Today, Microsoft"s Bill Doll penned a blog post outlining how the company is improving Microsoft 365 for the Mac. The first way, and undoubtedly the most significant, is that the core Microsoft 365 apps are being updated for Apple"s new ARM-powered Macs. These core apps include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook.
These updates are rolling out today. You can either go to the Mac App Store in the Updates tab, or you can use Microsoft AutoUpdate by going to Help -> Check for Updates, depending on how you installed the apps. The company also said that it"s working hard to bring native support for Teams to M1 Macs.
Also being improved is the Office Start experience, which now uses Fluent Design, although Microsoft actually said the design language is meant to match macOS Big Sur. This is rolling out next month. Also, Outlook for Mac is getting support for iCloud accounts, something that surprisingly never existed in an email client on an Apple product. iCloud account support will be added in the coming weeks.
Tell Me is a feature that lets you ask natural-language questions, and while it"s not new to Office as a whole, it"s available now for Mac users. Another thing that"s new for Mac is Data from Picture, which lets you snap a picture with your phone and then edit it in an Excel spreadsheet.
Finally, Office for Mac is going to support shared calendars, although this won"t be available until early next year, and that"s still only for Office Insiders.