Mac users aren’t at all shy about making their requests for applications known:

Previous versions include Project 2016, Project 2013, Project 2010, and Project 2007. Project 2019 is compatible with Windows 10. Project 2019 is compatible with Windows 10. Follow Microsoft 365. Stay organized and keep your projects on track with the only project management system designed to work seamlessly with other Microsoft applications and cloud services. Project Professional 2016 can be used as a standalone product or can be connected to a server. Project Professional 2016 includes a Project Server Client Access License (CAL). Software PC Mac Subscription Software Software for Students Small Business Software Best Sellers New Releases Deals Your Software Library Customer Support Software › Business & Office › Project Management. Microsoft Project 2016 Step by Step Carl Chatfield. 4.5 out of 5 stars 182.

How about Visio for Mac?

When will IE return to Mac?

Will we ever see a Microsoft Project for Mac?

Where can I get Access for Mac?

When will (insert name of hot new game here) be available for Mac?

Most of these requests are for well-known Microsoft applications on Windows, and Mac users want them. Let me address a few of these in some detail.

Microsoft Visio

It’s unwise to say “never” with regard to future development efforts by a company as large as Microsoft, so I will predict this about Visio for Mac: it’s very, very unlikely to ever happen.

Microsoft Project 2016 For Mac

I, and many others, believe the development costs to produce a Mac Visio that would faithfully render any existing Visio drawing (and have almost all the functionality of Visio for Windows) would never be recouped by Microsoft.

For any Mac software company, a software product that brought in $50 million per year would be viewed as a fantastic success. But in the rarified world of the Microsoft Office team, such a product would be considered a dismal failure.

For any Mac software company, a software product that brought in $50 million per year would be viewed as a fantastic success. But in the rarified world of the Microsoft Office team, such a product would be considered a dismal failure.

Microsoft Access

Exactly the same as Visio: very, very unlikely to ever happen, and for exactly the same reason.

Internet Explorer

Never going to happen.

There was a version of IE for Mac about 15 years ago. Microsoft ceased development of IE for Mac in July 2003. Given that there is no new development for IE for Windows (because of the release of Microsoft Edge in 2015), there is no chance at all for a future release of IE for Mac.

Any Hot New Game by Microsoft

Never going to happen.

The graphics foundations on Mac and Windows diverge sufficiently that porting any hot new Windows game over to the Mac is a major undertaking. It would be unlikely to recoup development costs, for the same reasons as the Office applications. You can read more details about DirectX and OpenGL.

What’s a Mac User to Do?

There are a couple of options for a Mac user:

• Use a viewer application. In some cases, a viewer application that faithfully renders a document that you could not otherwise open will suffice. In the case of Visio, Microsoft has released a Visio Viewer for iOS, as shown in Figure 1.

• Use a competing application. Search for “Visio for Mac” on Google, and many of the results will be for third-party applications for Mac that open Visio drawings and provide much of the same functionality.
• Run the real Windows application on your Mac. If you need the real Visio with all its functionality, then use Parallels Desktop® for Mac to run Windows 10 on your Mac and purchase Visio from Microsoft. You lose no functionality or visual fidelity, since you are running the real Visio in the environment it expects: Windows 10.

(Already own Visio? No problem. Just use the Migration feature in Parallels Desktop to move everything on your PC—including Visio—into a virtual machine on your Mac.)

Figure 2 shows Visio running on my MacBook Pro®.

Figure 2_Visio 2016 running in Windows10 on a Mac with Parallels Desktop

Figures 3 and 4 show Access, and Figure 5 shows IE—all running on my MacBook Pro.

Figure 3_Access 2016 in Windows 10 running on a Mac with Parallels Desktop

Figure 4_Access 2016 in Windows 10 running on a Mac with Parallels Desktop

Figure 5_IE in Windows10 running on a Mac with Parallels Desktop

While you may not be able to get the Mac applications you desire, you can get the Windows versions and run them right alongside your Mac applications.

As the product manager for Parallels Desktop, you might consider my opinions to be a bit biased. (They aren’t, but you might think that.) So, here is a quote from a Network World review (emphasis mine):

“I’ve been a Mac user for many years, and like with most Mac users, there are occasions when I have core business apps that require me to run Internet Explorer for a browser, or run Visual Studio for app development work, or even run Microsoft Project and Visio that just aren’t available on a Mac. And while Apple provides BootCamp where I can switch between booting from a Mac to booting as a Windows system, that means I have to constantly reboot my system to switch between operating platforms. So I’ve been a happy user of Parallels for years where I can run Windows and Mac applications side by side at the same time.” –Rand Morimoto, Network World

Try Parallels Desktop for free for 14 days!

To coincide with last week’s release of Office 2016, we put together a set of handy Quick Start Guides that introduce you to the newest versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote.

Whether you’re coming from previous versions of your favorite apps and want a quick orientation about where to find familiar basics or you’re entirely new to Office and want an overview of how to get to some of the most important things, each of our Quick Start Guides provides helpful information that you can read, print out and share.

Guides are now available for all three of our recent Office releases. Download just the ones you want or get the entire set for your preferred operating systems.

Office 2016 for Windows

Visit Office 2016 Quick Start Guidesto download guides for the desktop versions of Word 2016, Excel 2016, PowerPoint 2016, Outlook 2016 or OneNote 2016 on any recent version of Windows.

Microsoft Project 2016 For Macbook

Office Mobile for Windows 10

Visit Office Mobile Quick Start Guides to download guides for the modern versions of Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, PowerPoint Mobile, or OneNote on Windows 10.

Office 2016 for Mac

Visit Office 2016 Quick Start Guides for Mac to download guides for the Mac versions of Word 2016, Excel 2016, PowerPoint 2016, Outlook 2016 or OneNote 2016 on Mac OS X Yosemite or El Capitan.

While viewing any guide, you can save a copy of it to your computer, zoom in to get a closer look at a screenshot, or search for feature names or keywords to quickly find something in the text.

Please let us know if you find these types of guides useful and what sort of introductory content you’d like to see in the future. You can leave comments here on this blog post or at the bottom of each of the Quick Start Guide download pages.

—The Office team