What you need to know
- A new update to Microsoft Office for Mac came out last week.
- It brings with it support for Apple silicon for Microsoft Excel.
- That means native running on all Apple silicon devices, where previously a Rosetta emulator was required.
Microsoft for Office was last week updated to provide Apple silicon support for Excel, meaning the program now runs natively on devices like the MacBook Air with M1 and 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1.
First noted by TidBITS, the release notes from Thursday state:
Excel is fully supported on devices with Apple Silicon CPUs: Power Query in Excel for Mac is now natively supported on Apple Silicon processors. If you previously used Rosetta emulator to run Excel, you may now disable it and run Excel natively on your devices.
Other updates include screen capture protection and screen sharing protection for sensitive documents, as well as the ability to import data from local Excel books and files using Power Query. The protecting sensitive information update also comes to both Word and PowerPoint.
Outlook now supports File Answers, and Word also has a new feature to automatically refresh a document with the latest changes if you get disconnected while collaborating.
Microsoft was very quick to the punch with Apple silicon support, adding a beta version for Apple silicon in November 2020 following the release of Apple's M1 processor in the same month.
Apple has since release a new M1 iMac, as well as the all-new MacBook Pro (2021) from 2021 that features the M1 Pro and M1 Max Apple silicon chips. Apple is expected to complete the transition to Apple silicon by the end of 2022, with a new larger iMac and a Mac Pro, as well as a new MacBook Air reportedly on the way.
