“Microsoft’s 2016 Build Developers Conference just wrapped up, and although the conference focused heavily on Windows 10, Office for Mac got some love as well,” Nick Mediati reports for Macworld.
“According to Microsoft’s Office Dev Center, the company is bringing its add-ins feature to the Mac version of its Office suite,” Mediati reports. “Add-ins, which allow third-party developers to add functionality and features to Office, are already a key feature of Office on Windows and iOS, as well as the Office Web apps, so their arrival on the Mac will bring that suite more in line with the rest of the Office universe.”
Mediati reports, “Examples of add-ins currently available include one that lets you look up information on Wikipedia, another that translates text from within Word, and another that lets you save items to Evernote while you’re using Outlook.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: How about 100% feature parity across platforms, beleaguered Microsoft.
Many users think they need Office on their Macs. Most don’t. After being called vain, stupid, and wasteful by Microsoft, no one should.
We dumped Microsoft Office years ago for iWork which just keeps getting better and better (instead of dropping features like Office) and we couldn’t be happier. We advise MacDailyNews readers do the same.
Too little, way too late……If you need office, just get a PC. Don’t infect your mac with this bloatware.
I love iWork. But it just doesn’t suffice for school and work. As much as I hate to say it, Microsoft Office is practically a necessity. Most businesses and schools use Windows PCs due to the low hardware cost. So, they use Microsoft Office. At least 90% of businesses and schools use Microsoft Office. It’s the de facto standard in business and school. If you want to send someone a document, you’ll most likely have to send it in Microsoft Office format. If you use a word processor which doesn’t natively use Word format, it’s simply too easy to accidentally send someone a document in a proprietary format. You could send it to them in iWork format, but you’ll likely get a response from them saying “I can’t open it”. .You can’t function in business without Microsoft Office because everyone else is using it.
You can use Pages and convert to Word. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past few years. The only problem with doing that is that the Word version won’t look exactly the same as the Pages version. For example, a space or an indent might be lost or added, or a picture might be moved. This is true of any word processor which uses a proprietary format. It’s much better to be able to use a word processor which uses Microsoft Word format natively. TextEdit, which comes with your Mac, and LibreOffice (or OpenOffice) both accomplish this task.
Lately, I’ve been using TextEdit and LibreOffice whenever I need to create a Word document. I’m not sure if LibreOffice’s formatting sticks when a document created with it is viewed in Word, but it’s considerably more likely to because it can actually work with Word format natively.
I wish iWork was getting better and better.
Unfortunately, the TRUTH is that iWork is not as good as it was six years ago. BUMMER!
Yeah, MDN’s take on this borders on the hilarious:
“iWork which just keeps getting better and better (instead of dropping features like Office) ”
I guess MDN forgot all about the dumbing down of Pages to make it iOS compatible.
That’s why I use Pages ’09 instead of the current version.
Does Pages come with thesaurus functionality? If so, someone please show MDN how to use it so they can learn to use something else other than “beleaguered” when they write about a rival.
Beleaguered Microsoft
Beleaguered Samsung
Beleaguered FBI
Seriously?
You’ve beleaguered the word beleaguered.
If not, then let’s start a pot to get them an Office 365 subscription so they can write more intelligently.
I agree with you on MDN’s overuse of “beleaguered”.
But I wouldn’t recommend Office 365. I would go with the non-subscription version of Microsoft Office. It’s cheaper in the long run to pay $150 once than to pay $70 annually. The only time you need a newer version of Microsoft Office is when Microsoft makes a new format.
I agree! Ownership of MS Office for the Mac is worth every penny. Not perfect, but it easily remains the standard to beat.
MDN is tone deaf here, especially considering how many great strides MS has made in improving Office for the Mac to achieve better feature parity. In another recent article, MDN attempts to lampoon Fitbit when the Fitbit CEO says it makes a more focused product than the Apple Watch. But then in the next minute the MDN faithful claim that Office is too complicated and does too much, that the dumbed-down iWork is good enough. Hypocrisy anyone??? Great software is both powerful and intuitive, allowing the user to tailor the interface for his needs. When it comes to office software, MS delivers, Apple does not.
As for file format changes, Office has always been much more friendly than iWork. Apple borked the transition from iWork ’09 to the current dumbed-down apps — you still can’t open old files with new program and vice versa. Very user unfriendly!
Learn Apple-Microsoft history before spouting your beleaguered garbage.
I avoid Word as much as possible and use Pages as much as I can. I still have to use it when I need to do tables — Pages sucks at them. When I grade student essays, adding comments is easier in Word.
iWork is NOT getting better and better. It had the guts ripped out of it when it was made compatible with iOS. Why Apple bothered with this I cannot say, except that they seem to think that a) you can do real work on an iOS device and b) people want to. The truth is they are wrong on both counts.
Office 365 brings 1TB cloud storage across all your devices. And, unlike Apple’s iCloud it is actually useful for people who do real work. A project which consists of documents, spreadsheets, images, layouts, PDFs and charts can be stored in one place, in a folder hierarchy of your choosing on OneDrive, but NOT on iCloud.
When Tim Cook says he can do almost everything on an iPad, you know he doesn’t have to do much real work – he has a whole company of people to type documents, prepare reports and all the other tasks that require a PROPER computer with PROPER applications.
And my guess is that all these hard working people at Apple are using Office. Heaven knows they’re not using Pages to write their manuals or reports, or Numbers to crunch their finances.
It’s funny how Microsoft fanboys are always coming here crying and wailing loudly about use of the word ‘beleaguered’. Hilarious in fact. They sound just like social justice warrior morons trying to control everyone by imposing limits on language. Don’t be fooled, Microsoft *is* absolutely 100% beleaguered in every possible sense of the word.
Every sense of the word? Really? Why don’t you ask Siri for a definition of beleaguered because you obviously don’t know what the word means. Go ahead, ask Siri, Google it, whatever. Because I doubt Microsoft is actually besieged and surrounded by troops ay the moment.
Here you go, chump.
http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/beleaguered
“experiencing difficulties, opposition or criticism”
Ha! You actually did look it up! Lol!
BTW Einstein, that’s only one sense of the word. You said every possible sense of the word in your post.
Thanks, beleaguered russ!
Haha you also describe Apple as beleaguered for experiencing difficulties and criticisms for iWork, iPad pro, Mac app store. Hahaha.
Beleaguered Russ! Hahahahahahah.
I like Pages a lot. But it’s free. You get what you pay for, I suppose.
Sometimes you don’t get what you pay for, even with a free application. My wife had a very nice little second job editing simple websites with iWeb and fairly complex newsletters with Pages. In one case, Apple dropped all the features that made the application usable (try editing a publication without linked text boxes) and never brought them back. In the other, Apple dropped the application completely.
Both orphaned programs used proprietary file formats that could not be moved to another program (not even the new version of Pages) without repeating all the work. Staying with the old programs was not a viable option, since you really can’t knowingly charge a client for work on an obsolete platform that may stop working with the next minor system upgrade. It was easier for my wife to just give up her business. So, the “free” applications actually cost us a fair amount of money.
Add-ins, which allow third-party developers to add functionality and features to Office…
Like further Office malware? You just KNOW that’s what’s going to happen. It’s Microsoft. 😛