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In the Office 2016 applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote, accessing and customizing the ribbon and menu items is performed the same way. What differs are the customization options available within each application. To hide or show the ribbon, click the Ribbon Display Options button from the top right of your. Microsoft has released Office 2016 for Mac – a full set of Office programs for Macintosh OS X computers. There’s updated programs for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote. All the new programs support Mac goodies like Retina display, Full Screen and Multi-touch. Overall, there’s little surprising or truly new in Office 2016 for Mac.
Microsoft has released Office 2016 for Mac – a full set of Office programs for Macintosh OS X computers. There’s updated programs for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote.
All the new programs support Mac goodies like Retina display, Full Screen and Multi-touch.
Overall, there’s little surprising or truly new in Office 2016 for Mac. The ‘new’ features boasted by Microsoft are really features from Office for Windows that have finally made it to Office for Mac. For example the Design tab, threaded comments in Word. Excel’s formula builder, external data connections and ‘new’ PivotTable Slicers. Outlook’s push mail, conversation view and mail preview. All these things and more will be very familiar to users of Office 2010/2013/2016 for Windows.
Also brought ‘Into line’ is the interface which is more consistent with Office for Windows and the various phone/tablet apps.
Office 2016 times two
There’s now two ‘Office 2016’ products. One for Mac and the upcoming Office 2016 for Windows. That’s a nuisance because, until now, we’ve been able to tell Mac and Windows versions of Office apart simply by the ‘year’ – for example Office 2011 always meant the Mac version because there was no ‘2011’ Office for Windows.
Install
Office 365 customers (personal, student or organization) can go to their My Account page, choose Office 2016 for Mac. There’s a 1.1GB download, then installation.
Stand-alone, single purchase Office 2016 for Mac will be available in September.
One advantage of the Office 365 subscription/rental is that you can switch between Windows and Mac without cost. If you’re thinking of switching to a Mac computer, you can simply download and install Office for Mac without paying more.
Ribbon comparison
The Word Home ribbon looks much the same in Word 2016 for Windows (top) and Word 2016 for Mac (bottom)
The Styles gallery is a little different in Word 2016 for Mac. There are left/right buttons to scroll through the styles plus a down arrow to display a full list.
Quick Access Toolbar
There is no Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) in Office 2016 for Mac. At least not like Office for Windows.
You might think those buttons above the tabs are a QAT. Unlike the Office for Windows QAT, the Mac equivalent isn’t configurable at all. There’s no way to add more buttons or menus.
Cloud connections
No surprise that there’s direct connections to OneDrive and OneDrive for Business accounts, but disappointingly not Dropbox or Box.
To enable an OneDrive connection, click on the ‘File’ button on the top row.
Click on your account icon at the top of the File menu, then the plus sign next to ‘Connected Services’.
Then choose OneDrive or OneDrive for Business. Hopefully more on this list in future.
There’s always the option to include other cloud storage options by installing the sync software separately then opening documents from the synced copy.
Here’s a look at some of the ribbons in Office 2016 for mac … a more detailed view than Microsoft is providing. Note that the top buttons (File, Save, Undo, Redo) aren’t customizable like the Office for Windows equivalent ‘Quick Access Toolbar’.
Word 2016 for Mac
The Design tab, familiar to users of Word 2013 for Windows is now available for Mac users:
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This918 page book shows you important features and details for all serious Windows 10 users.
There’s a Developer Tab and tools for Word and Excel. Turn on from Preferences | View
Document Compatibility
Office 2016 for Mac is almost fully document compatible with Office for Windows and other Office apps.
For many common purposes, you can open an Office document, worksheet or presentation in any Microsoft Office program. If the program strikes something it can’t deal with (like the Equation Editor) then it should ignore that part but still save it back to the edited document.
Microsoft calls this ’round tripping’ of Office documents. Like many Microsoft promises, ’round tripping’ was dynamite in demos but less than perfect in the real world. Over the years ’round tripping’ has gradually become more reliable.
Font embedding still missing
There’s one missing part of Office 2016 for Mac that makes document compatibility very difficult. We regularly hear complaints about Word for Mac documents that look wrong when opened in Word for Windows. They are complaints that Microsoft does hear with convenient selective deafness.
