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Office 2016 Proving Unstable With Apple's El Capitan 138

Posted by timothy from the javohl-mein-kapitan dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Users of Microsoft Office on the Mac are reporting widespread instabilities and conflicts after upgrading to the latest version of the Apple desktop operating system, El Capitan. The first indications that El Capitan and Office 2016 were not working well together came in a now epic thread at Microsoft Community. Many users have surmised that new restrictions in file permissions in El Capitan caused the problems initially, though nearly all agree that Office's Outlook email client is the critical point of failure in the current round of application crashes and loss of functionality.
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Office 2016 Proving Unstable With Apple's El Capitan More

Office 2016 Proving Unstable With Apple's El Capitan

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  • Remembering what Microsoft did to stop Lotus and WordPerfect from running on their platforms, it seems kind of fitting that they should be getting shafted by an Apple update now. :)

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )
      Don't forget about running Windows 95 on DRDos (if OS = DRDOS, randomly throw warning/error) or Office95 on OS/2 (ask for memory at 2GB boundary, OS/2 only had 512MB windows VM). Those are 2 of the notable instances where MS purposefully made their own software flaky or broken for no reason other than to kill the competitor. I'm sure there are others.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Windows95 included its very own DOS. You're confusing the shitty Windows 95 with the godawful Windows 3.1.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by guruevi ( 827432 )

          Yes, the issue was Win 3.1 with DR-DOS (eventually they had a compatibility mode) but you could run Windows 95 on DR-DOS. Windows 95-ME was still DOS + a shell. You could replace the MS-DOS with DR-DOS.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )
            In fact, one of the anti-monopoly cases was decided in favor of DRDOS finally decades after the injury that MS not only illegally bundles DOS with Win95, but purposefully sabotaged other DOSes if they found Win95 running on top of them. Little good it did DRDOS or IBM PC DOS, both which were arguably better than MS DOS.
    • The job ain't done 'til Lotus don't run!

    • Except it doesn't work well on Windows either

      Written by someone about ot re-image his surface pro 3 to 8.1 and office 2013 because OneNote and Excel just worked before the downgrade to 2016. Really MS does make much better software than 15 years ago Linux users reading this. Windows 7/0ffice 2010 were it's height.

      I guess it comes to show what happens when you have no QA team left and rely on agile software development and user feed back for bugs. Until a user submits a story via a frown no one knows about t

      • Windows ME? Why? You had 98SE and 2000 to choose from, and either one would be better than the hybrid abortion that was ME.

        • Well the "correct" course of action was to stay on Windows 98SE, wait for XP SP1. If you didn't mind being on Win 9x.

          The equivalent would be stay on XP, wait for 7 SP1 (Vista SP2 an option too) ; stay on Windows 7, wait for Windows "10.1" (or Windows 8.1.1)

          • I remember Windows 2000 was good enough and stable for daily use, if you are not into pc gaming. Win98SE still gives you lots of blue screen and reboot often.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lisias ( 447563 )

      Remembering what Microsoft did to stop Lotus and WordPerfect from running on their platforms, it seems kind of fitting that they should be getting shafted by an Apple update now. :)

      And, worst, the kind of update that SHOULD NOT had broken them.

      Why *IN HELL* restricting system files would broek a Productivity Application?

    • what Microsoft did to stop Lotus

      This is actually urban legend. Never happened. Pure myth. Remember, Microsoft was, in the DOS days, utterly dependent on Lotus to sell PCs. Every Lotus employee involved at the time also deny there ever was such a problem.

      Lotus 1-2-3 dies because Excel was a (in areas vastly) superior product. It certainly had its flaws, but from a usability standpoint it blew Lotus out of the water. You only have to look at the Apple side of things. Lotus Symphony and Excel existed at the same time on the Mac, and I would

  • I know nobody RTFA's but.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by sconeu ( 64226 ) on Friday October 02, 2015 @06:18PM (#50648443) Homepage Journal

    It's not just El Capitan. Per the linked thread, Yosemite has the same issues.

  • Not just MS Office (Score:4, Informative)

    by Mal-2 ( 675116 ) on Friday October 02, 2015 @06:28PM (#50648501) Homepage Journal

    I got a notice from Native Instruments warning against upgrading to El Capitan, as a number of their products don't work with it either. Apparently something about the sound driver model was changed. The result of trying isn't just failure, but complete kernel panics.

    Is the typical OS X upgrade this perilous? I don't recall hearing warnings like this before.

