesses today. It can be used on desktop computers with both Windows and Mac operating systems as well as on mobile phones.
Microsoft Works Versions
Microsoft Works was an all-in-one scaled-down Word Processor, Spreadsheet, and Database geared towards the home user. It was released in variants for early DOS, Windows, and Macintosh. Microsoft Works competed against Lotus Jazz, FrameWork, AlphaWorks/LotusWorks, PFS First Choice, and many others.
Microsoft Works started development as 'Mouseworks' from 'Productivity Software', and involved developers of the original Apple II AppleWorks. The first release was in 1986 for the Apple Macintosh. It seems that Microsoft purchased it mainly to compete with Lotus Jazz.
Works was a completely different product from, and even competed against, Microsoft Office. Occasionally, Works was bundled with a version of Word, to cover for weaknesses and lack of popularity of the native word processor in the package. Works was commonly bundled with many OEM PCs as an entry-level lower-cost alternative to Microsoft Office. Microsoft Works was discontinued in 2007, with the final version being 9.0.
It appears there was no '1.0' for Windows. The first Windows version was '2.0', that matched the versions for DOS and Macintosh.
For more information, see Software Spotlight: Microsoft Works.
Installation instructions
Compatible with Windows Vista.
Ifinder. Office on the Mac has always been considered a bit of an after-thought, but with Apple’s dumbing down of its iWork apps, Microsoft has gone to great lengths to give the first new version of Office in five years a real shot in the arm.
Office 2016 is all about the cloud – it’s tightly integrated into Microsoft’s OneDrive and SharePoint services. Its codebase has been completely refreshed and optimised for modern Macs, and it’s designed to work beautifully on Retina displays.
Like the previous version, it consists of five apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote, and each has been updated and redesigned to fit in with the modern Office look that’s been rolled out on other platforms while ensuring it fits in with the OS X look.
Veteran users will notice the ribbon has been updated along with the task pane to make features more immediate and visible. Word users gain a handy new Design tab for managing a document’s layout, and a Navigation sidebar (confusingly referred to as Document Sidebar) for working more efficiently with larger documents.
Excel’s new features bring it in line with Excel 2013 on Windows, and include a new Analysis Toolpak offering a wide number of statistical functions, as well as a PivotTable Slicer, which is designed to pick out patterns from large volumes of data.
PowerPoint debuts a new Presenter View that makes it easier than ever to present your slideshow, plus a new animation pane is supplemented with a number of new slide transition effects.
Microsoft Works For Macintosh
The suite is rounded off with the latest version of Outlook for Mac, recently released as a standalone product, and OneNote. The Mac version of the latter remains less powerful than on other platforms, but is slowly catching up. Version 15.8 improves its sharing capabilities.
Regardless of how you feel about Microsoft on the Mac platform, there’s no doubt this is the slickest, most feature-packed version of Office yet. If you’re looking for a serious office package, this is it.
Note: only Office 365 users can use Office for Mac 2016 at the moment - the standalone version launches in September. For now, use the download link above to activate a free 30-day trial of the Office 365 service using your Microsoft Account.
Verdict:
It’s not as beautiful or well integrated as the iPad version, but Office for Mac 2016 is a major leap forward from previous versions and scores where it counts: in functionality and power. Advance acoustic review.