-->

• If you have installed Microsoft Office (eg) on your Apple computer it is because you were probably brought up on it and used it on a computer with Microsoft Windows operating system or use it at work etc. It’s definitely NOT Apple’s fault if Office won’t work with Catalina.
• For example, if you installed a volume licensed version of Office, such as Office Professional Plus 2016. The information in this article doesn't apply to Microsoft 365 Apps. For more information about installing Office updates, see Install Office updates.

Microsoft's Office 2016 for Mac is set to reach its end of support date on October 13, 2020, and after that date, connecting to Office 365 services using the Office 2016 for Mac software will no.

Note

Office 365 ProPlus is being renamed to Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise. For more information about this change, read this blog post.

Summary

Existing Office 2016 for Mac customers will be seamlessly upgraded to 64-bit versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote as part of the August product release (version 15.25). This affects customers of all license types: Retail, Office 365 Consumer, Office 365 Commercial, and Volume License installations.

Deployment options for the 64-bit update

AutoUpdate (MAU)

Customers who use Microsoft AutoUpdate (MAU) to keep their Office applications up-to-date will see a 'regular' monthly update notification when their selected channel is upgraded to 64-bit builds. Depending on which version is installed on the local computer, MAU will offer either a delta or full update. The update package size does not change between 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Also, MAU can deliver a delta update when applicable to update a user from 32-bit to 64-bit applications. Therefore, customers won't experience a sharp increase in download activity. For the release to the Production channel, customers will see '(64-bit)' in the update title to make them aware that this is a 64-bit update.

For information about how to use the MAU, see Check for Office for Mac updates automatically.

Manual updates

The August release of Office for Mac is available for manual download. The following file provides a 64-bit package to replace existing 32-bit applications with 64-bit variants during installation:

Download the Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac August update package now.

Virus-scan claim

Microsoft scanned this file for viruses, using the most current virus-detection software that was available on the date that the file was posted. The file is stored on security-enhanced servers that help prevent any unauthorized changes to it.

Volume License Service Center

Volume License customers typically get their Office 2016 software from the Volume License Service Center (VLSC). These builds are refreshed infrequently and are typically aligned with new language editions. The VLSC will continue to offer 32-bit installers (15.23) until November 2016. However, all updater packages that are released after August will be based on 64-bit builds. Therefore, a VLSC customer who updates either manually or through AutoUpdate will be transitioned to 64-bit builds.

More Information

64-bit only

The Mac operating system has been 64-bit for several years. Unlike for Windows, there's no choice between running a 32-bit or 64-bit version of the Mac operating system. Similarly, we won't offer a choice between 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Office 2016 for Mac. After each 'channel' is transitioned per the rollout schedule, only 64-bit builds will be available.

Effect on third-party applications and add-ins

The transition to 64-bit Office for Mac was announced in April 2016. IT Pros will want to understand which compiled add-ins are deployed to the users whom they manage so that they can assess the effect of the upgrade. The following Microsoft Office website summarizes the issues that affect the more common add-ins that are used together with Office 2016 for Mac:

Tools for inspecting product architecture

To verify the architecture of an Office application (that is, to understand whether you have a 32-bit or 64-bit build), start the application, open the Activity Monitor, and then enable the Kind column.

Microsoft Office Update For Catalina

You can also use the file command in a terminal session to inspect the binary. For this use, type file -N <path of binary>.This method can be used with for any binary file, including third-party add-ins.

The file command returns one of three values.

Options for reverting to 32-bit installations

There may be situations in which the customer has to change code that's not 64-bit ready. If customers can't immediately move forward to 64-bit builds, we will make available a one-time 32-bit update for the 15.25 release in addition to the default 64-bit updates. The 32-bit updates will be available only for manual download from the Office CDN.

The latest 32-bit release of Office 2016 for Mac (15.25.160818) can be downloaded from https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=823192.

Customers who manually install the 32-bit release won't be offered the 64-bit version of 15.25 through MAU. However, MAU will offer the 64-bit version of 15.26 in September 2016. Therefore, customers have a limited time to remain on 32-bit builds.

If a customer has already upgraded to the 64-bit update of Office for Mac 15.25 and wants to revert to the 32-bit version, follow these steps:

1. Exit all open Office 2016 applications.
2. Start Safari, and then browse to https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=823192 to start the download of the 32-bit installer.
3. Double-click the downloaded package, and then follow the instructions.

The 64-bit installation has a build date of 160817. The 32-bit version has a build date of 160818.

2020-12-28 17:33:41 • Filed to: macOS 10.15 • Proven solutions

Microsoft's Office products are so ubiquitous that they've even invaded Apple's macOS environment. However, after you buy Microsoft Office for macOS 10.15 and start using it, you may run across various issues. Most of these are easily addressable, and this article shows you how to fix issues with the Office suite for macOS 10.15 - officially known as Catalina - that Apple will drop to all Apple desktop and laptop users on 23 September 2019.

How to Troubleshoot macOS 10.15 Office Issues

Once you download Microsoft Office for macOS 10.15, currently in public beta, you might notice a few issues that other macOS users have reported. The issues might continue even with the public release version of Catalina, so it will help if you know the most common issues seen in Office for macOS 10.15 and how to fix them. Since Microsoft products don't usually play nice with iOS or macOS devices, there are quite a few of them. The top ones are listed here, along with fixes.

