Me, my Mac and I. The epic start of it all.
As promised, I’ll be sharing with you the journey of pain, laughter and surprises — #MacFriendlyO365Challenge, one baby step at a time. Today I looked at installing / configuring Office, Outlook, Teams, Groups, OneDrive, OneNote, Yammer & Skype for Business.
Ok, I’m exagerating. Maybe it’s not that dark, but I did expect the worst and WOW. Have I been pleasantly surprised?
I got my new (first) Mac on the 1st of March. Kind of a gift to myself for finishing my #Office365Challenge. It’s not that I wanted a Mac. I’m Microsoft’s biggest fan by far and was blessed to have won a Surface 4 Pro last year as part of the Metalogix MetaHero Award. I got a Mac to help people. (And yes, some people have warned me that I might just fall in love with it and stay on the Mac.)
Setting up my new Mac wasn’t much different to any other machine. It was installing of Office that I was concerned about. And I got around to that immediately.
Office 365
Signing in to my Office 365 Portal I was happy to see that the Portal recognized the fact that I was on a Mac and allowed me to download my Office.
Once downloaded I wanted to check for updates, and of course this is where things started looking different. Where’s my File Tab in Office???
In Windows we’re used to File > Account > Check for updates. On the Mac however I had to first get used to the System Wide Menu Bar at the top (will open if you move the mouse to top). We’ll get back to this later, let’s first check for updates: Menu Bar > Help > Check for Updates. This of course is applicable to the application that is open at the time.
I chose Automatic Download and Install updates and Office Insider Fast. Yup — early adopter right there.
Outlook
Next I configured my Outlook — choosing Office 365 I entered my credentials and a couple of seconds later, I was sorted.
OneDrive & OneNote
Installing OneDrive and OneNote from the App Store was super easy as well. No sync problems at all. I know there was some issues before — but all seems ok for now. Lucky me.
Microsoft Teams
Next up Microsoft Teams. I navigated to Teams.Microsoft and Downloaded the Teams for Mac Desktop App. Easy Peasy. 👍 (Web version not available for Safari though).
Office 365 Groups 🙁
Groups is not available for macOS yet, but after some research I found that it has been placed on the roadmap — whoooooop! That’s a good start.
Yammer 🙁
Yammer is also not available yet, but according to this article in the Redmond Mag, the apps will be released “in the next few months”. However, the mobile apps are available for iOS (not sure if I’m ready for the iPhone yet).
Skype for Business
I downloaded Skype for Business from the official Microsoft Download Centre, logged in and Voila — we’re online!
So apart from Yammer and Groups — I don’t think I had a bad first day at all?!?!?!
Just look at my box of tricks. Best of both worlds. Thank you Microsoft and Apple for making this super easy for a Non-Techie Change Geeky Chick like me. You Rock! 😀
(By the way — that smiley face on the macOS is CTRL + CMD + Spacebar to bring up the Mac emoji picker)
This blog was also written on my Mac (screenshots and all) — yup I’m rather proud of myself right now. 🍏 ❤️ ⭐️
