Interactive dashboard created in using MS Office 365 enterprise for Windows (using pivot slicers and timelines) doesn’t work on Office 365 for mac

Question

Good afternoon.

Our company has developed a interactive dashboard using MS Office 365 for Windows, using features like power query, data models pivot slicers and timelines. It works perfectly across the various services we have, even if we share it outside of our organization everyone is able to open and interact with the dashboard. However a new board member used Office 365 for mac and the dashboard doesn’t work. The slicers are non-responsive as if they were just images.

Would you be able to help with us with this.

Thank you in advance.

All the best,

Marco Branco

Answer 1

Hi Marco,

When Satya Nadella took over the reigns as Chief Software Engineer from Bill Gates, he had a vision that using a single code base would enable Microsoft Office to run nearly identically across all end points: Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod, Android and (at the time) Windows Phone.

During the middle of Office 2016's life, Microsoft made the big switch in code base from Mac code base to the common Office code base. It was when the version numbers went from 15.x to 16.x in the fall of 2018. That change killed off some Mac-only features and brought in many features that previously were Windows-only. It brought the 64-bit version of Microsoft Office to the Mac, something Apple had been pushing for since Mac OS 9 was replaced.

In theory, with the base being the same for Office for Mac and Office for Windows, with a little tweaking here and there Mac users and users of the web versions of Office should automatically get all the latest Office features in Microsoft Office.

Sadly, Satya's vision has failed. Along with it, Office for Mac and Office for the web appear to be over.

This quote from the UserVoice forum "...we’ll be unable to bring PowerPivot to Excel for Mac, because it relies on features of the operating system that don’t exist on Mac OS" means Microsoft has thrown in the towel. They've given up. It seems that every feature that relies heavily on Windows APIs is simply too difficult to bring forward. To me, it appears Office for Mac and Office on line products are officially dead.

PowerPivot, the Data Model, UserForms, Ribbon customizations, 3D maps, Com Add-ins - all of these are core features of Microsoft Office that are now missing or broken in Office for Mac and Office for the Web. Without them, a workbook that ought to work cross-platform simply falls apart, as yours did. You have complete data loss. Complete loss of functionality.

Gong forward, that leaves only the Windows Desktop version of Microsoft Office as a viable office product in the Microsoft sphere.

This means that you and everyone who uses Microsoft Office in an cross-platform environment needs to make choices.

You are lucky that you have an Office 365 subscription because you can run the Windows version of Microsoft Office on your Mac using the same license. Perpetual license holders can't do that.

To run Microsoft Office for Windows on your Mac you will need to purchase a retail copy of Microsoft WIndows and be willing to run and support Windows on your Mac. You can use Apple's all-or-nothing Boot Camp and choose whether to run Mac OS or Microsoft Windows when you boot your Mac. Or, you can use Parallels (another added cost) and run Microsoft Office concurrently with your Mac applications. Microsoft Office runs well in both Boot Camp and Parallels.

What about other Office products? I think the next best thing to Microsoft Office is Libre Office. LibreOffice is better than Microsoft Office at cross-platform compatibility. You can build your documents, workbooks, and presentations on one platform and be pretty darn shure your files will work on Windows and Mac. LibreOffice falls down in that its automation story is pitiful. Its feature set is more than 10 years out of date. Here's what your workbook looks like when opened in LibreOffice:

If you can live without the new stuff, then LibreOffice is a very good alternative to Microsoft Office. It's dated, yes. But it's free and easy to support. It's definately worth looking into. 10 years-ago Office was not that bad.

There are some BI (Business Intelligence) programs that are cross-platform. Tableau is one that comes to mind because it is favored by academics. It's pricey and focuses on the charting aspects of Excel. There's no word processor, a limited and weak presentation component, and no email. Tableau and its competitors are very pricey for what you get IMHO.

Sorry to have to deliver what I consider to be bad news.

Answer 2

Hi Marco

Got it!

My testing shows that the slicers do not work in Excel for Mac because the data model is not being refreshed. The ability to refresh the data model is supposed to be working now in Excel for Mac. I sent your example workbook to Microsoft so they can fix what's wrong on their end.

Answer 3

Hi again,

I heard back.

Refreshing data to certain data sources is supported, but currently, refreshing from the Data Model is still not supported. This is tied to the PowerPivot feature. Apparently, when PowerPivot was conceived, cross-platform support did not cross the minds of the developer team.

Please add your vote and comments to this feature request in the feature request forum. Thousands have already voiced their support for fixing this omission.

Add PowerPivot to Mac excel – Welcome to Excel’s Suggestion Box!

Answer 4

Good morning Jim.

Thanks for persevering. Please do share the file if needed.

All the best,

Marco

Answer 5

Thanks Jim.

Added my vote although the comments hint that it’s not likely it will happen as it appears that there isn’t a base in the Mac OS to facilitate the support of the PowerPivot feature.

Thanks for your help.

Marco