1. Application Slow or Crashes Regularly

One of the most frustrating things with any desktop application is that it runs slow, posing a significant hurdle to anyone looking to get their job done quickly. Even worse is a piece of software crashing on you; in such cases, losing unsaved work is a major problem. Here are some ways to fix these issues:

Fix #1: Update your Microsoft Office macOS 10.15 Product Key - If your product is not officially licensed, you may find that it runs slower than it should even though your RAM isn't under any strain from other resource-intensive processes. The obvious fix here is to get a product key to activate your copy of Office. There are several websites that offer generic, master, or OEM product keys that don't have a one-machine-one-license restriction. You can get one of those to activate your product, and see if the issue persists. If it does, move to the next fix.

Fix #2: Upgrade your Microsoft Office Software - If you're running MS Word 2016 for Mac, you might have this same issue cropping up again and again. The icon in the dock will keep bouncing up and down but clicking on it doesn't seem to launch the application properly. Most often you'll need to do a Force Quit by right-clicking on the Word icon and then relaunching it. Instead of doing that all the time, consider upgrading to a higher version of MS Office 2016. The issue is common in version 16.11, but even applying a minor update to version 16.11.1 should do the trick. Oddly enough, this issue is generally seen exclusively with Word 2016 rather than Excel or PowerPoint.

2. Documents Saved in the Wrong Format

Some users have reported that documents that are saved in PDF format sometimes show up as .DOCX files. This typically happens when you're saving documents to a cloud service, specifically, OneDrive, Microsoft's own cloud storage service. There's no permanent fix, unfortunately, but there's a workaround that will fix the problem for a particular file.

Fix #1: Fix #1: Rename, Save Locally, Then Save to Cloud - The way to circumvent this problem is to go into OneDrive, change the .docx file extension to .pdf, then switch the location to be saved as local. After that, you need to change it again to OneDrive, which usually fixes the issue.

3. Excel Issues: Format or Extension Not Valid

One of the more frustrating issues with Microsoft Excel for Mac is the problem with permissions. Protected files usually request that you grant permission before they can be opened. This is usually in the form of what is called the Open or User password. The issue with macOS 10.15 Office (Excel only) is that it will ask you for permission even if you didn't set a password, and then the system either freezes or alerts you that the .xlsx file extension is not valid or is the wrong format. Basically, Excel tells you that its own files are of the wrong type!

Fix #1: Delete a Library File - Microsoft doesn't have a fix for this yet, but they suggest a workaround. The first thing is to Force Quit Excel and then delete a specific file from your library. The file path is ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Excel/Data/Library/Preferences, which you can access using the Go To function in the Finder menu. Once there, delete the file called com.microsoft.Excel.securebookmarks.plist by right-clicking and moving to Trash. Relaunch Excel, and the problem should have gone away temporarily. You may need to do it each time you face the issue until Microsoft releases a permanent fix.

4. Font Problems in Office 2016 Version 16.9 for macOS 10.15

There's a weird issue that occurs in this specific version of Office 2016 for Mac. What happens is that your fonts get all messed up. At times one font will appear as another, or looks like garbled text, or certain fonts might even be missing from the drop-down list. The problem is that you may have multiple copies of the same font loaded in your Mac, which causes errors with the Font Picker in Office. Here's the fix.

Fix #1: Set Active Copy for Fonts - First, open the Font Book app on your Mac. This can be found in the Applications folder in Finder. You can also search for and select it using Spotlight. Once it's open, choose the All Fonts option in the left sidebar menu and click the information icon, which is a lower case letter 'i'. If you know which font is causing the issue, click and expand it in the center panel. Make sure that only the latest versions are set to On. However, first, turn every version to On, and then where you see the warning message on the right-side panel, click on Resolve Manually and pick the most recent version. This is what is known as the Active Copy. Close Font Book, go back to the Office application where you first faced the issue, and see if it's resolved.

The Best PDF Editor for Mac to Complement Office for macOS 10.15 Catalina

The Office suite is incomplete if you don't have a robust PDF editor. Since Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are generally saved as PDF for easy portability and sharing, you'll need something like PDFelement to round out the experience. This is a powerful piece of software that costs a fraction of what you would pay for the same features in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. It contains all the features typically used in an office environment, such as signing PDF contracts and agreements, filling or creating forms, redacting confidential information when sharing internal documents with outsiders, securing and encrypting PDF documents, and much more.

As a matter of fact, the matches Adobe Acrobat's product feature for feature, providing users with editing, annotation, page management, merging, and other essential tools to increase your productivity and speed up the workflow in your office. Although Word does have some basic PDF functionality, it can only convert from Word to PDF. On the other hand, PDFelement is a dedicated PDF management software that offers bulk conversions from and to multiple other formats, OCR (optical character recognition), data extraction from scanned forms and documents, and other essential capabilities. If you have macOS systems in your workplace and have opted for Microsoft Office for Mac, then PDFelement is an equally essential productivity tool.

Free Download or Buy PDFelement right now!

Free Download or Buy PDFelement right now!

Buy PDFelement right now!

Buy PDFelement right now!

Office 2016 For Mac Catalina