Office 2016 for Mac users are right to be unhappy with Apple and Microsoft as troubles continue with Office and the new ‘El Capitan’ release of Mac OSx.
Thousands of people have gone to forums and Office support to complain that Outlook for Mac crashes after the El Capitan update of their Mac.
What have we said, time and again, about delaying any major updates? ‘Let others be the guinea pigs‘ has been Office Watch’s advice for twenty years.
There’s also a problem with Outlook 2011 and El Capitan – Microsoft isn’t saying if the two problems are related.
Not everyone is affected, our MacBook with Office 2016/Mac stubbornly behaves quite normally.
It’s not clear what the problem is or who is to blame. Apple and Microsoft are doing a little PR dance.
Lack of Disclosure
Don’t bother looking on a Microsoft blog or the Microsoft Knowledge Base for any mention of the Office / El Capitan problems. You won’t find anything, not a word.
Microsoft’s long standing reluctance to admit a problem means there’s nothing said in the places customers would look for help, or just assurance that the problem is known.
The best Microsoft will do is a note on the looooong forum from a member of the Office for Mac team:
“Hello everyone,
We are aware of the issue with Outlook 2011 on El Capitan and of Office 2016 on El Capitan.
We are working on a fix for 2011 and for 2016 we are working closely with Apple to resolve this issue as soon as possible. Unfortunately we do not have any timelines for either fix, please stay tuned and thank you for your understanding.“
It could be a problem with El Capitan or a bug in Office 2016/Mac which the update of OSx exposed.
But it’s clear that Microsoft has been slack in dealing with the issue. There’s many reports of similar problems appearing during the beta cycle. Certainly Microsoft Mac team would have had access to the El Capitan updates long before the general public. That said, there’s plenty of reports from El Capitan testers who had Office working OK until the final release.
For the moment, all affected Office for Mac users can do is wait. Microsoft’s only suggestion to those customers is “install the latest updates to Office 2016 for Mac using Microsoft AutoUpdate”,
Maybe the new Office 2016/Mac updates released today will help?
If you haven’t installed the free El Capitan update yet, it would be best to wait until Microsoft, Apple or both have sorted out this mess and pushed out updates.
