Microsoft has announced today that the Mac Preview is now open to everyone and if you want to try out the new bits, hit the source link at the bottom of this post. This is the first large update for Office on OS X in many years as the last major release was in 2011. This release of Office comes with updated versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook. As soon as you open the apps, you will notice that the UI has been refined, there is a new task pane and a bunch of other tweaks to modernize the platform. And being on a Mac, the app suite does support the Retina display too. If you want to see all of the features that are new, you can check out the feature page. As with all other previews, Microsoft is letting consumers download and try out the new productivity suite today free of charge.

The company is looking for feedback as well; you can send feedback from inside the app with the smiley face in the top right corner of each app. It's important to point out that Office 2016 for Mac Preview is supported only on the latest version of Mac OS X: Yosemite (10.10).

Microsoft Office 2016 Preview Available For Mac Update

Also, if you currently have Office 2011 installed, these apps can be used alongside the older Office apps. The download weighs in at over 2.5GB and takes up roughly 6GB of space once installed; plan accordingly if you don't have much free space on your machine.

And as always with preview software, there could be bugs, features that are broken and the like, so make sure you take this into consideration before using the tools in a production environment.

Microsoft announced a preview version of. The release is the first major update to Office for Mac suite since Office for Mac 2011. The new suite is by all Mac users running OS X Yosemite, and will be free to use during the preview period.: 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. Office 2016 is Microsoft’s next step in its plan to make Office products available on any device, anywhere, anytime. The suite works with Office 365, and OneDrive, Microsoft’s cloud storage service. Office 2016’s new versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are redesigned with Retina-optimized interfaces, and new features with a heavy emphasis on collaboration and cloud integration.

While an Office 365 account is not required to use the preview edition of Office 2016 for Mac, Microsoft says users will get the best experience with the suite of apps if they are signed into Office 365, as it will allow them to access all of their documents on all of their devices. Current users of Microsoft Office 2011 will be glad to know they can use the Office 2016 for Mac preview version alongside the 2011 version. Microsoft Word features new editing, reviewing and sharing tools, and a design tab that allows you to manage layout, colors and fonts across your document.

The navigation pane helps you refine the document structure and efficiently navigate the document. Microsoft Excel offers charts, graphs, keyboard shortcuts and data entry enhancements, along with support for Excel 2013 for Windows functions that allows you to 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. Microsoft PowerPoint brings a new Presenter View to the table, displaying the current slide, the next slide, notes and a timer on your Mac, while showing only the presentation to your audience on a big screen. A new animation pane, and new slide transitions are also included.

Is also included, and its improved conversation view automatically organizes your inbox around threaded conversations. Outlook’s new message preview gives you the first sentence of an email just below the subject line so you can quickly decide if and when you want to read the entire email. Microsoft OneNote allows users to capture, organize and share ideas via digital notebooks that can be accessed on any device. Tags like “To Do,” “Important,” or “Question” can be used to to add structure to notes. A search engine tracks your tags, indexes typed notes and even uses OCR to recognize text in images and handwritten notes. For more information about the preview release of Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac, or you can download the preview version of the suite from the.