Make your Mac invincible
Learn how to convert your Word file to a PDF. Office 2016 for Mac support is ending soon. Upgrade to Microsoft 365 to work anywhere from any device and continue to receive support. Microsoft AutoUpdate makes sure your copy of Office will always be up-to-date with the latest security fixes and improvements. If you are a Microsoft 365 subscriber, you'll also receive the newest features and tools. Check for updates and install. Open an Office app such as Word, then on the top menu, click Help Check for Updates. As Microsoft Office continues to learn the macOS, it continues to grow. MS Office Touch Bar features. Trackpad and Touch Bar, unique to MacBooks, have made great new features available on Office for Mac. In Microsoft Word for Mac, you can use the Touch Bar to insert hyperlinks, comments, or photos right in the text editor.
Since its initial release nearly 30 years ago, Microsoft Office has become one of the world’s most popular productivity suites. With programs like Word and Excel for Mac, it’s no wonder that the MS Office suite is a must-download on any computer.
Microsoft Office for Mac 2019 includes the most modern versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, and OneNote. These apps are all available for download at the Mac App Store. Alternatively, with Office 365 for Mac, you can work online or offline and collaborate with others in real time, which is especially useful for any kind of team work.
Get a perfect alternative for MS tools on Mac
Try Setapp, an all-in-one toolkit that covers apps substituting Microsoft’s Visio, Project, and Publisher. All in a single spot on your Mac.
If you’ve been asking yourself questions like “what is Office 365 for Mac” and “how much is Microsoft Office?” — the guide below will help dispel your confusion. Besides, do you know how you can download Microsoft Office?
How To Download And Install MS Office For Mac
As mentioned above, Microsoft Office suite and all of its apps — Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, OneNote, and OneDrive — are now available at the Mac App Store. This makes it easier than ever to get the most current versions of MS Office for Mac (note that you’ll need an Office 365 subscription to use these apps). There is also a Microsoft Office trial available that allows you to use Office 365 free for one month.
To buy Microsoft Office outright, visit office.com. At the Office home page, select Install Office. Then follow the instructions for the installer file that has been downloaded to your computer.
System requirements to download Microsoft Office
Before downloading Office for Mac, make sure you have the fitting system requirements that allow for the best experience with Microsoft apps. For example, Microsoft Office suite always supports the latest three versions of macOS. Currently, it’s 10.14, 10.13, and 10.12.
As new versions of macOS are released, Microsoft shifts its support to the newest ones. While your Office apps might still work on older unsupported versions of macOS, you won’t be able to get security or feature updates.
To run Microsoft Office at the moment, you’ll need macOS 10.12 (Sierra), 4 GB RAM and 10 GB of available disk space.
The difference between Office 2019 and Office 365 for Mac
You can still buy Microsoft Office without getting into a subscription. The downside is not getting continuous feature updates, which will in turn be bundled altogether in the following year’s release.
Office 365, on the other hand, is based purely on a subscription model and powered by Microsoft’s cloud service. It frequently receives updates and provides full access to the whole suite of services.
How much is Microsoft Office?
As MS Office for Mac is available in two versions — a one-time payment and subscription — there are two prices. If you want to buy a license for Office Home and Student 2019 for Mac, which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, it will cost you $149.99. If you’d like to use Microsoft Office Outlook, you’ll need to purchase the Office Home and Business 2019 for Mac at $249.99.
For the subscription model, Microsoft Office 365 for Mac, you pay a month-by-month or yearly fee. And as new versions are introduced, you automatically get them as part of your subscription. Office 365 for Home costs $99.99 a year or $9.99 a month.
What about MS Office vs. iWork
Apple’s free iWork has a great price advantage over the MS Office suite, but is it better than all the Microsoft’s popular productivity apps?
iWork includes Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, but is generally best suited for smaller businesses or home use. Additionally, if you already use Microsoft Office extensively at home or work, being able to switch between Macs and PCs gives Microsoft Office Suite a big plus.
Microsoft Office is known for having a slight edge for ease-of-use and is packed with more features. The latest version of the suite also looks brand new compared to iWork’s currently outdated version. As Microsoft Office continues to learn the macOS, it continues to grow.
MS Office Touch Bar features
Trackpad and Touch Bar, unique to MacBooks, have made great new features available on Office for Mac.
In Microsoft Word for Mac, you can use the Touch Bar to insert hyperlinks, comments, or photos right in the text editor. It’s especially great when you’re working in Word Focus Mode without access to the controls on the screen.