    • Re:Not just MS Office (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02, 2015 @06:43PM (#50648569)

      It's the iOS-ification of OS X. They're changing the driver model and moving to a "rootless" model where the root account still exists but no longer has access to everything. There is now a list of files you can't change on OS X - at all. This includes the entirety of /bin and /usr, OS X specific things like /System, and random other things like /Applications/Photos.app.

      What this means is that people who create third party utilities that hook into OS X via non-Apple-approved ways can no longer do so in El Capitan, and the user has no way to "jailbreak" their Mac to allow them anyway. (That's not entirely true, there is still a method to disable this new iOS-style lockdown, but it involves booting off El Capitan install media. Which Apple doesn't distribute.)

      This new locked-down OS X is just the start of forcing all apps to go through the App Store and it's the cause of this Office bug and pretty much every other problem people are having with El Capitan. Since El Capitan offers basically no user visible changes (just backend ones like locking down your own computer from you), there's literally no reason to "upgrade." Basically, Apple pulled a Windows 10.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        You say that like it's a bad thing. Reason: when the inevitable privilege escalation bug happens grandma won't get her Mac compromised (Microsoft should take a big, huge, hunking hint here).

        If you're a developer: boot into recovery mode, terminal, "csrutil disable", reboot. Voila, root is back, end of story.

      • I have not seen this as a problem. /usr/local/bin is still accessible, why would you modify /bin? Homebrew made changes in /usr/local/bin so I know that is available. Why would you just not put your "changes" in another directory and put it first in your PATH?

        It does not require that apps go through the app store, the vast majority of my applications are installed from other sources. The "hardening" that they are doing is similar to selinux etc. where their is fine grained hardening of files you shoul

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Restart your Mac.
        Before OS X starts up, hold down Command-R and keep it held down until you see an Apple icon and a progress bar. Release. This boots you into Recovery.
        From the Utilities menu, select Terminal.
        At the prompt type exactly the following and then press Return: csrutil disable
        Terminal should display a message that SIP was disabled.
        From the menu, select Restart.

        System Integrity Protector is now disabled.

      • What about steam? adobe apps?

        Now if M$ did something like this it will be antitrust.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by armanox ( 826486 )

          I doubt that Steam is hit by this - Steam doesn't modify system files. (I can't test this for myself though, my MBP is stuck on 10.6...)

      • Since El Capitan offers basically no user visible changes (just backend ones like locking down your own computer from you), there's literally no reason to "upgrade."

        It at least "feels" like they've done something good with the scheduler and/or memory management. Switching between windows and tasks when the processors are all saturated is much smoother.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Basically, Apple pulled a Windows 10.

        Windows 10 doesn't force users to purchase apps from the Microsoft app store. You can still install and run whatever programs you want from whatever third parties you want. I have lots of open source software running on my Windows 10 system, all downloaded and installed from non-Microsoft sources and all of it is working perfectly.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          OS X doesn't force users to purchase apps from the Mac app store. You can still install and run whatever programs you want from whatever third parties you want. I have lots of open source software running on my OS X system, all downloaded and installed from non-Apple sources and all of it is working perfectly.

        • It does not, but certainly it wouldn't surprise me if that comes to pass in the next release. Microsoft has done so many things to Windows (most of them decidedly anti consumer) I never thought that could happen that this one wouldn't surprise me at all.
          I fear the day will come where users will be prevented from doing many things now take for granted on our own computers for "our own good" or some stupid excuse.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I'm going to sound like macs4all here (but I have no Apple stock, and really don't have a "dog in this hunt")... so devil's advocate time:

        The de facto UNIX standard since the SunOS 4.x days was to put non-OS stuff in /usr/local or possibly /opt. For something that isn't requiring a .kext module, this isn't an issue. For stuff that requires it, you can throw a master switch on dev machines, and use proper Apple signing once it is ready to ship.

        This isn't "jailbreaking". It is a good way to keep the bad st

      • Re:Not just MS Office (Score:5, Informative)

        by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Friday October 02, 2015 @07:55PM (#50648969) Homepage

        "and the user has no way to "jailbreak" their Mac to allow them anyway."

        Make things up much? Just Boot into recovery mode, start a terminal, type csrutil disable then reboot.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bogie ( 31020 )

          There is a strong chance that the next version of OS X won't allow you to do that. So he's not that far off.

      • and the user has no way to "jailbreak" their Mac to allow them anyway. (That's not entirely true, there is still a method to disable this new iOS-style lockdown, but it involves booting off El Capitan install media. Which Apple doesn't distribute.)

