The upcoming OS X 10.11.1 El Capitan release, which is expected to be released in the very near future, will include a compatibility update for Microsoft Office 2016 to fix ongoing crashing issues, MacRumors has learned. Since OS X El Capitan was released in late September, some Office 2016 users have found the software to be nearly unusable due to frequent crashes or an inability to open the Office apps at all.
Microsoft informed customers it was aware of the problem nearly two weeks ago and said it was "actively working with Apple" on a fix, hinting the problem was on Apple's end and wasn't something Microsoft could fix alone.
Microsoft did update Office 2016 earlier this week, adding new features and security enhancements, but admitted it did not fix any El Capitan bugs in an accompanying support document. At that time, Microsoft said it was working with Apple to "ensure resolution with the next update of OS X 10.11 El Capitan."
Apple's most recent OS X 10.11.1 beta for developers and public beta testers was released Wednesday afternoon, with Apple asking developers to focus on Mail and Office 2016. The upcoming OS X 10.11.1 release will also fix several issues with Mail regarding missing server information and a bug that prevents the display of messages and mailboxes within the app. The update also includes dozens of new emoji from Unicode 7 and 8, including taco, burrito, cheese wedge, unicorn head, middle finger, popcorn, and more.
Office 2011 users were also experiencing issues with crashing and with a non-functional Outlook app, but Microsoft was able to fix those bugs with an Office 2011 update that was released on October 7.
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Top Rated Comments
(View all)Emoji > anything else
Are you implying my expectations are fantasy? As an Office 365 subscriber I expect better from Microsoft - I expect a working product. As it stands, the whole suite still crashes, though things have progressed by leaps and bounds since the laughable instability of the early Office 2016 betas. That said, I don't know what the strategy is going forward, while finally using modern code the suite is still 32-bit and absolutely unwieldy in install and update size. El Capitan also completely broke the OneDrive for Business sync client.
If the bug is being fixed by an OS update, I think it's a fairly safe conclusion that the show stoppers likely weren't on Microsoft's end. At the very least, they weren't all on Microsoft's end.Microsoft's public/consumer facing software arm has two major money makers. Office and Windows. Even if they don't pay a lot of mind to OS X as a favored OS to support, they're not gonna staff a development team that doesn't think to test the software on betas of the next major OS release for a major system vendor.
The office one gets me.. if only Microsoft had access to OS betas over the previous months, this all could have been avoided. Oh wait...
Reading this over and over is getting boring .... In my personal experience, Office 2016 worked fine through all the El Cap betas and only broke when the GM came out. What was your experience?