Which to buy: Office 2016 or 2019?

[Head_Unit]

Through work I can get Office Home & Business 2016 for Mac OR Office Home & Business 2019 (MAC/PC). My primary use would be at home on a 2015 MacBook Air.

I'm wondering if there is any reason to get the older version? I read a screed online saying literally 2019 is not the version you want to buy, however that was mostly by comparison to Office 365 and I do not want that, I want a local standalone copy. Nor do I want OpenOffice or whatever, there is always some small incompatibility that gets in the way* and for $15 I can afford the "real thing" much as that offends me in some ways.

*heck between Mac and PC I get stuff aligning differently, and unless I'm really careful, font substitution. Not to mention graphics moving around...when oh WHEN will Word be able to place graphics without suddenly jumping around to a different place in the document, or suddenly changing to a different document? Just sayin'

 

[IWT]

There is currently support for Office for Mac 2016 & 2019:

https://support.office.com/en-us/ar...4-mojave-3593253c-95dc-4522-a8f7-8fb4fd16aff3
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/3187505/office-2016-for-mac-64-bit-upgrade

However, it is no secret the MS prefers a subscription service (365) and here is an article implying that support for standalone versions will cease in 2020: https://www.groovypost.com/news/microsoft-end-support-standalone-office-by-2020/

In the ordinary course, I would have pointed out that 365 subscription now allows for 6 users of Macs and iDevices and gives each user free 1TB of Drive space and some other goodies which works out much cheaper in the long run as it also include everlasting updates and upgrades.

But in your situation, with the prices being so cheap, a standalone option is attractive. The 2016 version is the closest to the original Office for Macs previously offered. The 2019 apparently lacks some components.

Lastly, I read in these Forums just today that someone said that it should be possible to buy just those parts of Office that you need, as separate items - via the Apple Store. I have not confirmed this yet.

Ian

 

[MacInWin]

I want a local standalone copy

Not sure what you really mean by that, but I have Office 365 and as Ian has said, for US$10/month I get six licenses and six 1TB One Drive accounts that can share data. That's pretty sweet.

If by "standalone" you mean a fully installed copy on your machine, that is what you get with Office365. Everything you need to run Office is on the local drive. It will run with no internet connectivity at all, and when you are connected, it checks with the mothership to see if the license is still OK and that's it.

Remember, when you "buy" the software, you aren't buying the software, you are paying for a license to use the software. The software still belongs to MS. The only difference with O365 is that I pay monthly, get all the updates as they are released and have the One Drive access.

 

[Rod]

No doubt MS Office for the Mac still has issues but it is kinda the benchmark and although I've tried all the alternatives I keep coming back to MS. I have Office 2018 and my wife has 2016 installed. Despite what MacInWin says US$10/mth which equals AU$14.00 will more than equal the cost of buying it outright in one year. I get all of the updates and I doubt if I will need to upgrade it again in my lifetime. I get 1Tb of storage with my OneDrive account, that's more than enough for me (at the moment). Having said all that, if I was just starting out (I'm 66 now) I think I would go the 365 route, especially if I was using it for business ( tax deductible subscription ).


Sent from my iPad using Mac-Forums

 

[harryb2448]

I use 2019 and like Rod will always go for the fully paid up version. At fast approaching 80, not like that kid Rod, I think Office 2019 will be my last purchase.

 

[KennyC]

I may be down the path to get Office for the Mac. Also at 66 I hate to spend that much for a non subscription based package for my personal stuff (been using Word 2007) but I've been using TextMaker for a while and it is very good but lack things I liked about Word which saves me steps and time reformatting information on things I want to save from the web. Other stuff I haven't come across yet but the more I used it I may find other things. I've shared some of them on another post.

Edit: Didn't realize I can get Office Home & Student for $149 https://products.office.com/en-us/compare-all-microsoft-office-products?tab=1

 

[MacInWin]

Despite what MacInWin says US$10/mth which equals AU$14.00 will more than equal the cost of buying it outright in one year.

Well, it's your call, but from Microsoft's pricing page at https://products.office.com/en-us/compare-all-microsoft-office-products?tab=1 The price of Office 365 Home with 6 users and 6 OneDrive accounts is US$9.99/month and the only "Buy" option is for Word, Excel and Powerpoint only, no One drive for ONE user at US$149.99. I have need for 5 licenses, one on my MBP, one on my wife's MBP and one on her Mini. So if I "bought" three Mac licenses, it would be US$449.97 and then I would still need OneDrive or some sharing site and something on the iPads. Plus with the Office365, I get not only Word, Excel and Powerpoint, but also Outlook and Skype. And I could install one copy in my virtual Windows machine under Parallels and have Publisher and Access as well.

