It’s slowly approaching five years since Microsoft first released Office for Mac 2011 in October 2010. While a final version of Office 2016 for Mac isn’t ready just yet, Microsoft is for Mac users to get an early look at the company’s work. Microsoft has been doing some great work with Office, bringing it to the iPad, extending it to Dropbox, and even acquiring impressive apps like Acompli to power Office on iOS and Android. Office 2016 for Mac is the latest result of Microsoft’s focus on cross-platform apps, and it finally matches its Windows equivalent. The first thing I noticed about using Office 2016 for Mac is the user interface. While the existing 2011 version looks old in comparison, Microsoft hasn’t ditched parts of the aging UI entirely.

It looks and feels like a mix of the fresh Windows design and Office for Mac 2011. 'We think we’ve done a good job of striking a balance that customers expect,' explains Eric Wilfred, the head of Microsoft’s Office for Mac apps, in an interview with The Verge. 'Our internal tagline, and we’re actually corny enough to say this in the hallways, is 'Unmistakably Office and optimized for the Mac.'

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' The result is the familiar Ribbon user interface that fits in with the OS X theme and features like sandboxed apps, fullscreen view, and Retina screen optimization. OneDrive cloud storage is built straight in Like Office 2013 for Windows, Microsoft is integrating its cloud storage services directly into Office 2016 for Mac.

That means Office 365, OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, and Sharepoint are all integrated. If you use OneDrive to store and edit Office documents with an iPad or a Windows laptop, then you can quickly access them from the recent documents location in Office 2016 for Mac.

Microsoft’s cross-platform app strategy, powered by the cloud, is a reality, and this is the latest piece of the puzzle. Word 2016 for Mac looks a lot like the iOS and Windows equivalents, and Microsoft is supporting co-authoring to allow several people to simultaneously edit a document. '\'document switching\' \'word 2016 for mac\''. Alongside co-authoring, there’s also new threaded comments to track comments more easily next to the relevant text. Microsoft is also adding a new navigation pane to quickly flick between pages in Word documents, better dictionary support, and a style pane to apply styles to an entire document. The vast majority of Word features are what you’d expect from the existing Office for Mac, but everything feels a little more polished thanks to the new look and feel. Excel now has the same Windows keyboard shortcuts Excel has some more significant changes.