Stand-alone Microsoft Office 2019 for Mac preview arrives for enterprise customers

AppleInsider · June 12, 2018 6:07PM

Microsoft on Tuesday issued a new preview of the next Office for Mac, intended only for commercial clients in its volume purchase program.

Some improvements across Office 2019 for Mac include a roaming pencil case and ribbon customizations. Word-specific improvements include a Focus mode, while PowerPoint now has 4K video export, Morph transitions, and in-click sequencing. Outlook offers a "focused" inbox, and finally Excel includes new charts and functions.

These features are already available to Office 365 ProPlus subscribers, but have been missing in the "perpetual," non-cloud versions of Office for Mac.

Among IT-directed upgrades are command-line tools for central control Office updates, and compatibility with standard mobile device management policies. The software was recently integrated with Jamf Pro, for instance.

The Commercial Preview includes only the desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote, not iPhone or iPad apps, which require an Office 365 subscription.

Office 2019 for Mac is supported on the two most recent versions of macOS. When a new version of macOS is released, Office 2019 for Mac's Operating System requirement becomes the then-current two most recent versions at that time: the new version of macOS and the previous version. Office 2019 for Mac and Office 2016 for Mac cannot run concurrently on either Windows or Mac.

The finished suite is due to launch sometime in the second half of 2018.

dkhaley · June 12, 2018 6:24PM

Yay! Morphing. 😣. How about fixing the bugs that have persisted in Excel and VBA for years?

Maybe waterfall charts should allow us to define our own color scheme (without having to edit each column individually).

Or you could allow VBA to change conditional formatting on a protected sheet when the userinterfaceonly option is enabled.

Or you could support try … catch

but hey … morphing! That should stop people from presenting bloated PowerPoint presentations!

nunzy · June 12, 2018 7:51PM

This is a slap in the face to all other Mac users. Disgusting. Typical Microsoft.

billearl · June 12, 2018 8:20PM

Complete VBA, or keep it and I'll continue with Excel 2011. I bought Office 2016 and never used it.

edited June 2018

aegean · June 12, 2018 11:22PM

I bought Office 2016 both Mac and Windows versions under HUP home user licencing programme with my employer for $10 each when it was released. And I am not willing to pay anything more than $10 for 2019 versions as well. It's a shame the way Mac version behaves even in simple mail merge, they are not advancing Mac version at all compared to their Win platform. I really wish if Apple adds at least mail merge feature in their Numbers and Pages.

edited June 2018

zoetmb · June 12, 2018 11:52PM

Well this sucks and I think Microsoft is leaving money on the table. I would love to upgrade my standalone Microsoft Office 2011 to a new version, but it has to be a standalone version. And I'd be willing to pay a decent price for it, like maybe up to $120 including Outlook. I'd pay a little more if it would sync to iCloud. If they don't do something soon, I'm probably going to abandon Office and just use the Apple apps instead, especially now that I don't generally need to exchange files with people anymore.

When I was still consulting, we had Office 360 in the office and it was always doing some strange flukey thing.

davidh2016 · June 13, 2018 3:34AM

aegean said:

I bought Office 2016 both Mac and Windows versions under HUP home user licencing programme with my employer for $10 each when it was released. And I am not willing to pay anything more than $10 for 2019 versions as well. It's a shame the way Mac version behaves even in simple mail merge, they are not advancing Mac version at all compared to their Win platform. I really wish if Apple adds at least mail merge feature in their Numbers and Pages.

I agree with your mail merge features comment. I have basically transitioned to Apple’s Numbers and Pages. However, I still need mail merge and for that I use Office. If Apple supported a robust mail merge, I’d be finished with Microsoft Office entirely.

lowededwookie · June 13, 2018 11:45AM

davidh2016 said:

aegean said:

I bought Office 2016 both Mac and Windows versions under HUP home user licencing programme with my employer for $10 each when it was released. And I am not willing to pay anything more than $10 for 2019 versions as well. It's a shame the way Mac version behaves even in simple mail merge, they are not advancing Mac version at all compared to their Win platform. I really wish if Apple adds at least mail merge feature in their Numbers and Pages.

aegean said:

I bought Office 2016 both Mac and Windows versions under HUP home user licencing programme with my employer for $10 each when it was released. And I am not willing to pay anything more than $10 for 2019 versions as well. It's a shame the way Mac version behaves even in simple mail merge, they are not advancing Mac version at all compared to their Win platform. I really wish if Apple adds at least mail merge feature in their Numbers and Pages.

I agree with your mail merge features comment. I have basically transitioned to Apple’s Numbers and Pages. However, I still need mail merge and for that I use Office. If Apple supported a robust mail merge, I’d be finished with Microsoft Office entirely.

https://iworkautomation.com/pages/script-tags-data-merge.html

Might help. It’s not built in but AppleScript to the rescue

lopez1k · May 7, 2019 4:49AM

I also agree with the merge features but it seems that the apple will not support robust mail merge, i had to use office anyway.davidh2016 said:

aegean said:

I bought Office 2016 both Mac and Windows versions under HUP home user licencing programme with my employer for $10 each when it was released. And I am not willing to pay anything more than $10 for 2019 versions as well. It's a shame the way Mac version behaves even in simple mail merge, they are not advancing Mac version at all compared to their Win platform. I really wish if Apple adds at least mail merge feature in their Numbers and Pages.

aegean said:

I bought Office 2016 both Mac and Windows versions under HUP home user licencing programme with my employer for $10 each when it was released. And I am not willing to pay anything more than $10 for 2019 versions as well. It's a shame the way Mac version behaves even in simple mail merge, they are not advancing Mac version at all compared to their Win platform. I really wish if Apple adds at least mail merge feature in their Numbers and Pages.

I agree with your mail merge features comment. I have basically transitioned to Apple’s Numbers and Pages. However, I still need mail merge and for that I use Office. If Apple supported a robust mail merge, I’d be finished with Microsoft Office entirely.

Stand-alone Microsoft Office 2019 for Mac preview arrives for enterprise customers

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