And if you only need ONE license the cost is US$6.99/month, or US$69.99/year, which is AU$9.73/month at the rates for today.

If all you need is Word and Excel and Powerpoint, and if you don't care about cloud storage or sharing, or only need once license then buying might make sense.

But not for me. So that's why I have Office365.

And I'm 73, so age doesn't matter, IMHO.

 

[chscag]

And again, the Mac App Store gives you a 30 day free trial for the Office apps it sells. After the 30 days are up, you must subscribe to O365 if you wish to continue using the apps. As far as I'm aware, the Mac App Store does not sell the stand alone MS Office 2016/2019. You can purchase those from Amazon and other legal on line resellers.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Through work I can get Office Home & Business 2016 for Mac OR Office Home & Business 2019 (MAC/PC). ...

I'm wondering if there is any reason to get the older version? ... I want a local standalone copy.

My understanding is that Office 2016 gives you a customizable Ribbon bar, and Office 2019 takes that away. (However, it's still available if you subscribe to Office 365, which I fully understand is something you don't want to do.) This is a big reason to stick with Office 2016 for some, and for others it has become a reason to move away from Microsoft Office entirely.

https://support.office.com/en-us/ar...-for-Mac-26911d4c-4971-41cd-b606-5fbc0318f499

 

[Head_Unit]

My understanding is that Office 2016 gives you a customizable Ribbon bar, and Office 2019 takes that away...

Ah! That's a HUGE issue for me. I wonder how old your link is? Because I could find another link seeming to indicate 2019 does have that, and another where a user was having problems with it. And that's it. Where else did you glean your "understanding" from because I would like to look into this more...

 

[Head_Unit]

As for Office 365, whether $7 or $10 doesn't matter:
- I can buy the standalone for $15
- If indeed the standalone do check the license, I've never had that be an issue (maybe my versions are too old is also possible). At work I get "out of date" messages and just don't want to fiddle with any of that.
I could care less about any advanced features; I'm doing basic stuff. The one "feature" I'd love to have would be for Word to actually be able to paste graphics without freaking out (suddenly switching to another document and/or another portion of the document and/or pasting the graphic in some other part of the document, grrrr, and that is WITH Office 365...and for years previously...heh, I once had big problems trying to copy a chart from Excel into Word. An MBA classmate who had worked at Microsoft laughed and told me it was impossible, they use incompatible charting engines because each app was its own fiefdom and the "Office" group that was supposed to coordinate stuff like that was routinely ignored by the Word/Excel/PP developers.)

 

[IWT]

@Head_Unit

That's why I suggested Office 2016 in my first post #2.

I went through the options (2016, 2019, 365 sub) and because of the fabulous discount you can get on a standalone version, I suggested that; rather than 365; and the 2016 > 2019 because of perceived "deficiencies" (which may/may not have been corrected).

Ian

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Ah! That's a HUGE issue for me. I wonder how old your link is? Because I could find another link seeming to indicate 2019 does have that, and another where a user was having problems with it. And that's it. Where else did you glean your "understanding" from because I would like to look into this more...

From users screaming, swearing and gnashing their teeth over it.

I think that folks in this very thread have verified it.

 

[usagora]

The one "feature" I'd love to have would be for Word to actually be able to paste graphics without freaking out (suddenly switching to another document and/or another portion of the document and/or pasting the graphic in some other part of the document

FYI - change the picture's wrapping to "behind text" and you can move it anywhere you'd like. I've never had Word switch to another document when pasting a graphic into another, so I can't relate to that. But I can relate to the image appearing somewhere within the document I'm pasting it in that I don't want it to be - changing the wrapping settings solves that.

 

[SandraGray]

It is better to get the Office Mac 2019, it supports Catalina 10.15, Big Sur 11, Monterey 12 , Ventura 13 , and Sonoma 14, you can get the Offiec for Mac 2019 Home business from the online store Keyingo, it is working good on my Monterey !

 

[MacInWin]

It is better to get the Office Mac 2019, it supports Catalina 10.15, Big Sur 11, Monterey 12 , Ventura 13 , and Sonoma 14, you can get the Offiec for Mac 2019 Home business from the online store Keyingo, it is working good on my Monterey !

@SandraGray , welcome to the forum. You have posted into a thead last visited 5 years ago, in 2019. You can tell the date of the thread from the bars between the posts. You are not the first new visitor to not see that, so don't feel that bad about it. Just be aware of the dates in the thread posts as you continue to visit.