Last year Microsoft eventually addressed the gap that was as a result of variations between its Windows and Apple versions of the productivity software. The firm addressed the problem by releasing an Office 2016 suite that would be available on Mac products. It released the version even before it had released the Windows version, and showed its seriousness pertaining to Apple products. And now the company has decided to tackle another problem, closing the 64 bits gap.
Microsoft announced, through an online document released this week, that they had already started rolling out updates that would upgrade the 32-bit Office applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote. Using the Microsoft Auto Update, (MAU), all applications will be upgraded to the 64-bit versions. Users also have the chance of downloading the updates manually which takes up to 1.5 GB in storage. Fortunately the update is available for all license types including the Volume License installations and the Office 365 consumer.
In the future, Microsoft Office 2016 products will be solely 64-bits. In their announcement, the company wrote that the Mac operating system had been a 64 bit system for a long time now. It also said that there would be no choice for 32-bit or 64-bit versions on the Mac system because unlike Windows operating system, there was no option to run a 32-bit or a 64-bit on the Mac system.
The move to the 64-bit system would help by improving the performance of the Office suite and would also help in larger address spaces which would be of help in creating better performances for users. However there is also a downside with the improvements that come.
Back in April when the company announced previews of the 64-bit version of Office for Mac to the members of the Office Insider group program, the tech giant noted that due to update some plug-ins would therefore not be able to work on the Mac. The company said that developers of the plug-ins would have to make updates to their plug-ins. Microsoft says that users may face some problems with the following Office add-ins such as the Thomson Reuters EndNote Cite While You Write, Mendeley, Adobe Acrobat PDFMaker for Word and many more.
And we also know that with every big and major change such as moving to the 64-bit version there will still be a group of people that will resist the change. However Microsoft is keen to address that and it is offering users a chance to change back to their 32-bit system if they prefer. In the announcement the company noted that it knows customers could encounter situations whereby a code is not 64-bit ready. In such cases, where customers can’t entirely move to the 64-bit version, a one time update of 32-bit version will be made available. The 32-bit update would only be available from the Office Content Delivery Network and it can only be done manually.
