Microsoft Office with native Apple Silicon M1 support arrives

Microsoft's main Office apps now run natively on Apple Silicon

Microsoft's main app collection of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook in Microsoft 365 have all been updated to run natively on Apple Silicon M1 Macs, with more related apps coming.

Microsoft has announced that most of its Microsoft 365 apps, previously known as Office 365, have now been updated and are universal apps. Alongside support for Intel Macs, Microsoft's most popular apps will also run on the new Apple Silicon M1.

"We are excited to announce that starting today we are releasing new versions of many of our Microsoft 365 for Mac apps that run natively on Macs with M1," said Bill Doll, Microsoft Senior Product Marketing Manager for Microsoft 365, said in a blog post.

"This means that now our core flagship Office apps— Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote— will run faster and take full advantage of the performance improvements on new Macs, making you even more productive on the latest MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini," he continued.

"The new Office apps are Universal, so they will continue to run great on Macs with Intel processors. The apps are not only speedy, but they also look fantastic as they have been redesigned to match the new look of macOS Big Sur," Doll said.

One exception to the native M1 support is that Microsoft Teams is only available to be run in either Rosetta 2 emulation on Apple Silicon Macs, or via a browser. "We are working on universal app support for M1 Macs and will share more news as our work progresses," said Doll.

Also not available immediately, but promised for January 2021, is an updated version of what Microsoft calls Office Start. This is meant to "enable you to be more focused with immersive experiences that are easier to use right from the first screen."

"[It brings experiences] that feel both unmistakably Microsoft 365 and include elements that are native to the look of macOS so they are also unmistakably made for Mac," concluded Doll.

Microsoft 365 is available to buy now in versions ranging from home use to enterprise, all from the official site.

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15 Comments

lordjohnwhorfin 853 comments · 18 Years

About 3 years ago

Public service announcement: most people don’t need Office. The apps bundled with the Mac for free (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) are highly capable programs that can read and write Microsoft’s file format and deliver all the features most people need.
for feature parity and higher compatibility you can get the free LibreOffice.
Now, if you have to work with complex Word layouts or Excel tables with macro programming, it’s a different story, but otherwise there is no reason to pay the Microsoft tax.

melgross 33484 comments · 20 Years

I’m impressed that they were able to redo the UI at the same time. 95% of Office type software suits users use Microsoft Office. So this is good news.

urahara 733 comments · 13 Years

lordjohnwhorfin said:

Public service announcement: most people don’t need Office. The apps bundled with the Mac for free (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) are highly capable programs that can read and write Microsoft’s file format and deliver all the features most people need.
for feature parity and higher compatibility you can get the free LibreOffice.
Now, if you have to work with complex Word layouts or Excel tables with macro programming, it’s a different story, but otherwise there is no reason to pay the Microsoft tax.

Most people do not know about existence of apple insider forum. And most people on this forum do not want to see this kind of comment (including mine :)).

CloudTalkin 916 comments · 5 Years

lordjohnwhorfin said:

Public service announcement: most people don’t need Office. The apps bundled with the Mac for free (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) are highly capable programs that can read and write Microsoft’s file format and deliver all the features most people need.
for feature parity and higher compatibility you can get the free LibreOffice.
Now, if you have to work with complex Word layouts or Excel tables with macro programming, it’s a different story, but otherwise there is no reason to pay the Microsoft tax.

By and large, no one really cares about office productivity software. MS Office is ubiquitous. It come bundled with a ton of computers, it works in every ecosystem (that matters), and you don't really have to think about it. The Mac apps are okay, but again, no one really cares. Like me, a lot of people use Office because it's low friction that works regardless of the hardware I'm using. Family 365 subcription with all that storage just makes it a no brainer. Not really sure what you consider an MS tax. I guess it depends on your use case.

rwes 200 comments · 11 Years

melgross said:

I’m impressed that they were able to redo the UI at the same time. 95% of Office type software suits users use Microsoft Office. So this is good news.

They've had the UI redesign (at least for Outlook) in the works for some time (at least 3+ months; I've been using it via a New Outlook toggle which was available in the application). Agreed though, still an impressive delivery and great news with the M1 support so quickly.