In Excel for Mac, using the equal sign on your keyboard will launch most recently used commands on the Touch Bar. Then you can select a range of commands or perform specific actions.
In Microsoft Office Outlook, Touch Bar makes recent files appear when you’re composing an email. From here, you can attach relevant files with a single tap. In Outlook’s Today view, you can use the Touch Bar to get a quick look at your daily calendar events or launch a Skype call.
During slideshow presentations in Powerpoint, you can use the Touch Bar to view specific controls. The function integrates slide thumbnails and includes a timer to make moving through your presentation on time a snap.
Great Substitutes For MS Project, Visio, And Publisher
If you’ve used MS Office tools on Windows before, you may have noticed that some of them aren’t available on Mac, specifically Microsoft Project, Visio, and Publisher.
The good news is you can easily substitute lacking MS Office apps with Setapp.
Take care of your publishing needs
With Microsoft Publisher for Mac currently unavailable, you need an app that is easy to use but, at the same time, delivers professional results when you’re looking to put together greeting cards or self-publish a magazine. Enter Swift Publisher.
Swift Publisher has a robust set of design tools that allow you to apply gradients, draw freehand shapes, and control different aspects of your design layout at once. The app also features an extensive graphic library with over 2,000 pieces of clip art and 100 image masks.
Make publishing easy with Swift Publisher’s support for exports to a variety of digital formats, including social media. You’ll find that quickly Microsoft Publisher for Mac will become a thing of the past.
The best alternative to Microsoft Visio
With the need to create flowcharts, diagrams, and organizational tables for your projects, you may miss Microsoft Visio. Fear not. You can easily brainstorm and create long-term plans with iThoughtsX instead. Even better, you’ll never lose important information with its built-in cloud integration.
iThoughtsX lets you visualize an idea, track to-dos along with deadlines, and check on the team's progress. You don’t have to interrupt your workflow at all, as this app supports multiple file formats that can store your ideas in .rtf, .txt, Microsoft Word (.docx), .csv, MindGenius (.mgmx), MindNode (.mindnode), .opml, and more.
Plan projects with Merlin Project Express
Merlin Project Express will help you plan both home and professional projects. It’s a great solution for managing budgets and resources available for any endeavour.
Just like Microsoft Project for Mac, Merlin Project Express lets you create tasks, manage dependencies, and track progress with ease. You can also come up with project templates to streamline your workflow, set daily goals, and visualize the timeline. Consolidate all information in one place with project info at hand by attaching emails, images, costs, and notes.
Best of all, three substitute apps: Swift Publisher, iThoughtsX, and Merlin Project Express are available on Setapp, a platform of more than 150 Mac apps and utilities that you can use at home and work to improve all aspects of interacting with your Mac. Get yourself a perfect complement to your Microsoft Office suite purchase and try Setapp free for seven days. Working smart doesn’t have to feel like a trade-off.
Meantime, prepare for all the awesome things you can do with Setapp.
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Get the best writing tool
Since the 1980s, Microsoft Word has been dominating all the writing software worldwide. If you get a résumé, document, report, or memo today, chances are it would be in either .doc or .docx format. It’s the de facto internationally accepted way of corporate communication.
Not surprisingly, Microsoft Word is not free. As part of the Office 365 suite, Microsoft Word would cost households $6.99 a month ($9.99 for a whole family) or $12.50 a month per business user. You can also just buy a standalone version of Microsoft Word outright for $139.99. But if you just need to edit an occasional document or use the basic formatting features, you’d rather not spend anything.
Is there a free version of Microsoft Word for Mac? Is there a free version of Office for Mac? Let’s answer these and more questions relating to how you can get Microsoft Word for Mac free and also suggest some better alternatives altogether.
Can I Download Microsoft Word For Free On Mac?
When someone sends you a .docx file and you don’t have Microsoft Word for Mac installed, what do you do? You can, of course, open the file with Quick Look or Preview, but the styling might be off and you wouldn’t be able to edit it.
If you decide to look up something like “Microsoft Word free download” online, you’ll stumble upon dozens of YouTube tutorials and written guides on how you can get free Microsoft Word by downloading a trial version and using a code-cracking app on it to get the license key for it. Not only this is illegal, you also risk downloading all kinds of malware to your Mac.
Luckily, there are a few other ways you can get Microsoft Word free.
