Microsoft Office 365 for Mac: Get Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and others in App Store You can get any of the Office 365 apps in the Mac App Store and use your current subscription with them. Reach your financial goals with Money in Excel, a time-saving template that helps you know when to splurge, spend, or save. Choose the right Microsoft 365 for your Mac Manage life’s demands with Microsoft 365.
Is there anything more frustrating than typing lag or slow-loading documents when you’re on a deadline? While Microsoft Office is one of the most widely used application suites for all kinds of projects in the modern office, it doesn't always show excellent performance.
When Microsoft Office slows down, showing you spinning wheels and requiring long wait times, it breaks your flow and concentration, ultimately affecting your productivity.
Thankfully, there are a few proven ways to speed up Microsoft Office on your Mac, and most of them are as simple as tidying up. If Marie Kondo has taught us anything, it’s that clutter can cause unnecessary stress in life. And this applies to hard drives as well!
Why is Microsoft Office slow?
While there are a few different symptoms indicating that Microsoft Office isn’t doing its best, such as a painfully slow opening of a program or Microsoft Word slow typing, the question stands: why is Microsoft Word so slow?
There are a variety of reasons Microsoft Office may run slowly, freeze, or cause the much dreaded typing lag. Often, the issue stems from a build-up of corrupted or temporary files that are meant to be automatically deleted but, for whatever reason, have failed to do so. The application suite could also be out of date or attempt to load corrupted files. Very likely it’s just a large number of small problems that have snowballed and are now causing noticeable issues. Here’s how you can fix it.
Refresh go-to templates
The template file normal.dot is created by Microsoft Word and stored automatically on your computer. It saves all the default settings of the application. So each time you change your settings, the preference is added to normal.dot. This way, the next time Microsoft Word opens a new document, your preferred settings load automatically. If your normal.dot file becomes corrupted or too complex to load, it can make Microsoft Word slow.
Deleting the existing normal.dot file will force Microsoft Word to create a new one. Starting fresh will be easy for most users, as the majority of us don’t stray too far from the default settings. For those that change their default settings in complex ways, make sure you back up your normal.dot files to a flash drive to avoid losing important settings permanently.
To find and delete normal.dot manually:
- Quit MS Word and open Finder.
- Type normal.dot into the search field.
- Wait for all results to load. It’s not uncommon to have more than one normal.dot file. They may also appear as normal.dotm.
- Select all normal.dot and normal.dotm files and delete them.
- Empty your Trash.
Finally, reload the application and see if the process has managed to speed up Microsoft Word.
Delete temporary files
All Microsoft Office programs will create temporary files to prevent you from losing your work. However, if the automatic removal of these files fails, they can build up and make Microsoft Office slow.
You can easily seek out and remove these files:
- Determine which temporary files you want to delete. Microsoft’s website lists different types of temporary files that Microsoft Office produces automatically. Likely the files you are looking for will be searchable using the trine sign ~*.doc, ~*.dot or ~*.tmp.
- Use Finder to search for files with ~*.doc or another marker.
- Select files to delete.
- Drag them to the Trash and empty it.
Once you are done, reload the application to see if that did speed up Microsoft Word.
Keep Microsoft Office updated
Having an outdated version of Microsoft Office will eventually cause it to run slowly. Luckily, updating the suite is very easy:
- Open Microsoft Word.
- In the top tool-bar, select Help and click “Check for Updates.”
- Install the update if detected.
Additionally, you can turn on Microsoft auto-updates using the same dialogue box, so that whenever Microsoft Office detects a new version it will offer you an opportunity to install it.
Another way to update Microsoft Office is to directly download the latest one from the Microsoft website. But before you do, check that it’s fully compatible with your version of macOS.
Reset the application to default settings
Download Office For Mac
Over time, all Mac apps accumulate lots of unneeded preferences that constantly rewrite each other. A good way to rule out that there’s anything wrong with the app is to do a factory reset — bring the app back to the state when it was brand new.
![Time Time](/uploads/1/1/9/4/119441719/541496376.png)
You can do a factory reset in two ways:
- Go to Finder and search for ~/Library
- Look for Microsoft Office files in the results
- Delete all of them but the app itself
Alternatively, you can do the same thing quicker and more thoroughly with the CleanMyMac X uninstaller utility:
- Download CleanMyMac X with a free trial.
- Go to Uninstaller tab.
- Select Microsoft Office and choose Reset.
- Click on the Reset button.
Delete and reinstall Microsoft Office
The old IT adage “have you tried turning it off and back on?” applies here, but in this case, it’s about deleting the application and reinstalling it. To completely delete Microsoft Office, you will need to remove files from two different places on your computer: delete the app first and then find your Library folder in Finder to see the associated files that need to be removed.
