Office for Mac now shares codebase with Office for PC and gets cross-platform real-time collaboration

[AlTech]

Office for Mac now officially shares codebase with Office for Windows. And the news doesn't stop there, there's now real-time cross-platform collaboration.

 

This is great news as Microsoft faces ever more fierce competition from Google Drive and similar services.

 

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The Mac version of Office has often lagged behind Windows in features (some periods have been better than others). But this change could lay the groundwork for better parity moving forward. A shared codebase doesn't necessarily mean everything will be the same, but it does mean that supporting all platforms (Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android) will be simpler on Microsoft's end.

Real-time collaboration is long overdue in Office for Mac. Users have been calling for it for quite some time. A major selling point of Google Docs and several other Office alternatives, it has been a slow rollout for this feature in Office regardless of platform. Limited live collaboration was part of the Office 2016 update, but Excel for Windows, for example, didn't get true real-time collaboration until a beta last year.

Now, users on Mac and Windows can see each other's changes in real-time. As in Google docs, thumbnails show which users are collaborating with you on a document. Flag icons indicate where they're working, and their changes appear to collaborators in real time as they work.

 

Office for Mac has also jumped from version 15.41.0 to 16.9.0 .

 

Here are the changes for Mac users:

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Word

Edit with others in real time: Thumbnails in the upper-right corner of the window show who else is working with you in a shared document. Flag icons show where others are working and you can view changes as they type. Learn more We save for you! Changes are saved automatically for documents, worksheets, and presentations stored in the cloud, and you can see others’ updates in seconds. Need to roll back? Check the version history for a list of changes and access to earlier versions. Learn more Quickly access your sites and groups: Quickly find presentations stored in your frequently used sites and groups in the Open menu.

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Excel

Collaborative editing: Work with others at the same time in your workbook. Thumbnails in the upper-right corner of the window show who else is viewing or editing the file with you. Learn more We save for you! Changes are saved automatically for documents, worksheets, and presentations stored in the cloud, and you can see others’ updates in seconds. Need to roll back? Check the version history for a list of changes and access to earlier versions. Learn more More charts: Use new charts, such as funnel, sunburst and histogram, to transform your data into professional visualizations, or use the new Map chart type to transform geographic data into a map with just a few steps. More functions: Shorten the formulas you write using the new logical functions IFS and SWITCH. Quickly access your sites and groups: Quickly find presentations stored in your frequently used sites and groups in the Open menu. Better support for PivotTable charts: Change your filters in a PivotTable, and the chart you created will automatically adjust to show exactly what you want. Multi-threaded calculation Formulas are updated faster when values are changed, because Excel uses multiple processing threads.

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PowerPoint

Edit with others in real time: Thumbnails in the upper-right corner of the window show who else is working with you in a shared document. Flag icons show where others are working and you can view changes as they type. Learn more We save for you! Changes are saved automatically for documents, worksheets, and presentations stored in the cloud, and you can see others’ updates in seconds. Need to roll back? Check the version history for a list of changes and access to earlier versions. Learn more See what's changed: Slides that have been modified by others while you were away are highlighted. Learn more A quick start to your research: Starting from scratch is hard. QuickStarter automatically creates an outline for your topic of choice with suggested talking points and designs that make your presentation pop. Learn more Trim media: Remove unwanted content from the beginning or end of an audio or video clip. Learn more Quickly access your sites and groups: Quickly find presentations stored in your frequently used sites and groups in the Open menu. Laser pointer in Slide Show: Use your mouse as a laser pointer to draw attention to certain parts of your slide.

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Archive or delete with just one swipe: Save time organizing your Inbox by swiping left with two fingers across the touchpad to archive an email or swiping right to delete it.

Additionally, there are some security fixes as well in this update.

 

So yeah, cool stuff.

 

I wish there was more open source competitors to Office but oh well. Libre is sort of good enough for now.

 

Sources:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/office-for-mac-finally-has-real-time-collaboration-in-16-9-0-update/

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Release-notes-for-Office-2016-for-Mac-ed2da564-6d53-4542-9954-7e3209681a41?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

[8uhbbhu8]

Oooo. One of my major reasons for using google sheets, pages, etc was the crossplatform, collab function. Still not enough to completely switch me back but a good effort from them! (Shoulda had this in Office 10 at least imo)

[captain_to_fire]

iWork and Google Docs may not be as feature rich as Office 365 but they’re free. I think the only thing that makes Office 365 a little bit worth it is th compatibility with millions who use Microsoft Office. 

 

Also the OP reminds me of these old internet gems 

 

[AlTech]

Just now, 8uhbbhu8 said:

Oooo. One of my major reasons for using google sheets, pages, etc was the crossplatform, collab function. Still not enough to completely switch me back but a good effort from them! (Shoulda had this in Office 10 at least imo)

Lol. the version numbers don't correspond to Office Releases like that.

 

E.g.

Office 12.0 was 2007

Office 14.0 was 2010

Office 15.0 was 2013

Office for Mac 15.0 was 2016 for Mac

Office 16.0 was 2016 for PC

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, hey_yo_ said:

iWork and Google Docs may not be as feature rich as Office 365 but they’re free.

* only if you get an inferior plan for Google Drive.

 

If you paid for an equivalent plan on Google Drive you'd be spending like $100/USD per year just like with Office 365.

 

The problem is nobody pays for Google Drive and so when they look at Office 365 they compare it unfavorably because they're comparing Apples to Oranges because most users use the 15GB free storage plan.

[8uhbbhu8]

4 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Lol. the version numbers don't correspond to Office Releases like that.

 

E.g.

