Microsoft Launches Office 2019 For Windows and Mac (theverge.com) 143
Microsoft is releasing Office 2019 for Windows and Mac today. The update is designed for businesses and consumers that haven't opted into Microsoft's Office 365 service with monthly feature updates. The Verge: Office 2019 is essentially a subset of features that have been added to Office 365 over the past three years, and it includes updates to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Project, Visio, Access, and Publisher. Office 2019 will include a roaming pencil case and ribbon customizations across all Office apps. Microsoft is also bringing focus mode to Word, alongside a new translator, and accessibility improvements. Morph transitions, SVG and 3D model support, play in-click sequence, and 4k video export are all coming to PowerPoint. According to VentureBeat, which cites a Microsoft executive, the new versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook won't receive future updates.
Re: I can understand being locked in on a PC offic (Score:2)
Well, for years office for Mac was developed by an independent team and was widely considered to be a better product than office for pc. But donâ(TM)t let that get in the way of having a rant!
Whilst much of what Microsoft does may not be to everyoneâ(TM)s taste, itâ(TM)s a multi faceted company and to generalise would be wrong. Back when windows 95 was a piece of shit and I was starting to run Linux, I still used a Microsoft natural keyboard and intellimouse because they were great.
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Your email system has a quota?
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What planet do you live on that Office for hte Mac was "widely considered to be a better product" clearly not someone who has had to support Office for the Mac professionally on 100s of Macs. This statement made me audibly guffaw and laugh
Probably depends on how far back you've been doing that. Compared to the horror that was Word 6, Office 98 for Mac was freaking amazeballs and many contemporaneous reviews pointed out that it had more core features than Office 97 (except for some Windows-specific OLE stuff and PC-only apps) and supported various Mac technologies on a first-class basis rather than through slow emulation layers.
On top of that, in a time when Installers (especially Windows-port Installers) were ungodly wizard affairs, a true s
Re:I can understand being locked in on a PC office (Score:4, Insightful)
One word: Enterprise.
Fortune 500 companies are not homogeneous. They run Windows AND Macs. Having documents with cross-platform support is a no brainer requirement regardless of how bad MS enforces Stockholm Syndrome.
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But what kind of retarded sadist would open themselves up to Microsoft's chicanery on a Mac?
The same moron who insists on bringing a Mac to work in a company with a Windows-based infrastructure.
As a single example, I support a number of travel agencies in Canada. The software used for booking airline reservations requires Windows. I'm not saying this is good or bad, it is simply a fact. Agents who insist on using a Mac are forced to run an emulated instance of Windows.
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No (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft launches yet another all-grey cannot-discern-anything UI abomination.
FTFY.
Compare Office 2019 [wikimedia.org] to the last sane version of ribbonized Office, which was 2010 [wikimedia.org].
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I'm going to go with Office 2007 for the last "sane" one.
Although the ribbon was when I dumped Office for Openoffice. It made me realize "why am I even paying for this?"
Finally (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Finally (Score:1)
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So what? Still the same as 20 years ago. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not like the last >20-30 years brought any meaningful changes, let alone changes that anyone actually uses.
It's gonna be a UI design change (for the worse), to trick you into feeling like something changed, a few trinkets here and there, and of course the hefty load of "cloud AI $buzzword digital assistant $buzzword" spyware that is "all the rage" among true psychopaths nowadays.
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> It's gonna be a UI design change (for the worse)
I hope not but knowing MS they will fuck it up.
The *only* positive I can see that on macOS you get BOTH the menu bar AND the ribbon bar -- at least on with the previous version 16.x. Did MS screw that up?
Still using Office 2010 (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm still on Office 2010. I don't understand the point of these "upgrades" (Google just did the same thing to gmail). Basically all they do is make me re-learn an interface I'm already comfortable and in return they introduce zero useful functionality.
I guess a few years ago it was a big innovation to use all caps in the menu headings?
Re:Still using Office 2010 (Score:5, Interesting)
The chief issue my company is facing is contractual requirements of software being sufficiently up to date to receive security updates. In just over 24 months Office 2010 be EOL, meaning we have to upgrade sooner rather than later.
