Office 365

I have office 2016 and the apps take about 3-5 seconds to open the first time

I usually leave them running if I am working using those at all -

How much RAM do you have on that machine? What year is it?

Can you go to https://etrecheck.com download, run and post the report please?

I have a base model (4GB) 2012 MacBook Air and Office 2016 (via Office 365 subscription) and the apps open in 5 - 7 seconds the first time. I also frequently leave them running.

Ah! not meaning to dampen your enthusiasm for all things Apple but the 2016 edition of Word has some really nice features as well

I was reading some older posts about users lamenting about some losses from Pages 05 to 09 to 11 when I think Apple officially stopped calling it iWork

You are welcome to switch and also request for help but it may be prudent to do your due diligence as well

The significant loss of features with the "upgrade" from Pages '09 is what convinced me to leave Pages/Numbers after using them for about 2 years. As much as anything else, that upgrade made me not trust having all of my documents stored in that format wondering what might happen next.

Another alternative is https://www.libreoffice.org/

This begs a question: when going "off the grid" and using locally installed programs, is Office:Mac 2016 100% compatible with Office:Mac 2011 at all documents level?

We have an Academic Campus Agreement with Microsoft, so have access and rights-to-use to all Office versions (Mac and PC) but I have abstained from going to 2016 yet.

Courcoul wrote:

This begs a question: when going "off the grid" and using locally installed programs, is Office:Mac 2016 100% compatible with Office:Mac 2011 at all documents level?

We have an Academic Campus Agreement with Microsoft, so have access and rights-to-use to all Office versions (Mac and PC) but I have abstained from going to 2016 yet.

Yes - I used Office for Mac 2011 -and those documents are backwards compatible the funny thing is - when one tries to save it offers a unique format .docdocx - I have some individuals who send me documents that save with .doc - this overcomes any difficulty they have in opening my replies / revisions

Apologies to OP for potential thread jacking - Courcoul and FoxFifth - if you would like we can start our own thread to discuss - happy to if there is need

I began using Office 2016 this past summer while it was still in beta and found no document incompatibilities with Word or PowerPoint which I have used extensively. I’m less certain about Excel because my Mac Excel usage is limited to small lightweight documents. The extensive macro capability of Office on Windows has kept me using Excel on Windows more than I might like simply because Excel macros just don’t cross over between Windows and Mac well even though Microsoft claims (I think truthfully) that 2016 is more Win/Mac compatible than ever before.

It is my understanding that Office:Mac 2016 interfaces seamlessly with the online Office365 Microsoft product, so you can construct and continue developing documents in either platform and which will remain in sync. Very convenient if you're caught out somewhere far from your Mac and need to access or modify your documents. Please confirm and/or detail how, given I've kept from 2016 thus far. Also, would this include access via the iOS version of Office or does that need a separate subscription?

All this should be of interest to the OP as well and somehow converge the thread back to its beginning.

Sorry Courcoul -

1. Office 2016 for Mac does not allow for iOS versions of the softwre

2. Office 365 allows one to download and use iOS versions - it immediately asks for the Office 365 account credentials

3. You do not need Office 365 per se to modify the documents away from the Mac - if you have access to the documents - you can do it in OneDrive - it has the apps built in just like iCloud had Pages and Keynote - although I have not personally tried editing or modifying an Excel for Mac document with OneDrive excel yet

4. Office 365 does net one a 1 TB storage space on OneDrive - plain ol' OneDrive without Office 365 is 5 GB

The iOS versions of Word and Excel are free for anyone whether or not they are subscribing to Office 365 or using any other Microsoft product.

However on the 12.7" iPad Pro (and only on that iOS device) a subscription is needed to create and edit documents. On all other iOS devices virtually all features are available free. The following lists the features that are not available without a subscriptions: https://products.office.com/en-us/office-resources#ios-features-section