In the Windows version of Office, when you click the File tab, youre sent to what Microsoft calls Backstage, for doing things such as opening a file, viewing cloud-based services associated with your accounts and so on.

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Mac users of Office who have felt left out in the cold by Microsoft (because the last version, Office 2011 for Mac, was released in October 2010) now have reason to be pleased: The final version of Office 2016 for Mac brings the suite out of the dark ages and into the modern world.

Hints of what the new Office would offer have been out for quite a while, notably the preview of Outlook, introduced in October 2014.

But Mac owners had to wait until early July for the final release of the full suite, including the core applications Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

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Its currently only available as part of a subscription to Office 365, which allows you to install Office on multiple devices.

The moment you run any Office application, you know youve left the aging Office 2011 behind.

Thats largely in part because the Ribbon has been redone, and now looks and works as it does in the Windows version of Office.

The Ribbon is far more prominent and now sits close to the top of the screen rather than (as before) beneath a long row of icons for doing things such as opening and closing files, printing and so on.

The usual Mac menu that sits atop Mac applications is hidden as well, although you can reveal it by moving your cursor to the top of the screen.

Its a clever way to bridge the worlds of Office and Mac OS X.

Not everyone is a Ribbon fan, though, and those who wish it were gone, or just want to give themselves a little more screen real estate, can hide it by clicking a small up arrow at the Ribbons far right.

Not only has the Ribbon been moved but its been reorganized, which is all to the good.

For example, Words confusing Document Elements tab is gone; most of what was there can now be found in the more logically-named Insert tab.

In Office 2011 you had to go on a treasure hunt through many different tabs to find all that.

For me, this reorganized Ribbon has made Office more usable and far more pleasurable to use than the previous version.

Also, I use the Windows version of Office, and because the Mac version now closely mirrors it, I found switching between Office on Windows and Office on the Mac to be largely seamless.

In Office 2016, Microsoft is bringing a common look and feel to the suite across all platforms, which is why this Mac version looks much like the recently released Windows-based Office 2016 IT Pro and Developer Preview.

However, there are still some differences between the Mac version and the Windows Office preview.

As with the Windows 2016 preview, on the Mac the applications are color-coded: Blue for Word, green for Excel and red for PowerPoint.

Also missing in the Mac version is one of the more useful features of the Windows version: A box on the far right of the ribbon with the text, Tell me what you want to do.

Type in a task, and you get walked through doing it via options and menus.

I found that exceptionally useful, and hope that Microsoft eventually introduces it in the final, shipping version of Office 2016 for the Mac.

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