Re: Still using Office 2010 (Score:2)
Baah, Office 2010, you kids and your newfangled toys!
I'm still using 2007, nothing wrong with it!
Sent from my Windows 8 phone , no seriously, this is what I'm sending it from, ok..you can stop laughing now
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I still use Office 2003.
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Office 95 was the last decent version I think. I saw the slow decline start with Office 97.
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And I know the other guy.
To be fair, that goofy Windows 8 "metro" look actually works for a phone despite being gawdawful stupid for a PC.
Re: Still using Office 2010 (Score:2)
Metro on a phone is awesome, its so intuitive with one hand. If MS had left the PC and phone separate and focused on both separately, we might actually have a third alternative.
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This is it in a nutshell.
In the old model, (some) developers would write a decent piece of software that would be outright purchased and the user could continue to get use out of it for the next 10 to 15 years or more; in this scenario, the developer will have practically coded their way out of a job; few new features are ever necessary or even used by 90% of the population (random stat created for poetic emphasis).
With the subscription model, you get locked in and they can justify rewriting the same stuff
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I believe Office 2019 is the final version you can actually buy, where Office 365 is the "nice documents, shame if anything should happen to them" billing model.
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The big innovation is the move from purchasing a license to paying for a subscription. You don't buy the software anymore; you rent it. It's a huge step backwards for the end user but from a revenue standpoint it's a huge step forward for Microsoft. All of the "legacy" desktop software vendors like Adobe and Intuit have been moving in this direction for several years now.
For business users, email will be the driver on this. In the past 4 or 5 years there's been a major trend towards companies outsourcing their mail hosting to either Google G Suite or Microsoft Office 365. If you were paying for volume licences, and software assurance, and now you have Microsoft hosting your email, you might as well take full advantage of licencing the office suite that way.
No idea what that means for small business or consumers.
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I'm still on Office 2010. I don't understand the point of these "upgrades" (Google just did the same thing to gmail). Basically all they do is make me re-learn an interface I'm already comfortable and in return they introduce zero useful functionality.
Dear everyone, please no longer make this point unless you (1) acknowledge the telemetry that showed that the large majority of feature requests were for features that already existed, (2) either accept the hypothesis that the product isn't discoverable enough or provide your own explanation for that telemetry, (3) suggest an approach that would benefit the general bulk of users rather than just you specifically.
Re:Still using Office 2010 (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you please tell me something significant that current Word can do that Word 97 couldn't do?
But yeah, the reason is that Word 97 would open in about 1/4 second flat on any modern machine. That is unacceptable, and means that an upgrade is not needed. Upgrades are the heart and soul of both the hardware and software worlds.
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Open/save XML-based document formats? In reality, the new formats do nothing for you except allow you to open and re-share files created by other people.
Also, Word 97 does not have High DPI support. On the other hand, opening a second document opens in a separate window. So on the whole it's hard to say which is the winner. I don't have a license to Word 97, though.
Native PDF export is also nice, but there are plenty of free PDF-printing alternative options for that.
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Dear everyone, please no longer make this point unless you (1) acknowledge the telemetry that showed that the large majority of feature requests were for features that already existed
Can you please tell me something significant that current Word can do that Word 97 couldn't do?
Something significant the current Word can do that Word 97 couldn't? -- I already wrote it. The answer is that the current Word makes already-existing features discoverable by the bulk of users. Word97 failed to do that. I think it's hugely significant, and one of probably the top ten features of any piece of software ... there's never any point writing software unless users discover and use it.
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There was a version of MS Word that worked on Unix systems and VT100 style terminals in 1987. Word has made features easier to use since then.
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Word 2016 can crash in only half the time it takes Word 97.
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I think you need to reverse that. Word 97 runs much faster and can therefore crash much faster.
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Can you please tell me something significant that current Word can do that Word 97 couldn't do?
