By Geetesh Bajaj, James Gordon. The Typography features in Word 2011 for Mac work only on fonts that are specifically designed to support them. Very few of the fonts that are on your system now are likely to support more than one or two of these features. Word Online is Microsoft's online word processor and is a stripped down version of the popular Microsoft Word. You can only open documents you have stored in your online OneNote account, but uploading files there first before using them with the editor isn't a huge step to take.

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• Microsoft Word 2016 for Mac

It doesn’t matter that you don’t think Microsoft Word doesn’t matter anymore. It does—for tens, hundreds, thousands of people, Microsoft Word is an every day event. An indispensable tool for getting daily business done. And without it, whether you like it or not, much of what must get done in the world of words wouldn’t, if it weren’t for Word.

What matters most to those users is how it works. Whether it works well. Whether it will get the job done without getting in the way. What matters to the hundreds of thousands of people who’ve traded up from a PC to a Mac and the tens of thousands of IT professionals who have to support them is whether or not Word on the Mac works in the world they work in. Is it invisible. Seamless. Unbroken.

With few exceptions, Word for Mac 2016 is exactly that.

As a word processing tool, Word 2016—which, at present, is only available as part of an Office 365 subscription—hasn’t changed much since its last major release as Word for Mac 2011. (Students, parents, and teachers may be able to get Office for free or cheap. Check out Microsoft’s Office in Education site to see if you qualify) How you create, edit, and style text remains the same as it ever was. What you may notice is that Word now supports some Mac OS-only features such as full screen mode, multi-touch gestures, and retina graphics.

Microsoft has also added some Mac-only features of its own, including a Smart Lookup feature that integrates Bing searches and other contextually relevant information from the web when you use the tool on selected text. All of the Office products also include something that Microsoft now refers to as the Task Pane, which, for my money, is an awful lot like Office’s old Floating Palettes, without the floating. In short, the Task Pane provides an easy way for you to make quick formatting changes to text and other document elements without having to rely on a menu or Ribbon element.

Over the past several years Microsoft has undertaken a massive redesign of its Office products for Mac and iOS. These updates have streamlined the look and feel of Office apps, making them more like their Windows versions, but with what I find to be a far less cluttered look and feel. In fact, the new Mac version is as clean as Word on the iPad, which is an excellent app, and it also has some of the same limitations. The upside to this sameness is that, whether you’re working on a PC at your office, your iPad on the train, or your Mac at home, you’ll find the tools you need in substantially the same places.

While there is an essential “sameness” to all these apps, you will still find that some features found in the Windows version are nowhere to be found on the Mac. For example, the option to add a pop-up calendar to a table—a feature you’ll find in the Windows version—isn’t available on the Mac. But...if you use your Mac to add a properly formatted date to a document with a table including that feature, the field will retain the calendar option when you open it again on a PC.

This raises an important point: Word for Mac is top-notch when it comes to collaborative work. This is obvious when it comes to basic document editing. Email a document to someone, have them make changes, and send it back to you. If they’re using the current version of Word on the device they edit with, the transition is seamless. But, better yet, share your document using OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or a Microsoft Sharepoint, and you can have dozens of people working on the same document at the same time, each without interfering with the other’s changes. Word’s collaborative tools also include threaded comments, so you can see and interact with others within the comments on a document.

Word 2016 isn’t without disappointments, but they are by no means deal killers. Word takes no advantage of Apple’s Autosave and Versions features. So you’re stuck with what now seems like a vestige of some ancient past. Have a power failure? Dog step on your power strip? You’re relegated to the weeping and gnashing of teeth you no longer expect when bad things happen and you have unsaved changes in a document. This also seems to be tied to Word’s collaboration features, which, while excellent, are not as dynamic as I’d like them to be. If you’re editing a document while someone else is also making changes, you don’t see their changes until both they and you save the document. (Compare this with Pages, which updates changes almost as soon as they’re made, no matter who is editing the document.) Finally, Word doesn’t support Yosemite’s option to rename and/or move a document using the menu in the document’s title bar.

