Microsoft Office for Mac: Microsoft 365 vs Office 2021 buying tips

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You can run Microsoft Office, add Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook on a Mac (and on your iPad or iPhone). But it’s not just about installing the app you want and starting typing. a subscription or purchase the full edition directly. You want whether you want only one app or all of them. And, if you determine a subscription plan, you want to find out what type of subscription applies to you.

There are several tactics to get the Office programs on your Mac. We’ll tell you which edition of Office for Mac is right for you in our complete Microsoft Office for Mac buying guide.

If you’re not sure about opting for Microsoft Office apps or loose or less expensive alternatives, check out our articles Best Word Processors for Mac and Best Mail Apps for Mac.

From time to time, we see discounted Microsoft software, around Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day. Here are the most productive Microsoft Office deals we’ve noticed for Prime Day 2023:

In the US, Prime subscribers can get a 12-month subscription to Microsoft 365 Personal (Office) plus a $10 Amazon gift card for just $49. 99, $79. 99. That’s a savings of $30. Microsoft 365 Personal includes Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. You also get 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage.

U. S. Prime subscribers U. S. users can also get Microsoft 365 Family (Office) and a $20 Amazon gift card. It is a 12-month subscription with another 3 months free. It will renew to the highest value if you do not cancel. It comes with Outlook, but can be used by up to six people.

If you’re in the UK, an Amazon Prime Day deal can save you 30% off the value of a copy of Microsoft Office 2021 Home and Student (Mac or Windows version). You can get Office for Mac for £83. 99, from the same retail price of £119. 99.

This is a one-time purchase, meaning you won’t be tied to a subscription that will fully renew in one year.

U. K. Prime subscribers can also save on Microsoft 365 Family Office 365 apps, adding Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook for up to 6 users. consistent with the year.

There are several tactics for acquiring Microsoft Office for Mac. You can subscribe to Microsoft 365 monthly or annually, or you can purchase the software directly.

The most recent edition of Office for Mac is available through a Microsoft 365 subscription that costs from $69. 99/£59. 99 per year or $6. 99/£5. 99 per month). If you subscribe, you benefit from the fact that you get the latest software updates, continuously, without having to repurchase the entire program or suite. The service, in the past called Office 365, was rebranded as Microsoft 365 in April 2020. The same.

If you do not need to purchase a subscription and prefer to own the software, rest assured that Microsoft continues to sell and update the Office 2021 suite. The latest edition of Office for Mac for home users is Office Home.

There is a home office

Microsoft also offers the Office Long-Term Service Channel (LTSC). Details of the upgrade to this can be found on Microsoft’s online page here. Microsoft 365 subscribers get updates every month (though organizational subscriptions can update user accounts semiannually, every January and July).

If you buy the one directly, the newest edition is Office 2021.

If you subscribe to your edition of Microsoft 365, your edition of Office will be updated with new features. You can check which edition is the newest and newest features on Microsoft’s online page here.

Both editions get security and functionality updates. You can locate the main points of the latest edition on the Microsoft website:

With so many options, the value varies depending on the type of license you need and how you need to pay. We’ve corrupted everything in our table below.

If you’re a PC user, also Office Professional 2021 for $439/£419, but there’s no Mac edition of this suite. More information here.

Office 2021 for Mac was introduced in September 2021 (three years after the release of Office 2019). However, some of the new features were already available as a component of the Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) subscription.

With Microsoft 365, consumers pay monthly or annually to have the latest edition of the software. There are other plans depending on whether you will be the only user using the software, if you will share the subscription with your friends and family, or whether you are a small or giant company.

The subscription formula is suitable for some users, however, others prefer to pay directly for the software and know that they will have it for all eternity. Therefore, Microsoft also allows you to acquire the full Office 2021 suite for a one-time payment. This license will never run out, Microsoft could eventually terminate support for this version.

When it comes to standalone software, Office Home can

You can also purchase the apps individually, below.

There’s also a loose edition of Office in the cloud that you can use online through an internet browser. Think of it as a simplified edition of the paid editions of the app. You still want to sign up for a Microsoft account.

If you’re a business user, you deserve an edition designed to be deployed in enterprises. With the release of Office 2021, Microsoft added Office LTSC as an option.

This edition of Office 2021 is available to volume licensing consumers who only need to make a one-time purchase, rather than subscribing to Microsoft 365. It includes the same apps as the Home and Business edition of Office Home and Business 2021, but, Mac users also get Outlook LTSC (PC users also get Access and Publisher LTSC editions).

