Applies to: Office for Mac, Office 2019 for Mac, Office 2016 for Mac. To use Office for Mac in your organization, it needs to be activated. How you activate Office for Mac depends on whether your organization has an Office 365 (or Microsoft 365) plan or has a volume license agreement.

• Office 2016 for Mac license. If you choose to upgrade to Microsoft 365 or Office 2019 for Mac, you'll simply need to remove the existing Office 2016 for Mac license, but you won't need to remove your Office apps. Download and run the License Removal Tool.
• Office 2016 and Office 2019 connections to Microsoft 365 services will be supported until October 2023. Note: Office 2019 is the latest version of Office available as a one-time purchase. Microsoft 365 is designed to work with the latest browsers and versions of Office.

Today’s post was written by Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office 365 Client Apps and Services team.

Today is a big day for the Mac community–we’re excited to announce that a preview of the new Office 2016 for Mac is now officially available! Click here to give it a try and please send us your feedback.

Office 2016 for Mac is powered by the cloud so you can access your documents on OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint at anytime, anywhere and on any device.

Cloud connected with OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint.

Similar to our recent announcements of universal Office apps for Windows 10 and Office for Android tablet, Office 2016 for Mac shares an unmistakably Office experience–but it is also thoughtfully designed to take advantage of the unique features of the Mac. The new apps offer full retina display support with thousands of retina-optimized graphics, full screen view for native immersive experiences, and even little Mac affordances like scroll bounce. While there are too many new features to cover in a single blog post, here’s a quick overview of a few of the highlights.

Office 2016 for Mac—an exciting step forward

The new Office 2016 for Mac includes updated versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook–and the moment you open any one of the apps, you’ll immediately feel the difference. We’ve modernized the user experience and made it easier to get things done. The redesigned ribbon intuitively organizes features so you can quickly find what you need quickly. A refreshed task pane interface makes positioning, resizing, or rotating graphics easy so you can create exactly the layout you want. And new themes and styles help you pull it all together to produce stunning, professional documents.

Word—create, polish and share beautiful documents

Word’s state of the art editing, reviewing and sharing tools make authoring and polishing documents easy. The design tab allows you to manage layout, colors and fonts across a document, and the navigation pane helps you refine the document structure and efficiently navigate to points of interest. Threaded comments turn editing cycles into conversations, so you spend less time trying to connect the dots.

Navigation pane

Excel—analyze and visualize your data in new and intuitive ways

With the new features in Excel, you’ll be telling your data’s story in no time. Charts, graphs, keyboard shortcuts and data entry enhancements (like formula builder and autocomplete) immediately make you more productive. And support for Excel 2013 (for Windows) functions ensures that you can easily share files across platforms. The new Analysis ToolPak offers a wide range of statistical functions, including moving averages and exponential smoothing, and PivotTable Slicers help you cut through large volumes of data to find patterns that answer questions.

Formula builder

PowerPoint—create, collaborate and effectively present your ideas

Walk into your next presentation with complete confidence. PowerPoint’s new Presenter View is like mission control for your presentation–displaying the current slide, the next slide, notes and a timer on your Mac, while projecting only the presentation to your audience on the big screen. A new animation pane helps you build your presentation faster, and new slide transitions ensures the finished product is polished and professional.

Presenter View

Outlook—enjoy a mail experience that works fast and looks great

Managing your email has never been easier. The recently released Outlook for Mac is also a part of the preview suite and uses push mail support to deliver an always-up-to-date inbox. The improved conversation view automatically organizes your inbox around threaded conversations, so you’ll never hunt for related messages again. And the new message preview gives 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.

Conversation view

Office 365 For Mac Trial

OneNote—harness your thoughts in your very own digital notebook

Never forget again with OneNote. Capture, organize and share your ideas with digital notebooks that you can access on any device. Use tags like “To Do” or “Important” or “Question” to add structure to your notes, and find things quickly with a powerful search engine that tracks your tags, indexes your typed notes and uses OCR to recognize text in images and handwritten notes.

Tag your notes.

This March 25th Office Mechanics show includes an end-to-end demo of Office 2016 for Mac Preview.

Download the apps today!

As you can see, there’s a lot packed into this preview release, and we’re excited to share it with the world. It’s not only full of new and improved features, it’s another proof point of our commitment to cross-platform support and a consistent experiences across devices. Unmistakably Office, but thoughtfully designed for the Mac.

But don’t take our word for it: Download the apps today and tell us what you think by sending us a smile from the top right of your app screen! We’re looking forward to hearing from the Mac community and will use the feedback to finalize the product for release later this summer.

— Kirk Koenigsbauer

This article applies to: Central IT Service Group (CITSG) Support, Office 365 Productivity Bundle

Microsoft Office Home And Business 2016 For Mac Office 365

What to Expect During the Installation

Starting the Office 365 upgrade process manually

Use these steps if you prefer to start the upgrade process manually, rather than waiting for your system to upgrade automatically after the deadline.

Upgrade Office 2016 For Mac To Office 365

1. Open Self Service and click Microsoft Office – Activate Office 365 Version Self Service.
   
2. Click Activate O365.
   
3. The activation may take 1-2 minutes to complete.

4. The next time an Office application is opened, it will prompt you either to activate the product or to sign in immediately.
   • If you are prompted to activate the product when an Office app is opened:
     1. Click Activate in the yellow activation warning bar.
        
     2. Click the Sign in link at the bottom of the activation window.
        
     3. Log in using your Cornell NetID and password.
     4. The Office application will no longer display the yellow activation warning bar.
        
   • If you are prompted to sign in when opening an Office app:
     1. At the Microsoft Sign in window, type your NetID in the field labeled Email, phone, or Skype, then click Next.
        
     2. Log in using your Cornell NetID and password. The Office application should open normally.
        
5. To confirm your activated Office 365 license in any Office application, click the application name in the Menu bar, then click About. The license type should read “Office 365 Subscription.”
   

What to Expect After the Upgrade

• Dock shortcut icons
  For any Office applications that were in the Mac Dock, you will need to add them again to the Dock. (To do this, open the app to make its icon appear again in the Dock. Control-click the app’s icon, then choose Options > Keep in Dock.)
• Your Office 365 Subscription
  This Office installation will count toward the five total installations that you are allowed through Cornell’s Office 365 licensing. When you launch any Microsoft application in the suite, you will be automatically logged in based on your Mac login. (The assumption is that you are using an Active Directory-bound system.)
• OneDrive for Business
  If you still use OneDrive for Business, be aware that it will not be re-installed with Office 365. We recommend you use the OneDrive app moving forward. For more information, see Sync files with the OneDrive sync client on Mac OS X.
• If your upgrade fails
  In the unlikely event that your Office upgrade fails, leaving your system without Office applications installed locally, please submit a ticket to CIT Desktop Support immediately.
  Until your upgrade issue is resolved, use the web-based Office applications. Log in to the Office site, then click the Apps icon in the upper left-hand corner to open a menu of available web-based Office apps.

What to Expect from Future Office Updates

• Release Notes
  Release notes for each version and channel can be found on the following pages:
• Regular Office Updates
  Once the upgrade has been rolled out, users will be on a 'monthly channel.' This means new feature updates will be released monthly for the product. For details, see Overview of update channels for Office 365 ProPlus. Unlike previous Microsoft Office updates which users received as part of 'Patch Tuesdays,' these Office 365 client updates require the apps to be closed prior to starting the update.