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Chapter 1

Overview from 10,000 Feet

IN THIS CHAPTER

Deciding which of the editions of Office for Mac to buy

Signing up for a Microsoft account

Installing Office

Keeping your apps updated

Over the next several hundred pages, you can find out in detail about the apps that make up the Microsoft Office for Mac suite. But first you must decide which version of the suite you want or need, acquire a copy of it, and then install it and find out how to update it to ensure that you’re always running the latest and greatest (not to mention most stable) version.

So, without further ado, dig in!

The Many Faces of Office for Mac

When it comes to choices, it seems Microsoft wants to make sure you have a veritable cornucopia of them for Office apps. Combining the number of packages available for individual and business use, there are roughly a dozen to choose from. For simplicity’s sake, we focus on the several tasty flavors of Office for Mac for individuals and home users:

 Office for Mac Home & Student

 Office for Mac Home & Business

 Microsoft 365 Personal

 Microsoft 365 Family

Office for Mac Home & Student and Office for Mac Home & Business are both one-off purchases; you pay one price up front and then own it forever. Microsoft 365 Personal and Microsoft 365 Family offer a subscription model, in which you pay a monthly or yearly fee, with access halting only when you choose to cancel or you miss a payment.

The four editions all provide the big three apps — Word, Excel, and PowerPoint — with variations based on whether you selected the Office or Microsoft 365 version. The Microsoft 365 editions of the big three apps provide the latest features and updates on a continual basis — Microsoft calls these premium versions. When Microsoft develops and implements a new feature, you get it automatically, so you apps are always up to date. The Office editions provide classic versions of the big three — what you see is what you get, with no additions or updates except security and bug fixes. You can’t take advantage of new features and products unless you purchase the next Office edition Microsoft releases (they’re usually several years apart).

Here’s the skinny on each of the four editions:

 Office for Mac Home & Student : The retail price is $149.99 for a single installation. As the least expensive edition, it includes the big three apps and OneNote. Many users need nothing more.Note that this edition does not include Microsoft Outlook. Outlook, which is sometimes called the Swiss army knife of personal communications software, combines an email client with an address book, a calendar, to-do lists, and searchable notes in a single app. Unless you dislike the Mail, Contacts, and Calendar apps that are included with macOS, you probably won’t miss Outlook much.

 Office for Mac Home & Business: The retail price is $249.99 for a single installation. What do you get for the additional dough (along with the big three and OneNote)? In two words: Microsoft Outlook.What’s that, you say? You don’t know whether you need Outlook? Well then, we suggest that you save yourself a bundle and start with the Home & Student Edition. Does your organization require or prefer that you use Outlook? It’s best to find out before you make a purchase. You can’t simply pay a few more dollars to upgrade from Office Home & Student to Office Home & Business; you’d have to pay the full price of Office Home & Business to gain access to Outlook.

 Microsoft 365 Personal: For the price of $69.99 annually or $6.99 monthly, you get access for one person to premium versions of the big three, OneNote, Teams, and Outlook, 1TB of OneDrive online storage (more on OneDrive in the next chapter), and the ability to install and use your subscription on up to five devices — Macs, PCs, iOS devices, and Android. That’s right: five devices with support for a variety of desktop and mobile operating systems!

 Microsoft 365 Family: The price is $99.99 annually or $9.99 monthly for access to everything in Microsoft 365 Personal. Plus up to six people can use the subscription instead of one. You can also try it for free for one month.

So there you have it — four editions for four budgets.

Installing Office

Regardless of which edition you decide to buy, you’ll need a Microsoft account and an internet connection to download the installation package for your apps.

Getting a Microsoft account

A Microsoft account is similar to your Apple ID; it’s an account for you to manage your Microsoft apps and purchases. To download and install your Office apps, your purchase of Office for Mac must be associated with a Microsoft account (personal, business, or school account).

If you don’t have a Microsoft account, go to https://office.com/setup to create one.

Downloading and installing Office

To install Microsoft Office, you need the username and password for an administrator account on this Mac. If you don't have an administrator account and password handy, it would behoove you to get one now.

After you have that detail settled, here’s how to download and install your Office apps:

1 Go tohttps://office.com and sign in to the Microsoft account associated with your Microsoft 365 or Office purchase.

2 Click the Install Office button and download the installer package.

3 Locate and double-click the installer package to launch the installer app.

4 Click Continue on the first screen.The screen displays the license terms.

5 Read every word of the license terms, and then click Continue. We’re only half kidding — we know that no one reads the licensing information. But because you’re about to enter into a legally binding agreement, we would be remiss not to at least pretend to urge you to read every word.

6 On the next screen, click Agree.The Select a Destination screen appears.

7 Choose the destination disk for the software installation and then click Continue.The Standard Install on your hard drive’s name screen appears.

8 If you want to install the Office apps somewhere other than the Applications folder, click the Change Install Location button and select another destination. In the next step, you click Install. But if you’re short on disk space, consider not installing some of the apps. To do so, click the Customize button before you click the Install button and then deselect any items you don’t want to install.

9 Click the Install button to open an authentication window, enter an administrator name and password, and then click OK.Go get yourself some coffee or a soft drink — the installation takes a bit of time.

10 When the screen informs you that the installation is complete, click the Close button and you’re ready to go.

Head on over to your Applications folder and double-click one of the newly installed Office apps to get started.

DEALING WITH MULTIPLE VERSIONS OF OFFICE

If you have an earlier version of Office on your hard drive when you install Office, the older version isn’t touched. You now have two (or possibly even three or more) Office versions in your Applications folder.

In a perfect world, all your Office documents, both new and old, would launch the current versions of Word (or other Office apps) when you open them. But in the real world, this may or may not be your experience.

So, we offer you this little lesson in macOS file-opening mastery. You can cause a single file or all files to open in a specific app in two ways. The first method is to right-click the document, choose Open With from the contextual menu, and select an app. The second method is to set a single file or all files of its type to open in a specific app, as follows:

1 To specify which version of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint opens when you double-click one of its document files, single-click that document file and then choose File ⇒ Get Info (or press ⌘ +I).A drop-down Open With menu appears. If you don’t see the Open With menu, click the small, gray disclosure triangle next to the words Open With.

2 Click the Open With menu and select the version of the app you want to open when you double-click this document.

3 If you want all documents of this type to launch this version of Word, click the Change All button.

There you have it — if the wrong version of an Office app launches when you open a document, you now know how to fix it.

Keeping Your Apps Up-to-Date

Microsoft AutoUpdate is a nifty app that’s installed along with your other Office apps (although you won’t find it in your Applications folder). AutoUpdate does what its name implies: It automatically searches for updates to your Office apps and installs them.

To open AutoUpdate:

1 Open an Office app (such as Word or Excel).

2 Choose Help ⇒ Check for Updates from the menu at the top of the screen.The AutoUpdate app launches and scans Microsoft’s servers to check for updates to any Microsoft apps you have installed (even apps that don’t come with Office, such as Microsoft’s web browser, Edge).

3 When updates are found, click the Update All button to download and install all available updates, or click the Update button to the right of the app’s name to only update that app.

4 (Optional) If you want AutoUpdate to periodically check for and install updates automatically, select the box labeled Automatically Keep Microsoft Apps up to Date.

5 Quit AutoUpdate when you’re finished.

If you don’t elect to have AutoUpdate work automatically, be sure to check every few weeks to a month to make sure you have the latest updates and fixes.