Use MS Word online
Is Microsoft Word for Mac free? No. Is Microsoft Word online, free? Yes! It’s not well-known, but you can use Word on the web at no cost. All you need is a free Microsoft account. The catch is that the MS Word online version is not as advanced as its desktop counterpart, but it’s still good enough for all the basic work with documents and for writing something on your own.
Here’s how to get Microsoft Word online for free:
Visit the MS Word online page
Click “Sign up for free”
Create your account
Choose to start a new document or drag and drop an existing one right onto the web app
Get a free Microsoft Office 365 trial
In case you have a complex project coming up that requires more of the features not available in MS Word online, you can access everything that the regular Microsoft Word has to offer by subscribing for a free Microsoft Word trial via Microsoft Office 365. You get one month to finish your project and you can use all the apps in MS Office 365, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, etc.
Here’s how to sign up for the Microsoft Word free trial:
Visit the Microsoft 365 page
Click “Try 1 month free”
Sign in with your free Microsoft account or register a new one
Get your Microsoft Word free download
Try free alternatives to Microsoft Word
If you need to use Microsoft Word for an extended period of time, and a one-month trial won’t cut it, you can try to actually substitute for another similar free app that’s fully compatible with Microsoft Word.
Google Docs, as part of G Suite, has improved greatly over the years and now supports custom styles, tables, in-line images, and more. Although it’s an online app, it feels native and can both edit and export .docx while keeping all the formatting intact.
LibreOffice (also known as OpenOffice) is another suite of text-editing apps available for free to anyone. Its Microsoft Word alternative is called LibreOffice Writer, which has many desktop publishing compatibilities of its paid competitor and is also completely compatible with it.
Use Microsoft Word with iPad
A surprisingly lesser known trick to get a full working version of Microsoft Word free is to load it on your iPad. Yes, the iPad version of Microsoft Word doesn’t cost anything and, with the release of iPads that feature Bluetooth keyboard support, it’s just as capable as its macOS counterpart.
Embrace third-party Mac apps
How To Microsoft Word For Mac From Fiu To Miami Airport
While Microsoft Word dominance is still apparent, it’s hard to argue that it’s the best app for all the word-processing jobs we need to do today. With the release of Mac App Store, we’ve seen a great proliferation of niche text editors, journals, desktop publishers, and more — every one of which is best at solving a specific problem.
Let’s look at a few of the best apps for working with words out there today.
Ulysses is one of the most popular writing apps of recent years. From small notes to manuscripts, its distraction-free environment just lets you get things done. The app has a built-in support for Markdown as well as grammar and style checkers. When you’re done, simply export your results as a PDF or publish to WordPress or Medium directly.
How To Microsoft Word For Mac From Fiumicino
Focused is another app for writing purists that does everything to get you concentrated on the words that flow from your keyboard. The app supports beautiful typography, various themes suitable for different times of day as well as ambient soundtracks to make it so you fully immerse in your environment.
How To Microsoft Word For Mac From Fiu Online
MarsEdit allows you to transport your complete blogging setup offline. You can edit HTML, rich text, or plain text to write and design blog posts with images, infographics, and videos with zero internet connection. Then upload your new blog post on schedule to the blog when you’re back online. As MarsEdit saves everything as you go on your Mac, you’ll never lose any data because of WiFi troubles.
Manuscripts empowers you to take on even the most complex writing projects possible: research papers, textbooks, novels, screenplays, etc. The app supports a variety of formats, multi-level outlines, templates, tables, graphs, LaTex, document versioning, and citation editing. Instead of trying to adjust Microsoft Word to your needs, let Manuscripts adjust to you.
Diarly enables you to think freely. The app encourages your daily journaling practice and makes the writing habit easy and beautiful. You can organize your notes, add lists, calendar events, sync across devices, and more. Diarly also takes your security seriously, encrypting all the entries on the fly.
So is Microsoft Word for Mac free? Not exactly. But you can get a lot of the same features from MS Word online, sign up for the Microsoft Word free trial, take a look at Google Docs or LibreOffice Writer, and use Microsoft Word free on iPad. Even better, give a wealth of more specialized apps a try. Sketch notes in Ulysses, concentrate on your writing in Focused, finish your blog post in MarsEdit, create your life’s work in Manuscripts, and keep a journal with Diarly.
Best of all, Ulysses, Focused, MarsEdit, Manuscripts, and Diarly are available to you absolutely free with a seven-day trial of Setapp, a platform with 200+ outstanding apps for your Mac. Try every single one today and discover the latest and greatest feats of Mac engineering at no cost.
Meantime, prepare for all the awesome things you can do with Setapp.
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