[Updated 2023] Guide to Using Microsoft Office 2021 & 365 for Mac | WPS Office Blog (2023)

FAQs

What are the changes to Microsoft 365 2023? ›

Changes to cloud storage

Starting February 1, 2023, cloud storage used across Microsoft 365 apps and services will include Outlook.com attachments data and OneDrive data. All data will continue to be protected with Microsoft's comprehensive set of security features.

macOS: 4 GB RAM. Hard disk Windows: 4.0 GB of available disk space. macOS: 10 GB of available disk space. HFS+ hard disk format (also known as macOS Extended) or APFS.

You can purchase Microsoft 365 subscriptions for both Mac and Windows. Office Home & Business 2021 and Office Home & Student 2021 are also available for Mac as a one-time purchase.

Yes, Office 365 does expire if you don't renew your subscription. If you don't renew your subscription, you will lose access to all the Office apps and services that are included in your subscription. This includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and more.

Is Office going away entirely? No, as part of Microsoft 365 you will continue to get access to apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. We will also continue to offer one-time purchases of those apps to consumers and businesses via Office 2021 and Office LTSC plans.

With each program in Office 365 taking two to three days of professional training to master, an individual could learn the whole of Office 365 in less than one month. Without professional instruction, learning Office 365 could take anywhere from a few to several months.

Upgrading your operating system to macOS Big Sur 11 or later will allow Office updates to be delivered for your apps. Note that new installs of Microsoft 365 for Mac also requires macOS Big Sur 11 or later. The October 2022 update (16.66) is the last build to support macOS Catalina 10.15.

Is there a difference between Office 365 for Mac and PC? ›

One of the main differences between using Office for Mac versus a Windows computer is that the File menu is located on the application toolbar at the top of the screen. Depending on which application you are using, the File menu options change accordingly.

Microsoft 365 or Office suite

You can use Word, Excel, and Powerpoint on your iMac, MacBook, or MacBook Mini. You just have to buy this software separately, because it's not included with a Mac by default.

Before you Install Office 365

You need to uninstall any previous versions of Microsoft Office including 2007, 2010, 2013, and/or 2016. If you do not uninstall previous versions of Microsoft Office and you install Office 365 your computer will not run any program of Office 365 properly.

Office 365 is a cloud-based suite of productivity apps like Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, and more. Microsoft 365 is a bundle of services including Office 365, plus several other services including Windows 10 Enterprise.

You can run Microsoft Office, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook on a Mac (and on your iPad or iPhone). But it's not a simple case of installing the application you need and starting to type. You need to choose whether to sign up to a subscription or buy the full version outright.

Admins and users no longer have access to the services or Microsoft 365 apps that came with the subscription. All customer data—from user data to documents and email—is permanently deleted and is unrecoverable.

1-30 days after subscription ends: Expired

Administrators can access all functions from the Office 365 admin center portal, including assigning licenses to new or existing employees. If the firm plans to depart Office 365, data may be backed up.

Microsoft Office Professional 2021 lifetime license: $30

It's available for both Mac and Windows, so be sure to grab the right one for the computer that you use regularly. If you're looking for productivity tools, it's difficult to match the Microsoft Office suite of apps.

Even though most things are changing to Microsoft 365, Office is not going away entirely. Existing Office 365 subscription plans will be unaffected. And we'll continue to offer one-time purchase options, such as Office 2021, and Office LTSC plans.

Microsoft 365 for the web is a free version of Microsoft 365 that you can use in a web browser. All you need is to sign up for a Microsoft account with a new or existing email address. Use Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more for free on the web.

What are three concerns or drawbacks while using Office 365? ›

Microsoft 365 is a subscription service that ensures you always have the most up-to-date Office apps from Microsoft. With Microsoft 365 Family, you can install Microsoft 365 on all your devices and sign in to five at the same time―that means you can use Office no matter where you are or what device you're on.

Office 365 is a robust suite of productivity programs with many features. While the basics of Office 365 are easy to learn, advanced features will likely elude most self-learners. Without instruction, some people never realize all the powerful tools Office 365 has available.

Microsoft Office 365 Training Center

The Office 365 Training Center provides you everything to start with. You can watch video tutorials in The Training Center for Microsoft Office 365.

Microsoft 365 is the best option since you can install the apps on every supported device (Windows 11, 10, 8.1, and macOS). It is also the only option that provides continuous updates at a low cost of ownership.

Office 2021 is the standalone iteration of Microsoft's flagship productivity suite. It includes the three core Office applications, Word, Excel and PowerPoint, in addition to other tools that vary from one edition to another. The Office 2021 license is perpetual.

Even experienced users can learn new tricks and save time with powerful tools like advanced styles and templates. When it comes to Microsoft Office software like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, many of us are self-taught.

Apple considers MacBooks obsolete when they are between five and seven years old. It considers them to be vintage when they are older than seven years. For a complete list of obsolete and vintage devices, see here.

How long before a Mac is obsolete? ›

Obsolete products are those that have been discontinued for at least seven years, and Apple does not provide any hardware service for these products.

So, in answer to the question: How long do Macs last? We'd say five to eight years, but beware that you may not be able to replace any faulty parts in a Mac when more than five years has passed since Apple last sold it. Before you buy a new Mac, read our article about the best time to buy a Mac or MacBook.

