Microsoft Office 2016. Microsoft Office 2016 (codenamed Office 16) is a version of the Microsoft Office productivity suite, succeeding both Office 2013 and Office for Mac 2011. It was released on macOS on 9 July 2015 and on Microsoft Windows on 22 September 2015 for Office 365 subscribers.
I looked into Office, since it has a Mac version now. Actually, Word and Excel started on the Mac. But I digress. Functionally, Office 2016 is pretty much 2011 with new paint. A few new things here and there but the main thing is the interface is now in line with the Windows and Online versions.
Outlook seems to be the black sheep of the family though. Still no CalDAV or CardDAV support so you can’t sync calendars or contacts with anything but Exchange. The mail features are all there. I’ve tested it with Outlook.com and Gmail IMAP accounts and it’s solid.
All things considered, and feature for feature, I still prefer Pages and Numbers for most of my work. Google media player for mac. Office has two unbeatable features though standard file formats and pivot tables.
I find Pages' layout capabilities better than what Word offers. 2011 at least had a Publisher View but that's been pulled in 2016. Pages has object alignment guides, and the tools available in the Format pane are more intuitive that Words' ribbon. Pages also handles exotic fonts and ligatures better than Word. Word is a great word processor but Pages is actually a desktop publisher. Numbers, like Pages, has better formatting options than Excel. Tables and charts are just objects that can be moved and manipulated easier for print or PDF export.
Numbers has nothing on Excel when it comes to crunching, I just prefer the UI and layout for simple datasets. If it could do pivot tables, I probably wouldn't use Excel at all. I have to use Excel because if it's possible to make pivot tables in Numbers then I haven't figured out how yet. And I used Word when I was writing my thesis because it had (in my opinion) a more mature set of features in the name of setting up an index and such.but again that may just be because I haven't figured Pages out yet properly.
That said, I GREATLY prefer the iWork suite in terms of interface and generally use them over Office. And when it comes to Powerpoint vs.
Forget about it! Keynote wins every time. The interface is far simpler, and the animations and presentation elements are much better. I do however use both Outlook and Mail.
I have a client that I work with who has a proper Exchange server set up and it plays very nicely with Outlook so calendaring etc. For everything else, including my full time work, I use and prefer Mail because it's much simpler and overall interfaces with the rest of the system (calendar, address book, even Safari and Messages) much better. If your whole reasoning for buying MS Office is for Outlook, I'd stick with Mail. If you need a whole new suite, the iWork suite of apps is great, Pages, Numbers, Keynote etc are great and a lot more OSX integrated because they were designed specifically for it better yet, they're free if you've purchased a device in the last like 2(?) years.
If you are a creature of habit and have used MS Office your whole life and need to make sure everything you use is PC friendly then use MS Office, it's great. The only downside is it's kind of a dulled down version of the PC version, most features are there but some are not, the PC version is a lot more powerful and OneNote is pretty much just an after thought with a whole bunch of features just not there. Again, I didn't make the initial claim, so I'm not playing that game. Finding features not present in Mac Office is only a google search away if you feel the need, though. VBA was not there in the prior rev, and it was a giant problem for lots of people. I'm glad it's back, but since 99% of my VBA needs are for clients on Windows, I use the Windows version of Office when I need to do something like that. Like I said, the coding environment is better.
I've been on a Mac since before OSX, but have never felt the need to delve into AS.