Generate a document more than 10 pages long without horribly fucking up the formatting? Seriously there's a lot to complain about on Office, but holding up Word 97 as some great example is like declaring a turd sandwich to be the pinnacle of lunchtime cuisine.
I remember Word 97. I remember file formats that corrupted easily. I remember what was on the display not looking remotely like what came out on the printer. I remember problems adjusting formatting, tables breaking documents. I remember a document ful
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Can you please tell me something significant that current Word can do that Word 97 couldn't do?
But yeah, the reason is that Word 97 would open in about 1/4 second flat on any modern machine. That is unacceptable, and means that an upgrade is not needed. Upgrades are the heart and soul of both the hardware and software worlds.
Word specifically? I'll give a few:
*WordArt can actually produce some visually appealing text effects.
*Though not Acrobat, PDFs can be opened and edited.
*Charts and tables are far easier to format.
*Text wrapping around images is a task with many more options. Also, image editing tools yield far better results.
*Automatic bibliography and citation generation.
*Controversial as the ribbon is, 16x16 toolbar icons would be virtually impossible to use on high res displays.
*Clippy is gone.
*Integrated mail merge tem
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I'm still on Office 2010. I don't understand the point of these "upgrades"
The quotations on "upgrades" are well deserved. My company has been following the latest releases from Microsoft. I've noticed my performance getting worse with every release. Many of the new features are for tighter cloud integration, which causes Office to run slower, especially on slow internet connections. We had some sort of network issue a few weeks ago, and it took Office out with it. The days of working offline are slowly going away.
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2007 SR3 for me. Before that, 2003 and 2K SR3. All worked well for me at home. I also use LibreOffice.
Marketing (Score:2, Funny)
The new features are so revolutionary compared to Office 2016 that the version number 2017 wouldn't do it justice. Neither the version number 2018. We think it deserves a jump ahead by 3 versions. Welcome to Office 2019!
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Now Office is updated once a month. The version number are out of control like Chrome and Firefox. :D
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If this is of any help, 2019 is simply marketing. I've been chatting to the Mac devs for a while, "Office will be called 2019 whenever the marketing team decide to call it 2019". They have only just forked for VL and boxed versions of Office at version 16.6.2, they have released version 16.17 which has no changes in features. Office 16.17 available for O364 subscribers and is still called "2016".
This is the only official notice people had for Mac updating:
"A BIG reminder to everyone that installer divergenc
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They're releasing Office 2019 before it's actually 2019. This means, of course, that Office 2019 will be obsolete before the year 2019 is over.
Office 2010 (Score:2)
Old version still works. Why do i need the new buggy version?
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On Macs, Mojave is the last OS that will support the old 32bit Office2010 versions. At some point you will have to let those old apps die.
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Shut up and do what dear leader Microsoft tells you!
Still hate the ribbon (Score:4, Insightful)
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Latest and probably last perpetual license version (Score:2)
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No, you can use Outlook 2019 to access O365, it's only Office 2016 that will be unable to connect after 10/13/2020 (end of mainstream support for 2016). Outlook 2019 will work until Q4 2024.
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No, you can use Outlook 2019 to access O365, it's only Office 2016 that will be unable to connect after 10/13/2020 (end of mainstream support for 2016). Outlook 2019 will work until Q4 2024.
The February announcement wasn't really clear on that, I'll admit. They made it sound like all perpetual license versions would be barred. Either way, it looks like they backed down on that on September 1, moving the date for 2016 to October 2023.
However they have not walked back the ESED date for 2019. It's still the same date (10/14/2025).
Has Office had a new feature worth buying (Score:2)
Since Office 97?
Seriously?
Re:Has Office had a new feature worth buying (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, Office 2007 upped the max row count for Excel to 2^20 instead of 2^16, Office 2010 get rid of the god awful binary blob format for documents which resulted in about 90% fewer file corruption issues. Outlook has gotten better with each release.
Office 1st rel. 1990 - any notable improvements? (Score:1)
Microsoft have had 27 years to get office in a state where it does exactly what the end-user wants it do to...
Unfortunately they have failed miserably and the entire suite is still a shiny polished turd of limited functionality.