Office Time For Mac Download
- Head to the Applications folder and move Microsoft Office to the Trash
- Find your Library folder in Finder by navigating to your computer in Locations and then clicking on your hard-drive (e.g. Macintosh HD)
- Open System then Library, and find the folder Containers
- From Containers, move the following associated files to the Trash:
- com.microsoft.errorreporting
- com.microsoft.Excel
- com.microsoft.netlib.shipassertprocess
- com.microsoft.Office365ServiceV2
- com.microsoft.Outlook
- com.microsoft.Powerpoint
- com.microsoft.RMS-XPCService
- com.microsoft.Word
- com.microsoft.onenote.mac
- Open Group Containers folder as well and remove the following files:
- UBF8T346G9.ms
- UBF8T346G9.Office
- UBF8T346G9.OfficeOsfWebHost
- UBF8T346G9.ms
- Finally, remove Microsoft Office from the Dock and restart your Mac.
Once removed, head back to the Microsoft website, sign in to your account, and install the latest version.
Optimize documents for storage
Keeping Microsoft Office functioning properly means saving documents in their most optimized state. Resizing large images or graphics and not overloading your files with macros will help you maintain speedy performance in the long run.
Office Time For Mac Desktop
Speed up Microsoft Office automatically in minutes
While all the above maintenance will help you speed up Microsoft Office, it can be time-consuming and finicky. Troubleshooting your app version, deleting and refreshing templates, and searching for temporary files is all manual work and could eat up a few hours.
To make things easy, you can use optimization software like CleanMyMac X, which will automatically detect and remove temporary as well as unused files to get your Microsoft Office running smoothly. Here’s how to do it:
- Download CleanMyMac X.
- Drag it into your Applications folder.
- Open it and run a general Smart Scan to start.
- Then run Optimization and Maintenance scans (which you can choose from the left-side panel) to target specific areas, such as freeing up RAM and reviewing your login items
- Repeat the process every month or so.
While following the above method of optimizing your Mac with CleanMyMac X is enough to remove any unnecessary clutter, the app’s sidebar menu offers even more options for increasing the speed of your Mac as well as a handy uninstaller for quick and thorough uninstallations of apps you don’t need anymore.
Ultimately, there are a number of ways to get Microsoft Office to run smoothly again. And although it’s entirely possible to do most of the cleanup manually, using an app like CleanMyMac X is a much faster and easier way to get rid of junk and ensure that your Mac is performing at top speed.
Today, Office 365 is available for the first time on the Mac App Store, making it easier than ever for Mac users to download Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and the whole suite of Microsoft’s popular apps. Users can also purchase a subscription for Office 365 from within the apps, so they can get up and running instantly.
Office 365 for Mac has been designed specifically to support features that are unique to the Mac experience — features like Dark Mode and Continuity Camera in macOS, as well as the MacBook Pro Touch Bar and the Mac’s industry-leading Trackpad.
“We are excited to welcome Microsoft Office 365 to the all new Mac App Store in macOS Mojave,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Apple and Microsoft have worked together to bring great Office productivity to Mac users from the very beginning. Now, with Office 365 on the Mac App Store, it's easier than ever to get the latest and best version of Office 365 for Mac, iPad and iPhone.”
Office For Mac Free
“We are excited to announce that today Office 365 is arriving in the Mac App Store,” said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president at Microsoft. “We have worked closely with Apple to provide Mac users with the very best productivity experience — one that offers everything they know and love about Office through an experience uniquely designed for the Mac.”
In business, as at home, employees want access to the best devices and apps to do their work. With Office 365 on the Mac App Store, these apps can now be easily distributed to employees using Apple Business Manager, a central dashboard where IT can deploy devices, apps and licenses. Now IT can quickly enable employees to get to work with their favorite Office tools across Mac, iPad and iPhone, with great new features designed specifically for Apple devices.
About the Mac App Store
![Office Office](/uploads/1/1/9/4/119441719/800810196.jpg)
The Mac App Store is the single largest catalog of Mac apps in the world. Newly redesigned this past year, the Mac App Store features a new look and rich editorial content for a more enjoyable experience when finding great, new apps for the Mac. Like the iOS App Store, the new Mac App Store celebrates apps, games, businesses and developers with an all-new Discover tab featuring compelling stories, in-depth interviews, helpful tips, collections of must-have apps and more. Users can also explore new Create, Work, Play and Develop tabs to find the perfect app for a specific project or purpose — from music, video and photography apps to business utilities and games.
Images of Office 365
Press Contacts
Starlayne Meza
Apple
(408) 974-3391
Apple Media Helpline
(408) 974-2042