The suite includes a word processor (Writer), a spreadsheet program (Calc), a presentation program (Impress) and other tools designed to be a FOSS alternative to commercial office suites, but first and foremost the ubiquitous Microsoft Office. The Document Foundation is the non-profit that promotes and manages LibreOffice, the open source productivity suite which started as a fork of OpenOffice. LibreOffice remains free, but Apple users will pay a price to get their software from Apple official channels, while skipping the download of important dependencies which are available in the aforementioned community edition. Shortly after the release of LibreOffice 7.4.1 Community Edition, The Document Foundation has started a new paid distribution of the office suite on the Mac App Store. The money will be used to fund the project's development, or rather to 'educate' organizations about the added value of professional services and official distribution channels. I will be waiting a couple months before trying it again.Cutting corners: The LibreOffice Foundation is offering a paid version of the eponymous productivity suite to Apple users. It is also worth noting that they have received other issues with the MAS version, to be fixed after restoring to the MAU version.Īnecdotally, it appears that the basic functions of the MAS version are great, just do not expect the thoroughness and full-feature set of the polished multi-billion dollar MAU version, yet. My institution’s IS/IT department and I concluded that it would be best to remove the applications and reinstall the MAU version. I could not accomplish this, in any Office app, and even edited my Mac’s Keychain items as a troubleshooting step. While I was authenticated through my 365 account for MAS, I was required to authenticate again before accessing some of the sharing features. I will be waiting a while before fully switching to the MAS version.

Unfortunately, I needed to use Word’s collaboration and shared document features soon thereafter. All seemed great for the first few days, and the removal of Microsoft Auto Updater (MAU) from my computer was a Godsend.

I transferred to the App Store versions (MAS) of Office 365 a couple of weeks ago.

Microsoft office on mac app store