Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office Client Applications and Services team said “Today we are taking a big step forward for Mac® users—Office 2016 for Mac is now available in 139 countries and 16 languages. Based on feedback from the great Mac Office community, we’ve made major updates to each of the apps, and we couldn’t be more pleased to deliver it first to our Office 365 customers.”

Unmistakably Office, designed for Mac

The new versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote provide the best of both worlds for Mac users—the familiar Office experience paired with the best of Mac.

If you already use Office on a PC or iPad, you will find yourself right at home in Office 2016 for Mac. It works the way you expect, with the familiar ribbon interface and powerful task panes. Mac users will appreciate the modernized Office experience and the integration of Mac capabilities like Full Screen view and Multi-Touch^TM gestures. With full Retina® display support, your Office documents look sharper and more vibrant than ever.

Office for Mac is cloud-connected, so you can quickly get to the documents you’ve recently used on other devices and pick up where you left off. New, built-in document sharing tools make it easy to invite teammates to work on a document together. When sharing documents, you won’t have to worry about losing content or formatting, as Office for Mac offers unparalleled compatibility with Office on PCs, tablets, phones and online.

Five modern, first-class applications

Word for Mac—Word’s powerful writing and reviewing tools make it easy to create great-looking documents. The new Design tab lets you easily apply designer-quality layouts, colors and fonts throughout your document. You can work on the same document simultaneously with your teammates and use threaded comments to have a conversation right next to the corresponding text.

Excel for Mac—The new Excel for Mac helps you visualize your information by recommending charts best suited for your data with chart previews. Familiar keyboard shortcuts, autocomplete and an improved formula builder save you time when creating spreadsheets or entering data. For deeper analysis, new PivotTable Slicers help you filter large volumes of data and discover patterns.

PowerPoint for Mac—PowerPoint’s improved Presenter View gives you full control when you present by showing you the current slide, next slide, speaker notes and a timer on your Mac screen, while the audience only sees your presentation on the big screen. The new animation pane helps you design and fine-tune animations, and the latest set of slide transitions add polish to your presentations.

Outlook for Mac—Managing your email, calendar, contacts and tasks has never been easier. The new Outlook for Mac has push mail support so your inbox is always up-to-date. The improved conversation view automatically organizes your inbox around threaded conversations, so you won’t have to hunt for related messages. And the new message preview shows you the first sentence of an email just below the subject line so you can quickly decide if you want to read it now or come back later.

OneNote for Mac—OneNote is the newest addition to Office for Mac. You can capture your ideas in digital notebooks and access them on any device. Find things quickly with the OneNote search engine that tracks your tags, indexes your typed notes and recognizes text in images and handwritten notes. Bold, italicize, underline or highlight notes, insert files, pictures and tables and organize your notes however you want. You can also share notebooks with friends, family or colleagues so everyone can work together on travel plans, household tasks or work projects.

Made better by Mac users

The customer participation in Office for Mac preview since its launch in March exceeded expectations, making it largest Office for Mac beta ever. Thanks to everyone who participated in the preview program and helped improve the product.

Mac preview participants provided with over 100,000 pieces of feedback. Based on this feedback, Office released seven updates in four months with significant improvements in performance and stability. Also added features like improved Mail Merge in Word, Propose New Time in Outlook and support for External Data Connections in Excel.

And the best news is that Office for Mac will continue to see ongoing improvements over time. With released updates and new features for Office 365 customers at least once per quarter.

Available today for Office 365 customers

Office 365 subscribers can get the newest version of Office for Mac today. All you need is an Office 365 subscription (Office 365 Home, Personal, Business, Business Premium, E3 or ProPlus), which includes the rights and access to use Office applications on Mac, Windows, iOS and Android devices, along with additional value in OneDrive and Skype.

Here are a few different ways to get Office 2016 for Mac today:

• Already an Office 365 customer? On your Mac, just browse to your account page (office.com/myaccount), sign in and follow the installation instructions. If you have Office 365 through your organization, go to portal.office.com/OLS/MySoftware.aspx.
• Are you a student? You may get Office 2016 for Mac for free or at a substantial discount. It takes only 30 seconds to find out at office.com/student.
• Otherwise, go to office.com/mac or buy an Office 365 subscription at your local retailer.