The price is 10% higher than the Office Home version

There are also Microsoft 365 subscription plans for business and enterprise. Each is billed according to the user/month and there is a decrease according to the monthly costs if you sign up for an annual commitment.

Microsoft 365 Business Basic (formerly Office 365 Business Essentials) is the cheapest option at £3. 80/$5 depending on the user depending on the month. Includes only the Internet and mobile versions of Office applications. Subscribers also have OneDrive, Exchange, SharePoint, and Teams

Microsoft 365 Apps for Business only provides access to apps and access to OneDrive. You also get the desktop versions, but not beyond software like Teams or risk protection. It costs $8. 25/£7. 90 depending on the user depending on the month.

Microsoft 365 Business Standard (formerly Office 365 Business Premium) includes Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook (plus Access on a PC), plus business email, Microsoft Teams, and cloud storage through OneDrive. This tier is consistently priced at $12. 50/£9. 40 with the user consistent with the month.

Office 365 Business Premium (formerly Microsoft 365 Business) includes everything you get in Business Standard, plus coverage against cyber threats. It is the maximum at $20/£15. 10 depending on the user depending on the month.

Go to Microsoft now to compare your plans.

As you can see above, there are other tactics to get Office, or systems exclusive to the Office suite, on your Mac. You can subscribe to the software for as long as you want and then cancel your subscription. This way, you can get the basic edition of Office for Mac for $6. 99/£5. 99 per month and cancel after 30 days. However, be careful, you might lose your data. After you cancel, you can still use Office in read-only mode.

Speaking of read-only mode, this mode is convenient if you only need to read Word documents or PowerPoint slides. In this mode, you can view, but not edit. This would possibly be all you have to do, in which case it’s the cheapest option as it’s free.

If you want to be able to edit documents, another option is to open them in Apple’s iWork apps. Apple has a word processor called Pages that can open Word documents, Keynote for PowerPoint presentations, and Numbers for Excel. These features will allow you to open and edit Office documents and save them in Office format, without having to open Office. Sometimes the format may be disabled, but this is a wonderful solution. And most importantly, you may not charge anything because those apps are loose. for Mac users.

If you only want Word, for example, you don’t want to buy all Office applications. As you can see in the table above, it is possible to purchase Word, Excel, and PowerPoint separately. At around $150/£150 each, this may only be a smart solution if you don’t want to pay extra to get the other apps included in the suite.

We have this article on how to get Microsoft Word for free.

As for the formula requirements, Microsoft 365 and Office 2021 will run on macOS Monterey, Big Sur, Catalina, Mojave, and High Sierra (Microsoft will keep trying with existing and two older versions of macOS). Mac users will want at least 10 GB of disk space.

One thing to keep in mind is that older 32-bit editions of Office, such as Office 2011, may not work on Mac with Catalina or later. To find out if your edition is 64-bit, click the Apple icon in your menu and select ToAbout This Mac, then System Report. Scroll down to Software and choose Aplicaciones. Si any of your applications are 32-bit, see this data here.

Another compatibility factor is for M-series Macs. Shortly after the arrival of the Mac M1 in November 2020, Microsoft made sure Office ran natively on the M1 chip. Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and OneNote work on Mac M1. Microsoft 365 users would have had the new edition of the software update. If compatibility issues occurred in the future, you might have to wait longer to get an update if you’re not a Microsoft subscriber. See all the required formulas for Microsoft Office and Office 2019.

If you subscribe to Microsoft 365 Personal for two years, spend $139. 98/£119. 98. This is necessarily the same expense as buying the software outright.

Of course, this situation also has many drawbacks. Office 365 subscribers will take advantage of new feature updates during those two years, which means they’ll miss out on some wonderful new tools. You can get the technical help you get with a 365 subscription. Maybe you want to access both iOS and Android versions of the software. We have this article on how to get Office apps on iPad for free.

Another thing that would possibly influence its resolution is that Microsoft will avoid compatibility with Mac versions of Office Home.

Karen, a Macworld editor since 2008, has worked on both sides of Apple’s division, recording several years at Apple’s public relations firm before joining Macworld just about two decades ago.

The highlight of Karen’s career comes with Apple’s Steve Wozniak interview and discussion of Steve Jobs’ legacy on the BBC. She focuses on Mac, but lives and breathes Apple.

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