MS Office Suite

We just bought a new MacBook Air, and need to procure MS Office. All my many years of experience have been with PCs. I was told that only Office 365 and Office 2016 can be used. If so what did the earlier Macs and MacBooks use? Can I use any earlier versions of Office for MAc? 2007? 2011? 2013? I assume whatever I install it will need to be from a download or Thumb Drive. Thanks for responding.

Welcome to the Mac-Forums.

Your new MacBook Air can run Office 365 (subscription only), Office 2016 (download only from MS), Office 2011 (CD), or even Office 2008 (CD). There is no Office 2007, or 2013 for the Mac; only for the PC. Right now Office 2016 is currently on sale from several on line sellers. The Home and student version is the least expensive and consists of Word, PP, Excel, and OneNote. The single install version can be purchased from Amazon. Office 2016 stand alone is only sold as a Product ID card bundled in a box. You have to download the suite from MS with your Product ID.

Two things:

1. You may not actually need Microsoft Office at all. There are plenty of substitutes -- most of them work rather differently, but they are all highly capable and compatible with MS Office. There's Apple's own Pages software (roughly like Word), Numbers (barely like Excel, but covers the same basic concepts), and Keynote (superior to PowerPoint in my opinion). There's the free LibreOffice or OpenOffice. There are individual word processors and alternative spreadsheet programs and alternative presentation programs (Mariner Write, Mariner Calc, and Fotomagico, respectively, among others).

2. Office 2016 is highly recommended if you must use Office, as its the best version the company has put out in at least a decade. It can be purchased as a standalone or as a "subscription" model (which works out considerably cheaper, particularly if you also take advantage of the free cloud storage). As Charlie notes it is possible to run an older version of MS Office on your Mac, but it will simply go obsolete/non-functional more quickly.

Yep, and if you are running El Capitan OS 10.11 you may find MS Office for Mac OS 2011 on special somewhere due to the release of the 2016 edition. I am doing just that and currently the best price Office for Mac 2011 Home & Student -Family Pack – installs on 3 computers $107.99.
But bear in mind that Microsoft claims the new Office suite for mac is designed to take full advantage of the new features of OS 10.11 such as split screen for example so if you are a power user the 2011 package may not be the best option for you.

I have Office for Mac 2011. I would avoid that version as it is terrible. As for 2016, I would look into the Home Use program. Depending on who you work for, you may be able to get a full copy for as little as $10 (as I did because a DOD ".mil" email address qualified for it).

I have Office for Mac 2011. I would avoid that version as it is terrible.

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Your opinion only. Mac Office 2011 according to the MS MVPs and many of us who use it daily, is the best suite available right now. Office 2016 is still buggy even after several updates from MS and does not have near the configurable ability that Office 2011 has. I have both Office 2011 and 2016 and there is no doubt that 2011 is many times better.

I haven't used 2016 yet but the bugs in 2011 and the vast differences from the Windows version drives me nuts. Maybe I'm expecting too much.

Well, although 2016 is much more in line with the current PC version, they ARE different platforms that do some things fundamentally differently, so there will always be differences.

Bugs? What bugs?

If you keep Office 2011 up to date, currently version 14.5.9, it is great and rock steady and by far the best suite.

I understand that Office 2011 comes on CD. How would I install it on a MacBook Air?

Probably a DVD, actually, but you'd get an external DVD reader and plug it in to the USB port, or you'd use the AirDisc capability to connect to another Mac's built-in DVD burner if you have one. There may also be a legal download option, I wouldn't know about that however.

lrd said:

I haven't used 2016 yet but the bugs in 2011 and the vast differences from the Windows version drives me nuts. Maybe I'm expecting too much.

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There aren't any bugs in Mac Office 2011 and there are really no "vast" differences from the Windows version. I also have Windows Office 2010 and yes there are some differences but not vast as you state. You just need to get used to doing things the Mac way. Perhaps you didn't know but MS Word and MS Excel were originally written for the Mac before versions appeared for Windows some years later.

No bugs in Office 11? I'll throw one out from memory. Excel conditional formatting won't let you set a "clear" cell on condition. White yes, but not clear. There's a button to clear all but it doesn't work. Works just fine in the PC version. That's a feature I use a lot, so I often dump the file to the virtual windows machine on my Mac, fix it, then return it. Shouldn't have to do that...

Or how about the inability to display the print area in excel. Also very annoying to have to set it and trust that you got it right because you can't check it after the fact.

I could go on but...

No bugs in 2011. Sigh...

I'm afraid I must concur. "No bugs" indeed. This IS a Microsoft product we're talking about, Charlie!!

You can find "bugs" in any program including those from Apple. But it seems member "Ird" doesn't like Office 2011 and like I stated above, that's his opinion. And by the way... Office 2011 does not come on DVD, it comes on a single CD with the product code enclosed in the jacket for activation. Office 2016 stand alone is shipped in a box that only contains the product ID on a card. The buyer is then required to download the suite from Microsoft using the product ID that came in the box.