It would seem from my opinion they have never actually had the will power or skill to fix Office or they have never ever spoken to one of the many frustrated end-users.
oh well never mind, all hail the coming of Office 2020!
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Unfortunately they have failed miserably and the entire suite is still a shiny polished turd of limited functionality
An yet it is the most widely used office software that ever has been. Probably makes more money for Microsoft what all their other products combined. If you call this a shiny polished turd of limited functionality, I wonder what your ideal of premium software is.
There actually HAVE been improvements (Score:1)
Over the years, but unless you're a power user, especially in Excel there's no reason to go past 03-07.
There's quite a few things I can do to manipulate data in 2016 that would be much harder or impossible in older versions.
I just wish Libre was on par with those features because I would prefer using that.
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Over the years, but unless you're a power user, especially in Excel there's no reason to go past 03-07.
There's quite a few things I can do to manipulate data in 2016 that would be much harder or impossible in older versions.
I just wish Libre was on par with those features because I would prefer using that.
Mind expounding on which features those are?
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The missing feature in Libre that stops a *lot* of industries from using it is Change Tracking in Word. This is a required feature when dealing with lawyers for patents, most (all?) publishers, etc.
Re: There actually HAVE been improvements (Score:1)
No More OneNote :( (Score:3)
Sad that it is being removed and there really isn't a replacement.
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That pales to the full version and is online only.
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AFAIK OneNote isn't part of Office because it's free now... has been for a while.
Don't use the Windows 10 version though, it's missing probably 50% of the features of the "real" desktop version... it's on par with the Mac version and the web version.
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I know, but there isn't another version. Or not another one I found.
Pay, pay, PAY, AD INFINITUM (Score:2)
Fuck this whole 'software-as-a-service' bullshit, fuck it sideways with a rusty chainsaw, I say.
Re:Pay, pay, PAY, AD INFINITUM (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the new Miscreant-o-sodomite business model: Make everyone pay for everything, forever. Fuck this whole 'software-as-a-service' bullshit, fuck it sideways with a rusty chainsaw, I say.
Lets look at this 'software-as-a-service' for a moment. I'm looking at a quote from amazon for office 2016 pro, which is the version I have in my office 365 subscription. The version of 2016 listed on amazon is $359. I pay $69 a year for my office 365 subscription.
Taking into account a 3 year upgrade cycle, 2016-2019, my cost over those 3 years is $207. So if you are someone that likes to keep their software up to date, and some of us we have to do so because of business reasons, its cheaper to go with office 365. The other perks that M$ tosses in, like the 1 TB of cloud storage and being able to put it on my tablet, and phone are just gravy.
So it clear that if you are in a business that needs to keep your software updated it is better to go with a office 365 subscription.
Now then if you are a home user, a student, or a business that can skip a few upgrade cycles, then the stand along version is a better choice. I mean, really, office 2010 is still perfect software for 95% of everyone out there.
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Renting thing is never cheaper over the long term.
You really should stop using bold in your posts so much. I'm sure I'm not the only one that finds this annoying.
But anyway, this is completely dependent on what you value. i owned a house once. I hated every minute of it. I had to keep my yard cut and the flower beds neat. I was responsible to keep the pool in order. When something broke, I had to fix it or pay to have it fixed.
I rent an apartment now. When I want to go out to the pool, I just go. Grass needs cutting, a hoard of immigrant labo
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You really should stop using bold in your posts so much. I'm sure I'm not the only one that finds this annoying.
Oh, no, that's not a bug, it's a feature! Annoying you is just bonus points! xD xD xD
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It's quite obvious that consuming services can be cheaper and easier than doing it yourself, that's the whole reason we started having bakers and smiths and whatnot. But if we separate the services from the object, like if we assume your building management is subcontracting out everything what they have in net is simply working capital. And they'll want a return on their investment, of course you could say so does the bank if that's the alternative. But a lot of people just don't see it as a hidden form of
And ... (Score:2)
Office 2019 will include a roaming pencil case and ribbon customizations across all Office apps. Microsoft is also bringing focus mode to Word, alongside a new translator, and accessibility improvements. Morph transitions, SVG and 3D model support, play in-click sequence, and 4k video export are all coming to PowerPoint.
