Microsoft is now delivering its office suite for Macs as a universal app that is designed for both Intel processors and new Macs with “Apple Silicon”. Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote should run faster on Macs with Apple’s M1 chip and benefit fully from the performance improvements, emphasized Microsoft. The updates can be obtained from AutoUpdate or the Mac App Store – depending on which source the Office apps come from.

So far, already use the Office apps on ARM Macs with the help of the Rosetta translation layer. For now, this remains the only way to get Microsoft Teams running on the M1 Macs. A universal version of the team communication tool is in progress, the manufacturer emphasized, and an expected release date will be given later when work on it has progressed.

Outlook with iCloud support Microsoft 365 considers further innovations to be Mac users ready: Outlook now supports Apple’s iCloud to synchronize e-mails, contacts and calendars. The function is to be activated gradually over the coming weeks, says Microsoft. The user interface of the Office apps has been redesigned in recent months in order to prepare it for macOS 11 Big Sur. The new version of “Office Start” will be made available in January.

Excel users can now take photos of a table with the iPhone and use them directly in the spreadsheet on the Mac – Apple’s “Camera – Handover “supported. A new dictation bar for Word and Outlook will enable extended voice control and also help with text correction, for example, and the writing assistance tool Microsoft Editor will be integrated into the Mac version of Word – this is intended for participants in the Insider program from the beginning 2021 will be introduced.

At the beginning of next year Outlook on the Mac will also support shared calendars and Word will get a new, improved comment function.

Problems with Word The new Word version 16. 44 showed in a short test in the Mac & i editorial team both an M1- as well as an Intel-Mac problems when working with very long documents, when scrolling in the print layout of hundreds of pages there were disruptive dropouts, which with version 16. 43 does not occur – not even on ARM Macs. As a precaution, Word users can save the old version before the update so that they can continue to use it in the event of a problem.

(lbe)