It seems that the Office 365 apps for Mac are launching soon on the Mac App Store. Apple first teased the upcoming Mac App Store availability back at WWDC in June 2018, and Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook were originally expect to arrive on the store before the end of 2018. But as reported by 9to5Mac today, Apple has apparently started promoting Office 365 for Mac apps on the Mac App Store in select markets like France.
If this Mac App Store ad wasn’t enough, Microsoft also recently published a support page to explain how to activate the apps on macOS Mojave. As expected, Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook will all require an active Office 365 personal subscription when downloaded from the Mac App Store, and owners of one-time Office licenses will have to continue to download the apps directly from Microsoft.
Microsoft already has a couple of apps on the Mac App Store including OneDrive and OneNote, but the upcoming release of the Office 365 apps for Mac will be a major win for Apple. Just like the Microsoft Store on Windows 10, it’s still quite hard to find quality apps on the Mac App Store, even though Apple has revamped its digital storefront to add a new curated section in macOS Mojave. Some of the most popular apps in the Mac App Store include Apple’s iWork suite, which many still consider to be inferior compared to Microsoft’s Office for Mac apps.
The Office 365 apps for Mac can’t be found on the Mac App Store as of this writing, but the official launch could be imminent. This should be pretty geat news for Mac users, and Microsoft actually plans to bring a couple more apps to the Mac. While there’s still no ETA, both Microsoft To-Do and the new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge are expected to launch on macOS in the near future.
Update: The Office 365 apps for Mac are now live on the Mac App Store (via The Verge). apple is offering the apps as a bundle including Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, OneNote and OneDrive, and a free 1-month trial of Office 365 is included with each Microsoft Office 365 in-app purchase.