We’ve talked before about font embedding in documents – or rather the lack of it in Word for Mac. Word 2016 for Mac still lacks the essential ability to include fonts within the document.
A document formatted in Word for Mac can look quite different when opened in Word for Windows because the same fonts aren’t being used. Word for Windows users can avoid that with the Save option ‘Embed fonts in the file’ but that’s missing from Word for Mac.
Excel 2016 for Mac
PowerPoint 2016 for Mac
PowerPoint 2016 for Mac gets it’s own Animation pane, just like it’s big brother Windows program.
Outlook 2016 for Mac
Unified Inbox
Outlook 2016 for Mac has a ‘unified’ Inbox where the contents of multiple email accounts can be merged into a single view.
This defaults on and might suit you. Others will want to turn the unified Inbox off because the email accounts are for different parts of your life (e.g. Personal, Work, Hobby etc.). Go to Outlook | Preferences | General | Group similar folders, such as Inboxes, from different accounts.
Outlook 2016 for Mac also has Conversation view. It’s not as compact as Outlook 2013/2016 for Windows, taking up the reading pane.
Some people don’t like Conversations in Outlook and Office-Watch.com was once among them. However we’ve come around and now use the view constantly.
Corporate users will greatly miss the Ignore button – still missing from Outlook 2016 for Mac. Ignore tells Outlook to send past and future Conversation messages to the Deleted Items folder. A handy way to skip past in-house email exchanges that you can live without.
OneNote 2016 for Mac
OneNote for Mac has most of the features you’ll need. But it can’t embed videos and searching isn’t as complete at Windows users will be used to.
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Change the Ribbon in Mac Excel 2016 and up
![Customize ribbon in excel Customize ribbon in excel](/uploads/1/2/5/8/125853287/870709686.png)
Note : Update Mac Office first and be sure it is 15.17 or higher, in the 15.17 update Ribbon customization via Ribbon XML is enabled by default for all customers.
Note: If you are a Excel for Windows user start here : Change the Ribbon in Excel 2007 and up
Things we must do and understand before we start
Important : The easiest way to insert RibbonX in a Excel file is to do it on a Windows machine. I suggest that if you want to develop custom Ribbons you develop in Windows and then test it on the Mac.
Note :The information below assume you develop on a Windows machine
If you want to insert RibbonX into a Excel 2007 and up workbook to change the Ribbon, then I suggest you download and install the free Office RibbonX Editor created by Fernando Andreu to make this a lot easier : https://github.com/fernandreu/office-ribbonx-editor/releases/latest
Before Fernando Andreu released this tool we used a tool named Custom UI Editor created by Trang Luu, you can download it here if you want to test this very old tool, but I suggest that you use the new tool that Fernando Andreu created that is up to date.
The Office RibbonX Editor gives you an option to insert a customUI.xml file in your Excel workbook that loads when you open the file in Excel 2007and up and/or a customUI14.xml file that only loads when you open the Excel workbook in Excel 2010 and up. What, files that are inside a Excel file?.
Excel 2007 and up files are really zip files so if you change the extension to zip and open the file in your zip program you see that there are a few folders and a file inside the zip. Thanks to the Office RibbonX Editor we not have to do all this to add or edit the customUI.xml or CustomUI14.xml file inside your Excel file.
Excel 2007 and up files are really zip files so if you change the extension to zip and open the file in your zip program you see that there are a few folders and a file inside the zip. Thanks to the Office RibbonX Editor we not have to do all this to add or edit the customUI.xml or CustomUI14.xml file inside your Excel file.
Note: You will notice that Excel versions 2010 and up use the same xml file named customUI14.xml
When you not work with things that are added in Excel 2010 and up (like Backstage View for example), then you can only use the Office 2007 Custom UI Part option to add your RibbonX, it will load the RibbonX from this file when you open the Excel file in Excel 2007 and up. But if you open the Excel file in Excel 2010 and up and there is also a customUI14.xml file it will load only this file.
Note: It is not possible to insert RibbonX into Excel 97-2003(xls) files.