Microsoft Office Versions

Outside of the interface differences, you will notice that Mac Office doesn't have all of the apps that the PC version has. And, some of the visual basic functions are missing in Mac. Mac does have a better layout look for more of the publishing aspects. Only Word for PC has that feature.

Fun fact: There's a version of Microsoft Office written just for Mac. So you can use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on a Mac just like on a PC. macOS also provides built-in support for the latest version of Microsoft Exchange Server.

Microsoft Office Documents: Although Mac computers can run Microsoft Office through Microsoft Office for Mac or virtual desktops like Parallels, PC computers are generally considered to be more compatible with Microsoft Office.

Do you have to pay for Word on Mac? Yes, you need a Microsoft 365 subscription or one-time purchase of Office 2021 to use Microsoft Word on your Mac.

The Office apps available from the Mac App Store provide the very latest version of Office on the Mac. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook require a Microsoft 365 subscription to activate.

Do your best work with productivity apps in Microsoft 365—anywhere, anytime, with anyone.

We recommend that you uninstall any previous versions of Office, including Visio and Project, before installing the newer version. But, in a few cases, such as for application compatibility testing, you might need to keep a previous version installed for a limited time while you transition to the new version.

Upgrade recommendations

If you uninstall Office before installing the new version, your Office files won't be deleted, but if your version of Office includes Outlook you may want to back up your Outlook data files.

How is Office 365 different from previous versions of Office? ›

How is Office 365 different from previous versions of Office? Office 365 is a subscription-based service, meaning rather than buying a copy of the suite outright for a one-time, up-front cost, users instead pay a monthly subscription fee to access the service at a level of their choosing.

The correct answer is MS-Paint. ​MS-Paint is not a component of MS Office 365.

Microsoft makes a free version of Microsoft Word available for anyone to use on the web. You have to register a Microsoft account, but that's free too. As the app works entirely inside a web browser, you can access it from any computer, and your files are always synced and saved in the cloud.

A Microsoft 365 subscription unlocks access to the full versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and more across the web, mobile, and desktop. It also guarantees updates to the latest versions of the apps as they release, unlike with a standalone copy of Office.

iWork Suite

Included with your Mac is the iWork suite: Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. These are Apple's own alternatives to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Pages, for instance, is one of the best Word alternatives for Mac. As these are Mac-centric apps, the UI is quite different.

Microsoft offers completely free versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, all of which you access online at its Microsoft 365 hub. You'll need a Microsoft account, but these are free and you may find that you already have a Hotmail or Outlook account that you created a while back.

The best Mac laptop for most people is the 13-inch MacBook Air with Apple's M1 processor. It's more than fast enough for browsing, working on documents, and making light photo and video edits, and it has an excellent high-resolution screen, a great trackpad, a totally silent fanless design, and a reasonable price.

We do hope to see colorful models for the Surface Pro 10 with 5G, and maybe options for more RAM and storage in line with the Wi-Fi model. The Surface Pro 10 will likely launch in the fall of 2023, roughly one year after the Surface Pro 9, so we'll see then if it can live up to our expectations.

Microsoft 365 app coming in January 2023

The Office mobile app (the 'all in one' app) is being changed and renamed to become the “Microsoft 365 app”. So far, Microsoft has been big on hype for the 'new' app but little substance beyond the standard platitudes.

On January 9, 2023, Microsoft enhanced the capabilities of detecting and notifying Azure fraud alerts. Partners will be able to register a new webhook, azure-fraud-event-detected, in Partner Center webhook events. The Partner Center webhook APIs allow partners to register for resource change events.

What are the new features of Microsoft 365? ›

Support for Office 2013 ended on April 11, 2023 and there will be no extension and no extended security updates. All of your Office 2013 apps will continue to function. However, you could expose yourself to serious and potentially harmful security risks.

Microsoft Office 2021 (Third perpetual release of Office 16) is a version of the Microsoft Office suite of applications for the Microsoft Windows and macOS operating systems.

Such trends show that the forced return to the office may reverse in the next few months. In short, it's likely that 2023 will see a slight expansion of employees working remotely. These findings suggest that most companies are finding their hybrid workplace policy to be a successful solution for their organization.

Early in 2023, Microsoft announced an even cheaper option, Microsoft 365 Basic(Opens in a new window), which gets you 100GB of OneDrive storage and includes only the web and mobile versions of the apps, but it costs just $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year.

Welcome to the March 2023 update. This month, we are excited to announce several new features across web, Windows, and Mac. For web users, speed up large workbooks with Check Performance, insert and edit formulas with Formula Argument Assistance, and enhance your query organization with Drag & Drop in Queries Pane.

As a reminder, Windows 8.1 has reached end of support on January 10, 2023.

Welcome to the January 2023 update. This month we are excited to announce the release of PivotTable show details to Excel for the web and the ability to automate your tasks with the Power Automate tab in Excel for Windows and Mac.

What is the latest version of Office for Mac? If you buy the software outright the latest version is Office 2021.

What is the three most popular features of Microsoft Office? ›

Microsoft 365 is a set of apps for your productivity and protection needs and includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Microsoft Editor, Outlook, OneDrive, OneNote, Clipchamp, and so much more.