Microsoft has unwrapped a surprise for Mac users after releasing a preview of Office 2016, available now. Mac users have been waiting sometime for a successor to Office 2011, and the preview, which is a free download for Mac users running OS X Yosemite (Office 365 subscription not required), offers a much improved experience.

In a blog Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office 365 Client Apps and Services team, said that, Office 2016 for Mac offers everything Office has to offer, but also it is, “thoughtfully designed to take advantage of the unique features of the Mac.” Microsoft also revealed that the apps will offer, “full retina display support with thousands of retina-optimized graphics, full screen view for native immersive experiences, and even little Mac affordances like scroll bounce.”

The updated Office for Mac includes support for cross-platform doc syncing via One Drive, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint, while a redesigned ribbon, new themes and styles, as well as a new taskbar, Microsoft says has modernized the Office experience.

The updated Word features improved editing capabilities with threaded comments, better dictionary support, while formatting documents should be easier with updated layout management tools. Excel has seen data entry enhancements and new keyboard shortcuts, while a new ToolPak offer various statistical functions. PowerPoint with Presenter View enables you to arrange all your slides on you Mac while the big screen shows only the present slide, while an animation pane should help jazz up your presentations. Outlook and OneNote are included in Office 2016 for Mac, but then they been for some time already. In the new Outlook scanning, finding, and managing emails has been improved and there’s also push mail support to keep your inbox up to date. One of the impressive features in OneNote is OCR support, which allows you to recognize text in images.

The full version is expected to be released sometime in the second part of the year.

Photo credit: Presenter View, Microsoft