Open the Office RibbonX Editor
Open : Open the Excel file that you want to edit (Be sure it is not open in Excel)
Save : Save the RibbonX in the file that you have open in the UI editor
(not possible to save when the file is open in Excel)
Insert Icons : Insert your own icons in the file (icons will be saved in the file)
Validate : Validate your RibbonX so you are sure that there are no typos
Generate Callbacks : This will create macros(callbacks) for each onAction you have in
the RibbonX. Select all callbacks and copy them in a normal module in your workbook.
Reload on Save : This button have no use if you not have the file open in Excel when you open it in the editor, for more information about this button read the info on the download page.
Save : Save the RibbonX in the file that you have open in the UI editor
(not possible to save when the file is open in Excel)
Insert Icons : Insert your own icons in the file (icons will be saved in the file)
Validate : Validate your RibbonX so you are sure that there are no typos
Generate Callbacks : This will create macros(callbacks) for each onAction you have in
the RibbonX. Select all callbacks and copy them in a normal module in your workbook.
Reload on Save : This button have no use if you not have the file open in Excel when you open it in the editor, for more information about this button read the info on the download page.
When you open a Excel file in the Office RibbonX Editor you can right click on the file name and choose :
Office 2007 Custom UI Part Or use Office 2010+ Custom UI Part
Or you can use the Insert menu to choose one of the two options.
Office 2007 Custom UI Part Or use Office 2010+ Custom UI Part
Or you can use the Insert menu to choose one of the two options.
It creates the customUI14.xml file if you choose Office 2010+ Custom UI Part and the customUI.xml file if you choose Office 2007 Custom UI Part. After you choose one option or both, you can enter or paste your RibbonX in the correct part.
Let's make an Example for Excel 2007-2016 (Win and Mac)
In this basic example we add RibbonX to a file that create two buttons in a new group named My Group on the Home tab when you open your file in Excel 2007-2016. Because we not use something new for 2010-2016 we only have to add the RibbonX to the customUI.xml file ('Office 2007 Custom UI Part') .
1: Open a new workbook and save it as Book1.xlsm (Excel Macro-Enabled workbook)
2: Close the workbook
3: Open Book1.xlsm in the Office RibbonX Editor
4: Right click on the File name in the Office RibbonX Editor or use the Insert menu
5: Choose 'Office 2007 Custom UI Part' to create the customUI.xml file
6: Copy/Paste the RibbonX below in the right window
1: Open a new workbook and save it as Book1.xlsm (Excel Macro-Enabled workbook)
2: Close the workbook
3: Open Book1.xlsm in the Office RibbonX Editor
4: Right click on the File name in the Office RibbonX Editor or use the Insert menu
5: Choose 'Office 2007 Custom UI Part' to create the customUI.xml file
6: Copy/Paste the RibbonX below in the right window
7: Save your changes in the Office RibbonX Editor (click on the Save button)
8: Close the Editor
9: Open the File in Excel
10: Alt F11
11: Insert Module
12: Copy the two macros below in the Module
8: Close the Editor
9: Open the File in Excel
10: Alt F11
11: Insert Module
12: Copy the two macros below in the Module
13: Click on the Save button in the VBA editor
14: Use Alt q to close the VBA editor
15: Test the workbook in 2007 and/or in 2010-2016
14: Use Alt q to close the VBA editor
15: Test the workbook in 2007 and/or in 2010-2016
Note: If you want to avoid the compile error on the macro callbacks when you open the file in Excel 2011(this not compile in 2011 : control As IRibbonControl), you can add the two macros in between the two following lines in the code module.
#If MAC_OFFICE_VERSION >= 15 Then
Put your macro callbacks here
#End If
Information and Example files for Mac Excel
Custom Ribbon Example files
Download a few basic example files below (4 files), remember that there are problems with a few idMso's on this moment, the Mac Excel team is working hard to fix them. for example you can't add every built-in group to a custom ribbon on this moment.
Will upload more example files soon to this page
Tab and group idMso's of the Mac Excel Ribbon
Visit this page for more information:
Control idMso's of the Mac Excel Ribbon
Visit this page for more information:
![Excel 2016 ribbon editor Excel 2016 ribbon editor](/uploads/1/2/5/8/125853287/736715130.jpg)
imageMso's that you can use in Mac Office
Visit this page for more information :