Good news, Mac Office Fans! Microsoft has a free preview of a completely redesigned Office 2016 for Mac available right now.
The new Mac Office suite takes advantage of many Mac features, including Retina display optimizations and full-screen view support. On the other hand, many Mac Office users find themselves frustrated going back and forth between PC and Mac. To help them out, Microsoft has made all PC keyboard shortcuts available on this new Mac version.
The individual apps within Office have been reworked with new features, including:
- A new Design tab and Format Object pane for Word,
- A new interface and new Windows version formulas for Excel,
- An improved Animations pane and collaborative authoring for Powerpoint,
- Online Archive support, category list sync, weather in calendar, apps for Office, and side-by-side calendar in Outlook.
The preview builds are made to work alongside Office 365 and OneDrive though they’re not required.
The preview will work for about 60 days until the next preview version is released. The final preview build will work for about a month after the official retail launch in the last half of 2015, at which point you’ll have to start paying for it.
Are you playing with the new preview build, or planning to? Let us know what you think!
