New Version Of Microsoft Office For Mac Due In 2015

Microsoft has released a new version of Outlook for Mac for Office 365 subscribers and says a new version of Office for Mac will be released in early 2015.

The last version of Office to be made available for OS X was Office for Mac 2011, which was launched in October 2010. It has fallen behind its Windows and cloud-based counterparts during that time, with reports that a planned Office for Mac 2013 had been scrapped.

It had been thought that a new version would be released before the end of 2014, but Microsoft has said it will launch a beta version of the new Office for Mac during the first half of 2015 with a full release to follow during the second half of the year.

Office for Mac

The company said that delay was caused by its commitment to ensuring mobile and cloud users could get the best possible experience following the launch of Office 365.

“Historically we have released a new version of Office for Mac approximately six to eight months after Office for Windows,” said Microsoft. “However, following the release of Office 365 we made the conscious decision to prioritize mobile first and cloud first scenarios for an increasing number of people who are getting things done on-the-go more frequently.

“This meant delivering and continuing to improve Office on a variety phones (iPhone, Windows Phone, and Android) and tablets (iPad and Windows)—brought together by the cloud (OneDrive) to help people stay better organized and get things done with greater efficiency at work, school, home and everywhere between.”

Office for Mac 2015, or whatever it is called, will be available at no extra cost for Office 365 subscribers and will also be offered on a “perpetual licence” basis.

Outlook for Mac

Office 365 users can benefit immediately from the new version of Outlook for Mac however, as the new version is now available to commercial, home, personal and university subscribers of the cloud-base office suite and boasts a refreshed user interface similar to the PC, web and mobile versions of the email client.

Outlook for Mac has received a number of reliability and performance upgrades that make it easier to search archived email, either from cloud or on-premise repositories, sync with Exchange Web Services and manage category lists. Office 365 subscribers have the added benefit of push email support for real time message delivery.

Office 365 has received a number of updates in recent weeks, with users now available to take advantage of unlimited storage and mobile device management (MDM) features, while developers now have access to more APIs for new applications.

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