Microsoft Office remainsthe gold standard of productivity suites, but there are several different versions/editions of Office available for users of Apple hardware. Together with Parallels Desktop and Parallels Access, the Apple user can access just about any of these versions/editions on each of their hardware platforms.
While Microsoft produces all of these suites and the suites have a very high degree of similar functionality and visual fidelity, they are not identical, and no single suite has all the features of the entire group.
This blog post will enumerate most of the differences between the following suites and their apps:
2020-3-30 One may not easily fathom the differences between Office 2016 and other earlier versions. This free trial version of Microsoft Office 2016 has Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook as the major constituents.In addition to this, OneNote, Microsoft Access and Publisher are available. Can I install Office 2016 for Mac and Office for Mac 2011 on the same computer? Yes, you can install and use Office 2016 for Mac and Office for Mac 2011 at the same time. However, we recommend that you uninstall Office for Mac 2011 before you install the new version just to prevent any confusion.
The vast bulk of the content in this post is in the following five tables, which list the differences I found. Note that because the tables lists differences, no row of the table will be all checkmarks (since this would mean that all the suites had this feature, and thus this wasn’t a difference) nor will any row be all “X”s (since this would mean that no suite had this feature, and thus it isn’t a difference either). I am listing the differences because listing the similarities would take much too much room—the suites are that identical.
Hopefully, this will assist you in choosing the best version/edition for your use. In addition, I will describe my personal Office setup.
Here are the five tables (click on each thumbnail for an enlarged view):
Table 2
Table 4
What differences surprised me the most? These two:
WinOffice has had support for right-to-left languages like Arabic and Hebrew for many years. While Mac users have been asking for such support, no version of MacOffice, even the latest MacOffice 2016, has had such support. Therefore, I was quite pleasantly surprised when iPad Office added support for Arabic, Hebrew, and Thai.(See Figure 1.)
Figure 1: Arabic text in iPad Word on iPad Pro
All Office programs provide some way to select content in a document (text, cells, or shapes, for example). This is needed so that the user can apply some operation on just that content (change the color, for example). The Windows or Mac Office applications also provide for “advanced” types of selections. In Word, this is non-contiguous text selections; in Excel this is non-contiguous cell selections; and in PowerPoint this is the simultaneous selection of multiple objects. In Word and Excel, these really are advanced types of selections that are rarely needed by even sophisticated users of Word or Excel. (See Figures 2 and 3.)
Figure 2: Non-contiguous cell selection in MacExcel 2011.
Figure 3: Non-contiguous text selection in MacWord 2011.
But in PowerPoint, the ability to select multiple objects is a pretty basic capability. (See Figure 4.)
Figure 4: Multiple selections in MacPowerPoint 2011. Microsoft onenote 2013 mac.
I wasn’t surprised to learn that non-contiguous selections were not supported in iPad Word or iPad Excel, but I was astonished and very disappointed to learn that multiple selections were not supported in iPad PowerPoint.
So, which do I use? The short answer is that I use all of them.
I worked on the MacOffice team at Microsoft for several years, and at that time I also worked closely with colleagues on the WinOffice teams. Because of this background, I am often able to pick just the right Office app that will make a given task the easiest to do. One task might be particularly well suited to MacWord 2011 because Publishing Layout View—a feature only in that one Word version—will make this task easy. Another task might be suited to WinPPT because of the Animation Painter, which is not in any MacPPT version. Yet another task might be best suited to WinPPT 2013 because it needs an Office extension not available in other Office suites.
Having all the versions of Office at your fingertips used to be rather hard to setup, not to mention very expensive. Luckily, that is no longer the case.
With a single Office 365 Home subscription, you get five installs of the Office suite and you can pick which versions make up this set of five. Since I have Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition on my Mac, I can run any version of Windows without rebooting. Because I have different versions of Windows running on my Mac, I can also run different versions of WinOffice on my Mac and have everything I need on one computer. (You can download a free trial of Parallels Desktop for Mac here.) Here’s my setup:
So, why don’t I use MacOffice 2016 as my main productivity suite? Four reasons:
Those are my five installs, and with this setup, I have easy and immediate access to the best Office app for any particular task. I tend to store all my documents on Dropbox so that I have easy access to them from any of my Office suites or Apple platforms.
Which Office suite(s) do you use, and what’s your setup?
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You can split the Word window into two panes so that you can view two different parts of a document at the same time. This is useful if you want to copy and paste text and graphics into a long or complex document or refer to one part of the document while working in another.
On the View tab, click Arrange, and then click Split.
If the window is wide enough, Word displays Split directly on the View tab.
To adjust the relative sizes of the panes, move the mouse pointer to the dividing line, and when you see the split pointer, click and drag the dividing line to a new position.
Note: To remove the split in the window, drag the dividing line to the top or bottom edge of the window.
Tip: In addition to simultaneously viewing two different parts of the same document, you can also use the split window to display two different layouts, such as Print Layout and Outline. After creating the split, click in the pane that you want to change, and then select a different layout on the View tab.
Minimum header footer is.25' in 2011, in 2016.30 (3/10's)' To Margin and Bottom Margin in excel 2011.5', and left and right.25'.In 2016 it's.6' (6/10') all round.Disclaimer:The questions, discussions, opinions, replies & answers I create, are solely mine and mine alone, and do not reflect upon my position as a Community Moderator. The only Issue I have had (using Yosemite) is Formatting. Inches in 2011 is based on.25' on 2016 based on 1/10' inch. Jones, C.E.T. If my reply has helped, mark accordingly - Helpful or Answer Phillip M.
On the View menu, click Draft, Web Layout, Outline, or Print Layout.
Rest the pointer on the split bar at the top of the vertical scroll bar until appears.
Split bar
If you cannot see the vertical scroll bar
On the Word menu, click Preferences.
Under Authoring and Proofing Tools, click View.
Under Window, select the Vertical scroll bar check box.
Drag the split bar to the position you want.
Tip: To return to a single window, double-click the split bar.