The file browser in Office 2016 for Mac forces users to take an extra, slow step to access local files as well as files stored in cloud services like iCloud Drive, Google Drive, Box, and Dropbox. Mar 8, 2017 - By default, Office for Mac apps launch with the Document Gallery. Here's how to configure Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to launch with a new.

Mac users of Office who have felt left out in the cold by Microsoft (because the last version, Office 2011 for Mac, was released in October 2010) now have reason to be pleased: The final version of brings the suite out of the dark ages and into the modern world. Hints of what the new Office would offer have been out for quite a while, notably, introduced in October 2014. But Mac owners had to wait until early July for the final release of the full suite, including the core applications Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

It was well worth the wait. Office 2016 for Mac sports a far better interface than Office 2011, integrates well with Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage and dramatically improves Outlook. [ Further reading: ] (Note: Mac for Office 2016 requires Yosemite OS X or better. It’s currently only available as part of a, which allows you to install Office on multiple devices.

It will sell as a standalone Mac product later this month.) Spanking new interface The moment you run any Office application, you know you've left the aging Office 2011 behind. It's less cluttered, cleaner and sleeker-looking, more logically organized, more colorful and simpler to use. That's largely in part because the Ribbon has been redone, and now looks and works as it does in the Windows version of Office. The Ribbon is far more prominent and now sits close to the top of the screen rather than (as before) beneath a long row of icons for doing things such as opening and closing files, printing and so on.

The usual Mac menu that sits atop Mac applications is hidden as well, although you can reveal it by moving your cursor to the top of the screen. It's a clever way to bridge the worlds of Office and Mac OS X.

Not everyone is a Ribbon fan, though, and those who wish it were gone, or just want to give themselves a little more screen real estate, can hide it by clicking a small up arrow at the Ribbon's far right. The Ribbon goes away and the arrow turns to face downwards. Click the arrow to make the Ribbon come back. [ ] Not only has the Ribbon been moved but it's been reorganized, which is all to the good. For example, Word's confusing Document Elements tab is gone; most of what was there can now be found in the more logically-named Insert tab.

So now, you use the Insert tab when you want to insert anything, whether it be art, a table, header, link and so on. In Office 2011 you had to go on a treasure hunt through many different tabs to find all that. Download internet explorer for mac computers.

You'll find similar reorganizations throughout all of Office. For me, this reorganized Ribbon has made Office more usable and far more pleasurable to use than the previous version. Also, I use the Windows version of Office, and because the Mac version now closely mirrors it, I found switching between Office on Windows and Office on the Mac to be largely seamless. Standardized look and feel In Office 2016, Microsoft is bringing a common look and feel to the suite across all platforms, which is why this Mac version looks much like the recently released Windows-based. However, there are still some differences between the Mac version and the Windows Office preview.