Microsoft has released version 16.98 of Office for Mac with improvements for Outlook and security updates for the Office suite. Outlook adds a centralized Copilot Command Center that consolidates features like summarization, drafts, and schedule into a single entry point; enables you to choose a specific account as the sender for Merge to Email in Word; allows generation of Copilot summaries for PDFs, Word, and PowerPoint attachments from the attachment well or from the summarize card; and adds support for sharing calendars from Exchange On-Premises accounts. Version 16.98 also includes security updates for remote code execution vulnerabilitiesâone each for Excel and PowerPoint, three for Word, and five for the overall Office suite. ($149.99 for a one-time purchase, $99.99/$129.99 annual subscription options, free update through Microsoft AutoUpdate, release notes, macOS 12+)
Itâs been interesting to watch both Microsoft and Google impose price increases for their productivity suites this year, presumably driven by their perceived need to invest in AI.
My understanding through the grapevine is that both companies have been very disappointed in sales of optional ~$30/month AI add-ons to Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 to business customers, so they are spreading smaller price increases across all customers and or restructuring their business offerings to mitigate the âproblemâ.
Also of note, Microsoft is terminating its relatively recently announced Microsoft 365 charitable donation program, at least in the USA. If I remember correctly, they only launched the program late last year. For very small charities, it was a terrific deal, offering complimentary access to Office 365 desktop apps and other items for up to ten users per organization. For small, volunteer-only charities, that is a big deal! Moving forward, they will offer limited donations to the cloud-only Microsoft 365 Business Basic plan and discounts to other plans. To be fair to Microsoft, the discounts can still be pretty significant compared to the full commercial rates.
I will admit that I have never seen anyone use LibreOffice in the wild or heard from a real-world friend that theyâre using it. And the number of people I hear talking about it online is pretty small.
I would tend to think that anyone actively trying to avoid Microsoft with a local suite of productivity apps would just use iWork (Pages, Keynote, Numbers) since theyâre free, bundled, and pretty powerful. As soon as youâre not using actual Microsoft apps, there will always be some uncertainty about compatibility or interoperability with those who are using it, so I donât know that LibreOffice provides a notably better story there than iWork.
I used to use it occasionally use it to convert docs my wife gets from some of her ladies groupsâŚa couple of them have some weird word processing apps and Libre was able to convert them into something Pages can read. Havenât done it in awhile as Pages improved.
I gave up MS Office many years ago when macOS stopped running 32-bit software and the original Rosetta (I needed to replace my old version of MS Office and I didnât have any organizational or professional need to remain with MS). I first used OpenOffice until it became apparent to me in 2023 that LibreOffice was much better supported by developers.
I think LibreOffice is a good replacement for MS Office. I like LibreOffice a lot more than Apple âOfficeâ, because most of my MS Office habits and muscle memory allowed me to just start using OpenOffice and LibreOffice. Appleâs programs work so differently from MSâs that I didnât want to spend the time needed to learn how to use them.
I have to continue using MS Office for professional reasons. Even if other tools are mostly compatible, formatting glitches and small incompatibilties happen often enough that they are too much of a hassle to accept.
That said, I predict that upon retirement, I will let my Office subscriptions lapse and adopt LibreOffice as my preferred suite.
Thought Iâd mention that another alternative to MS Office is SoftMaker Office, softmaker.com. (SoftMaker is based in Germany I think.) Though theyâd like you to ârentâ it, a perpetual license is $30. I have used it for years (current version it 2021) when I needed to work with MS files. Itâs a pretty good substitute for Word and Excel.
We use LibreOffice on our personal Mac systems and have been since before Covid. The only MS Office that exists here is on a system imaged by the university (site license).
The biggest issue that impacts me as a keyboard-navigation user is the shortcut for jumping a word when using the Calc (spreadsheet) module. Mac standard is option (alt) + Left or Right arrow to move the curosr one word left or right. LibreOffice Calc moves the vertical column left or right with this same keyboard combo. Annoying, but I can work with it.
The older 32-bit compatible version is sometimes sluggish in scrolling and redraw on macOS versions prior to 10.15 Catalina, but still works. Sadly it was one of the later patches that seemed to introduce this issue on 32-bit macOS.
There are other issues of course, but overall it allows for opening, editing and creating Word/Excel/PowerPoint docs. I have not worked much with PowerPoint beyond just opening a few files.
The number one thing I would suggest to anyone trying LibreOffice who will be working with a lot of MS Office documents, is to change the settings for File FormatâŚ
LibreOffice > Preferences > Load/Save > General > Document type:
Select the following types and change the âAlways save as:â drop down as followsâŚ
type âText documentâ â save as âWord 2007-365 (.docx)"
click APPLY button
type âSpreadsheetâ â save as "Excel 2007-365 (.xlsx)â
click APPLY button
type âPresentationâ â save as âPowerPoint 2007-365 (*.pptx)â
click APPLY button
You can choose âsave asâ options for older formats or whatever works best for your needs. If you do not change these settings, LibreOffice will default to creating its own â.odfâ files.
Personally, I have an Office Home 2024 (perpetual non-subscription) version just for a single seat of Excel. Never installed Word (I use Nisus Writer) or PowerPoint (Keynote, of course) or Outlook (Mail) so I figured Iâd save myself some space. I do use Numbers for some light personal things, but nothing really compares to the feature set and compatibility of Excel.
I think Libreoffice is much more popular in Europe than the US, being a European product, and all the moreso as Europeans move away from American clouds.
In my case I do need Microsoft Office 365, as for working purposes I am a heavy PowerQuery/Excel user. In terms of spreadsheets I like very much the simplicity of Numbers that remind me of Lotus Improv, for outside of the box spreadsheets. Have LibreOffice and OnlyOffice that are free and have good (LibreOffice) and more basic (OnlyOffice) spreadsheet programs. Also, have SoftMaker 2024 (Planmaker) that is better than LibreOffice and a lot better that the 2021 version.
When you write for people who pay you money for your words, you have to put them in the form they want, and thatâs generally Word. The major exception that comes to mind is TeX or LaTex used in the scientific publishing. From what I understand, LaTeX is better for equations, but I have never learned it.
The biggest advantage of Libre Office is its ability to translate from other formats, which can be important to those of us who started using Macs in the mid-80s and still have files from those days. .
TeX is the best equation-formatter Iâve ever seen. A lot of web-publishing tools (like the Sphinx project used by many open source products) actually gives you the ability to embed TeX code in the documents, specifically for equations and such.