Office 2016 for Mac will become available as a one-time purchase option this September.

We hope you’re as excited as we are about the new Office for Mac. It’s one of many important releases this summer. “We released Word, Excel and PowerPoint for Android phones just two weeks ago, which join Outlook and OneNote for Android phones, and we are just weeks away from delivering Office Mobile apps for Windows 10.” said Kirk Koenigsbauer

Have questions?

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For those infatuated with the 11-inch MacBook Air’s svelte form factor but still tethered to Windows, I’ve got two nice alternatives that are worth considering: The Sony Vaio X1 and the Acer Timeline X. I’ve put together a gallery of unboxing and product photos of both machines, along with some comparison shots next to the 11-inch MacBook Air.

While the Sony Vaio X1 and the Acer Timeline X are both worthy competitors to the 11-inch MacBook Air, they are two very different machines that will appeal to different sets of users. Here’s my quick take on the two of them.

Sony Vaio X1

Sony is known for its stylish PC hardware, but it often comes at a premium price tag — similar to Apple. However, in this case, the 11-inch MacBook Air and the Sony Vaio X1 have similar price tags to the Acer Timeline X. All three systems have a base price of roughly $1000. At that price, the three of them have remarkably different hardware profiles.

The Sony Vaio is the lightest of the three machines, and it’s also the most lightly powered. It runs a 2.0GHz Intel Atom processor, the same one that powers many netbooks (compared to the speedier 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo that powers the 11-inch MacBook Air). Here are some of the additional specs of the model we tested (VPCX131KX/B):

•2GB of RAM
•11.1-inch display with LED backlight and 1366×768 resolution
•Integrated Intel graphics
•64GB of flash storage
•2 USB ports, VGA port, Ethernet port, SD card slot
•3 hours of battery life (standard battery) or 12 hours battery life (expanded battery)
•Weighs 1.6 pounds (with standard battery)

The Vaio X1 is even a little smaller than the 11-inch MacBook Air. A business professional could easily slip it into a padfolio. Its portability and weight (or lack thereof) are its greatest assets, and it’s a solid machine for email, Web, and basic business apps. The tradeoffs are that it’s not a very fast or powerful machine and it feels a little overpriced for what you get.

My other concern with this machine is durability. Unlike the MacBook Air, which is made almost entirely of aluminum, the Sony Vaio X1 is totally plastic and not an especially durable blend. That makes it light, but also makes it feel very flimsy. I had the sense that I could have almost broken it in half with my bare hands if I twisted it hard enough.

Still, if you’re not too concerned about performance and you need a super-portable system, then the Vaio X1 is pretty impressive and worth a look.

Acer Timeline X

The Acer Timeline X can’t match Sony or Apple for style or thinness, but it packs a lot more power under the hood. The model we tested (1830T-68U118) was running an Intel Core i7 processor (1.46GHz) and offered very zippy performance for just about any task. The rest of the specs for the Timeline X included:

•4GB of RAM
•11.6-inch display with LED backlight and 1366×768 resolution
•Integrated Intel graphics
•500 GB hard disk storage
•3 USB ports, VGA port, HDMI port, Ethernet port, SD card slot
•8 hours of battery life

The Timeline X can keep up with a lot of desktop machines. It’s that fast. This is the system for someone who needs to pack a lot of performance but wants to do it in as small a package as possible. The Timeline X is certainly a little more heavy and bulky than the MacBook Air of the Vaio X1, but it is far smaller than most of the other laptops in its power class.

My beefs with the Timeline X are mostly qualitative. The touchpad is just too small to be very useful. The 11-inch MacBook Air is literally about three times the size of the Timeline X — and although I’m not a fan of touchpads in general, the one on the Air is one of the few that are useful in a pinch. With the Timeline X, make sure you have a good notebook mouse and plan to use it most of the time. On a related note, the keyboard on the Timeline X is not great either. The keys are huge but they are very close together, which makes it easy to hit the wrong key. The keys are also stiff and shallow, which isn’t very friendly for typing. This is one of the main areas where the Timeline X doesn’t match up very well with the MacBook Air, and to a lesser extent, the Sony Vaio X1.

However, if you want a lot of power in a small package and you want it to run Windows, the Timeline X is one of your best bets.

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