Office 12.0 was 2007

Office 14.0 was 2010

Office 15.0 was 2013

Office for Mac 15.0 was 2016 for Mac

Office 16.0 was 2016 for PC

Meant Office 2010. As all office versions since 07 are named after the dates I thought it would be obvious what was meant. Guess it wasn't for you  

[8uhbbhu8]

4 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

TIL this forum does tables o_o

• Yep. (Called bullet points and lists here) Click this:
• 

[vanished]

The biggest thing I've noticed over the years working with others who have macs is the inexplicably different UI layout.  It is completely foreign and for no reason that I can fathom.  Hopefully this update will resolve that once and for all, yes?

[8uhbbhu8]

3 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

The biggest thing I've noticed over the years working with others who have macs is the inexplicably different UI layout.  It is completely foreign and for no reason that I can fathom.  Hopefully this update will resolve that once and for all, yes?

It better lol. Of the very very few times I have used macs with office on them its been nothing but a pain in the ass trying to find what I need. 

[AlTech]

51 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

The biggest thing I've noticed over the years working with others who have macs is the inexplicably different UI layout.  It is completely foreign and for no reason that I can fathom.  Hopefully this update will resolve that once and for all, yes?

Yup. Mac got bumped up to Windows Standard as far as I know.

[Misanthrope]

Great, now do Linux.

[captain_to_fire]

3 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

Great, now do Linux.

Uhm... Wine?

 

I don't know how Office 365 works on Wine though as I haven't tested it myself.

[Sauron]

7 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

I wish there was more open source competitors to Office but oh well. Libre is sort of good enough for now.

LateX is the way my friend

[Misanthrope]

3 hours ago, hey_yo_ said:

Uhm... Wine?

 

I don't know how Office 365 works on Wine though as I haven't tested it myself.

Why Wine and not native support? OP says mac has shared codebase so it should be less trouble just releasing a version for Linux. I'm sure many Linux users would gladly pay Microsoft for the suite/subscription if they were officially supported and capable of real time collaboration without Wine.

 

And yes this is just me being facetious: Let's just say that I want to know if Satya Nadella truly loves Linux or if he said that just to sell Azure to people who's main objection was potential lack of Linux support on the server side.

[AlTech]

41 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Why Wine and not native support? OP says mac has shared codebase so it should be less trouble just releasing a version for Linux. I'm sure many Linux users would gladly pay Microsoft for the suite/subscription if they were officially supported and capable of real time collaboration without Wine.

I'm not so sure.  Many linux fans are also OSS and/or FOSS fans.

[Misanthrope]

4 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

I'm not so sure.  Many linux fans are also OSS and/or FOSS fans.

Many say they are, sure. How many truly are? Well that remains to be seen: I suspect it would go along the lines of CoD fans planning on boycotting CoD and then purchasing the game in mass but that's just me making assumptions due to my general lack of confidence in the human race as a hole.

[goodtofufriday]

Way too late for these features. Many small to medium.sized businesses have already switched platforms. Why would anyone retrain people for an application they moved away from and that cost money. 

[jasonvp]

On 1/20/2018 at 2:13 PM, Misanthrope said:

Why Wine and not native support?

Why not?  The herculean effort it would require would not turn into enough licenses sold to justify it.  It wouldn't be a simple port at all; don't mistake it "running on Macs' for "It'll run on anything with a UNIX underpinning".  The UI API is the problem.  So far, MS has to code to 2 completely different UI APIs: Windows' and Mac OS'.  And there's a reward for that work: lots of licenses sold.

 

Would MS write to X11?  Or Wayland?  What if they write to Wayland and Linux users as a whole decide, "Nah, we don't want that UI on our systems."  Or they could write it to X11 and gamble that it doesn't get abandoned sometime in the near future.

 

Ultimately it's a "how many would we actually sell, and can we support it on that platform?" question MS would have to answer.  Likely, the answer is something along the lines of, "Not many, and probably not."  By and large, Linux users generally don't want to pay for the software they're using.  Now, that's a generalization of course, but it's a valid one.

 

I don't know how many of you remember WordPerfect, but MS Word wasn't always the only word processor out there.  At one point in the early 90s (circa 93-94 or so) WordPerfect had a version of its graphical word processor compiled and linked statically for SCO UNIX (meaning it was written to X11 and Motif).  That statically linked binary could run natively on Linux, too.  So they started selling copies to Linux users.  All... what... 5 or 10 of us that were actually interested in paying for a word processor?  Ultimately, they didn't sell many copies, because, again, most Linux users just don't want to pay for software.

 

[AlTech]

On 1/20/2018 at 8:33 PM, goodtofufriday said:

Way too late for these features. Many small to medium.sized businesses have already switched platforms.

To what?

On 1/20/2018 at 8:33 PM, goodtofufriday said:

Why would anyone retrain people for an application they moved away from and that cost money. 

There is no retraining involved?

 

The only retraining that would happen is if companies moved from Office to something else.

 

And so far Office has the lion's share of the Office suite market.

[suicidalfranco]

About why not port it to Linux, I would rather see MS show their commitment to Linux if the truly "♥️" it by actively contributing to the WINE project than see them port any of their application to the platform

[thorhammerz]

7 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

There is no retraining involved?

 

The only retraining that would happen is if companies moved from Office to something else.

But isn't that what @goodtofufriday is talking about, for the (hypothetical) companies who have migrated to using something other MSOffice?

[goodtofufriday]

16 hours ago, thorhammerz said:

But isn't that what @goodtofufriday is talking about, for the (hypothetical) companies who have migrated to using something other MSOffice?

Indeed. Small companies and some medium have moved to googles platform entirely