Microsoft updated Office suite to bring native support to Macs with M1 processor.
Microsoft Office is the most popular productivity and collaboration tool used on the Apple Macs and the company has just updated it with several new features, including native support for the ARM architecture.
Microsoft Office comes to Macs with M1 CPU
The support comes with the update of the cloud and subscription version Microsoft 365 for Mac, leaving the main applications of the suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook) ready to run natively on the new Mac ARM-based M1 processor.
- Microsoft announces support for x64 applications on Windows 10 on ARM
- How to boot your M1 Mac into macOS recovery?
- Apple is already working on the new M1X processor
In addition to ARM support, Microsoft has announced new features such as the improved experience of Office Start, which now uses the design language Fluent Design. The company will update it next month to match the Big Sur MacOS design.
Another improvement comes for Outlook, which will receive support for iCloud accounts in the coming weeks, something that – surprisingly – has never existed in email client of Apple.
Tell Me is another new feature to be added. It allows you to ask questions in your native language and, although it is not new for Office as a whole, it is now available for Mac users. Another new thing for Mac is Data from Picture, which allows you to take a picture with your phone and then edit it in an Excel spreadsheet. There are various new features for all the applications that you can review in the Microsoft announcement. And other applications are on the way like Teams.
Office for Mac has received special treatment since Bill Gates’ historic announcement in 1997 and the native version for ARM is a great confirmation. Apple will replace all its Intel-based computers (MS Office will continue to work the same way on them) with the new architecture over the next three years. Few external developers will be left out. For example, Mozilla today also announced native support for Firefox 84 on ARM-enabled Macs.
