In regards to the update (KB3074482) released today, all the core products including Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote have been upgraded to Version 15.12.3. The release notes aren’t terribly specific however here’s a breakdown of the fixes and improvements MS published:
Outlook 2016 for MacClutterBug fixesWord 2016 for MacBug fixesExcel 2016 for MacBug fixesPowerPoint 2016 for MacAbility to modernize legacy movie formatsBug fixesOneNote 2016 for MacBullets and numbering galleriesShare to OneNoteBug fixes
Personally, additional Clutter support for Outlook is the update that caught my eye. Clutter is a new service Microsoft released a few months back which leverages its big data platform, Office Graph. Office Graph uses different feeds of information, including your behavior to determine which email is clutter vs. important. It uses machine learning technology to improve over time however you can also train it by marking an email as clutter (or not clutter). My guess is that’s the update they added this month (Right Click an email, Move to Clutter). This blog post explains the basics however here’s a nice video that reviews the Clutter feature in more detail:
The easiest way to update your Mac is to just use Microsoft Auto Update. Open a Microsoft Office app and click Check for Updates in the Help menu. You can also grab individual updates to each app via the KB3074482 Article Page. Either way, in typical fashion on the Mac, the updates are very large — basically full re-installs of each product. If you have a slow internet pipe it’s going to take some time to finish. Problems so far…out of memory errors (I have 16GB RAM / 4GB VRAM), regular crashes with no recovery mode..lost work, suddenly requires reactivation despite 5 copy licence paid for, loss of graphics on screen…text and graphics disappear from documents..and so it goes on. Back to 2011 and cancellation of subscription seems the sensible way ahead. The worst part of Office 2016 with Office 365 Home is that each Mac user on each Mac is treated as one user. You need to deactivate one of the five installation in order to activate the sixth one. Another worst thing is OneDrive can login only one personal account. My fear here is am I opening myself up for new problems with this update. I guess my question to some are, if your current installation was stable, does this effect anything (negatively). It sounds like many people already had stability problems this update made them worse. Yes or No…should I risk the update or wait for the next one. PS: These update files are enormous… Lastly, it is unfortunate that Office is not handled through the Mac App Store – Microsoft’s separate solution for purchasing / downloading / updating is not the way it should be on the Mac. At least with the iOS products, Microsoft has no choice but to be part of the ecosystem. Another BIG problem is the inability to import contacts using CVS or other non-MS format. Imagine having to import 500 contacts one by one, thanks to Microsoft’s lack of its customers needs. Why discard an industry standard file format, except to penalize its users? Why switch to Outlook if you lose the ability to import contacts? Bottom Line: This End of July Update wasnt an update … it was a downgrade and more or less a disaster ! I’ve also left Office 2011 on my computer in case I have any significant problems with 2016. Knowing MS, there will be another “update” in a few weeks and in typical fashion, the 3rd one will be okay. I’m betting we see another update soon and then I’ll delete 2011 after the new install. At this point, my Office 2016 is running acceptably. I have a MacPro 13″ Retina, 2.6GHz, with 8GB RAM and 500GB SSD, late 2013 model. I’m not updating until I see the new Office 2016 running better. Comment Name * Email *
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