Bottom line

Microsoft Word 2016 is an excellent update to what is, for most users, an important business tool. Changes to the program’s user interface make it easy for anyone to bounce from Word on a Mac to Word on any other platform with a minimal transitional curve. Word’s collaboration features make it possible for business users to work on the computing platform of their choosing without making significant sacrifices.

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While the program doesn’t support some of Yosemite’s more important, user friendly, and bacon-saving features—such as Autosave—the overall user experience is superb. In short, Microsoft Word gets the job done without getting in the way, If Word is your primary tool for getting work done with words, run, don’t walk to upgrade to Word 2016.

• Microsoft Word 2016 for Mac

  If Word is your primary tool for getting work done with words, run, don't walk to upgrade to Word 2016.

  Pros

  • Clean, updated user interface
  • Excellent collaboration features, including threaded comments
  • Seamless integration with OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Sharepoints

  Cons

  • Currently only available with and Office 365 subscriptions
  • Does not support Yosemite's Autosave and Versions features
  • Documents you're collaborating on are only updated as long as everyone saves their documents
  • Not all features of Word for Windows are available in Word for Mac.

Most applications (such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) include fonts that are automatically installed when you install the software. For example, applications that are created especially for document design projects, such as Microsoft Publisher, often come with quite a few extra fonts that you can use with any other program on your computer.

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However, sometimes you may want to install custom fonts that you've created, purchased or downloaded from somewhere else. In this article we'll talk about how to install those fonts so you can use them in Microsoft Office.

Note: To embed fonts in a Microsoft Office Word document or PowerPoint presentation, see Embedding fonts on the PPTools site.

Locate custom fonts on the Web

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In addition to acquiring and using fonts installed with other applications, you can download fonts from the Internet. Some fonts on the Internet are sold commercially, some are distributed as shareware, and some are free. The Microsoft Typography site site provides links to other font foundries (the companies or individuals outside of Microsoft who create and distribute fonts) where you can find additional fonts.

After you find a font that you would like to use with an Office application, you can download it and install it through the operating system that you are currently using on your computer. Because fonts work with the operating system, they are not downloaded to Office directly. You should go through the system's Fonts folder in Windows Control Panel and the font will work with Office automatically. On the Mac you use the Font Book to add the font and then copy it to the Windows Office Compatible folder.

Many third parties outside of Microsoft package their fonts in .zip files to reduce file size and to make downloading faster. If you have downloaded a font that is saved in .zip format double-click the zip file to open it.

Install a custom font you have downloaded

Once you've downloaded the font you want to install you need to install it in the operating system. Once the font is properly installed in the operating system Microsoft Office will be able to see and use it. For detailed instructions select the operating system you're using from the drop-down box below.

1. Find the font file that you downloaded, keeping in mind that it may be contained within a .zip file. It's probably located in your downloads folder.

2. Double-click the font file to open it in the Font Previewer

3. If you're satisfied that this is the font you want, click Install at the top left.

4. Close the Font Previewer, and open your Office program. You should now see your new font included on the font list.

1. Find the font file you downloaded - it likely has a .ttf or .otf extension and it's probably in your downloads folder. Double-click on it.

   Note: If the font file has a .zip extension you need to open that .zip file and open the font file from there.

2. It will open in the font previewer. Click Install Font. It will open in the Font Book.

3. Close the Font Book. Your font should now be available to Microsoft Office.

Note: If you're using Office 2011 for Mac, you may need to drag and drop the font to the Windows Office Compatible collection in the Font Book to make it available to Microsoft Office.

Sharing files that contain non-standard fonts

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When you install a custom font, each font will work only with the computer you've installed it on. Custom fonts that you've installed on your computer might not display the same way on a different computer. Text that is formatted in a font that is not installed on a computer will display in Times New Roman or the default font.

Therefore, if you plan to share Microsoft Office Word, PowerPoint, or Excel files with other people, you'll want to know which fonts are native to the version of Office that the recipient is using. If it isn't native, you may have to embed or distribute the font along with the Word file, PowerPoint presentation, or Excel spreadsheet. For more information about this see Fonts that are installed with Microsoft Office.

See also

Do you have ideas for how we can improve Microsoft Office?

See How do I give feedback on Microsoft Office?