And ... what is the advantage of all that over LibreOffice again? For 99.9999% of people?
Yes, the network effect, everyone else uses it ... surely they can't coast on that forever?
Re:And ... (Score:5, Insightful)
And ... what is the advantage of all that over LibreOffice again? For 99.9999% of people?
Well you have the idiot factor. I installed libreoffice on my nieces laptop for college. She turned in a paper to her professor and got it rejected. He said 'the paper must be turned in written in M$ word." He didn't even look at her paper because she "didn't follow directions."
I loaded the paper in office 2010, 2013, 2016, and office 365. It was just fine. Her mistake was telling him she used libreoffice and his is he is just a god damn moron.
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Well PDF would have been ideal but Word format was required, and the only option. Which is kind of shitty because not everyone can afford a $150 office package. That is why I told her to go with libreoffice to start with. She didn't protest, just saved a copy from word on my desktop and handed it a day later. She took a letter grade hit for it. No changes where made to the original document so I doubt word even saved it.
I felt bad for her since I was the one that recommended libreoffice in the first
Notable things for better or worse (Score:3)
I'm sure everyone can argue the merits of the new Office, hell LibreOffice does everything I need it to, so that's what I use. But the features aside, let's take a moment to remember that no one knew for sure up to a point if Office 2019 was actually going to be a thing or not. Microsoft had indicated that 365 was the future, and if I was a betting person, this 2019 may be the last "retail" version we see. That isn't to say there will never be an offline version, but I feel that the days where Microsoft sells Office to John and Jane Doe are starting to sunset.
That said, I figure I'd point out a few new things for this release. That's not to say any or all of these things justify the price or that this is everything, it's just a list of features I found interesting.
Word 2019
Add the ability to use LaTeX notation to do mathematical equations. Ability to understand SVG with filters, better SVG rendering. Better 4K support. Several accessibility fixes and new features such as configurable audio cues for features and UI theme for hard of seeing.
Excel 2019
New visualizations. Publish to a Power BI server from Excel. Embedded Power Query and Power Pivot into the main product. Namespaces for Excel functions. Some Excel functions can be remoted using a style similar to JS promises. Custom functions for use in Excel can now be written in JavaScript. Excel now offers connectors for Flow. New Insight functionality. Multiple users can edit a workbook if stored on a SharePoint server or in OneDrive.
PowerPoint 2019
New animations, transitions, and so on. (Think copy of all the on-line guys like Perzi and what not). Hardware pens that are used in Windows 10 can now be used to present. Tighter integration between Excel and PowerPoint to allow the same visualizations there to be used in PowerPoint.
That's the big three there and those are just the new features I found to be interesting. There's more. Oh also, the chart engine for MS Access has been completely redone and there's a few new data types added to Access. However all these features said, there are some features in 2019 that won't be there that will only be in 365. An example is the ability to @ anyone anywhere in the big three of Office and it show up in their Outlook.
Roaming pencil case (Score:2)
Jesus wept.
Excel Needs Better Charting & Stats (Score:2)
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I have Office 2013 for a reason. (Score:2)
It's the last version with only a little bit of annoying "hey, ever considered going online!" "hey, hey you! listen, how's about that subscription"
"hey, we can offer *THIS* feature too, just SIGN IN HERE,...!"
and so on and so forth.
2013 is a pretty competent office suite.
I strongly suspect, very strongly suspect that Office 2019 is /probably/ more like "Office 365, offline demo edition, with splash screen reminders, endlessly"
No MSI downloads (Score:2)
Office Professional Plus 2019 will be released with Click-to-Run installation technology only. We are not providing MSI as a deployment methodology for Office Professional Plus 2019.
Meh, O365 all the way here. Forced to for security updates & support compliance, otherwise past history would suggest we'd be thinking about moving to v2019 about 2025...
What is the last decent version of Office? (Score:2)