Earlier this year, Microsoft unveiled the entirely redesigned Office for Mac 2016 preview and introduced a variety of new features to go along with the fresh appearance. Today, Microsoft has released the official public build of Office for Mac 2016. In order to use the software, you must have an Office 365 subscription, which runs $99.99 per year or $9.99 per month.
A few months back, we went hands-on with Microsoft’s Office for Mac 2016. The software very much takes a “cloud first” approach and looks to compete almost directly with services like Google Drive. For instance, multiple users can collaborate on documents in real time when using the same app on different platform, including Mac, iPad, or PC.
Each individual app in the suite also has received its share of enhancements. Word, for instance, now includes a design tab for managing and creating style and layout preferences for documents. PowerPoint includes a new brand presentation mode, as well. Excel also has its fair share of enhancements, including new keyboard shortcuts, new functions, and a new PivotTable Slicer that allows you to set parameters for data to quickly find new data points from existing numbers.
All three apps in Office have new open and create windows that show documents saved to OneDrive across all platforms. All three apps also can now take advantage of OS X’s full screen mode.
Office for Mac 2016 is available now with an Office 365 subscription. Office 2016 for Mac will become available as a one-time purchase option this September