        Bullshit. Boot into recovery mode (from the recovery partition that the installer creates by default) and disable System Integrity Protection, and it's gone.

      • I read "Many users have surmised that new restrictions in file permissions in El Capitan" and my first thought was that there is now roughly zero chance that Adobe will ever fix the anomalous problem of Lightroom claiming that it can't properly delete files.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Craig Cruden ( 3592465 )
      Native Instruments problem sounds like it was their (Native Instruments) drivers....

      The fact that it has been in public beta for 3 months and now all of a sudden they realize there might be an issue is just negligence on their part.

      For me, the update has been smooth and all 40 applications work fine. The only issue I have had is the configuration for background on 2 of my many monitors keeps going back to default on boot :p

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by chihowa ( 366380 )

        The fact that it has been in public beta for 3 months and now all of a sudden they realize there might be an issue is just negligence on their part.

        Yeah, I'm not a big fan of for-pay app developers (on any platform) who find out that their programs don't work on a new OS version at the same time as their customers. Nearly every platform offers API documentation and betas of their new OS versions well in advance of the actual release.

    • Is the typical OS X upgrade this perilous?

      Yes. Typically after an OSX upgrade, I go through my applications folder, removing things that no longer work.
      It was fine until around OSX 1.5, but since then, I've lost something on every upgrade. I figured that would have to end sooner or later, but I guess not.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

      Here's the specific notice I mentioned, [native-instruments.com], and they do have beta drivers for the hardware, but not yet for this:

      Validation of AU (Audio Units) Plug-ins Fails in Logic Pro X

      All Native Instruments Audio Units plug-ins will not pass the AU validation and therefore will not be available in Logic Pro X under OS X 10.11. The root cause of this issue has been identified and a workaround is still being developed in close contact with Apple. We will keep you updated on any developments regarding this issue.

      I cannot confirm or deny anything, I'm a humble Windows user and the only NI product I use is Kontakt.

  • Rootless is a problem, and Office 2016 > 2011 (Score:5, Informative)

    by aussersterne ( 212916 ) on Friday October 02, 2015 @06:43PM (#50648573) Homepage

    Just upgraded to El Capitan last night.

    Problem (1): I found out very quickly that root has been neutered; you can't make any changes to "system" files (in this case, meaning files that were included in the OS distribution, including things like the Mail.app folder or binaries, etc.). You get a message about not having permission, despite being root, and without any extended attributes being set on the files. Turns out that El Capitan uses a new "rootless" model in which root is no longer root and many parts of the system are off limits to any human user. Solution: Boot into recovery mode, start a terminal, and enter the command "csrutil disable" then reboot. You'll get root back and will be able to change files again.

    Problem (2): Parts of Office 2011 didn't work at all—just beach balled upon startup. I tried to figure this out for a while but didn't see anyone else talking about solutions online, so I installed Office Mac 2016 (since I'm already paying for Office 365 anyway so that I can use it on my tablet and phone). I've been using the Office Mac 2016 applications all day (Outlook, Word, and Excel for work) heavily, without any trouble, so as a data sample of one I can say that in my case, 2016 is definitely a better bet on El Capitan than 2011, since Word and Outlook 2011 didn't work at all.

    • Why are you trying to modify Mail.app or other system files? Files in etc are modifiable - including hosts, fstab etc.

      • Because I keep my Applications folder lean and uncluttered and I never use Mail.app, as one example, so I want it gone from sight.

        My prerogative as the ower of the system, I'd say.

        • You're holding it wrong. In the new iOS X model you're supposed to press the Home button and navigate the springboard, not look in /Applications.

          What do you mean "your Mac?" It's clearly Steve Jobs (c/o Tim Cook)'s Mac.

          Man I wish I were joking.

    • Just tried my Office 2011 install under El Cap, having slightly panicked at your post, and have had no problems at all, thank goodness.

      • The later versions however may have problems. We were told by IT at work that they were going to roll out Office 2016 and that we needed to upgrade to Yosemite or it wouldn't work.

        Enterprise people tend to always want the latest Office despite it never having any new features that anyone needs.

    • Wait? This is not informative... it's bad advice. Informative would be a solution to work along side the new security features. You know.. that etc folder thingy bopper.

      • The first thing I wanted after installing El Capitan was information on how to disable rootless mode, not advice about the soundness of this idea. Thankfully, I found an informative post or two by searching Google. Any advice would not have been the information I was looking for.

        And for those that are interested, yes, there is actually a .conf file that controls the rootless mode protections. I forget the path, but if you Google, you'll find it. The catch of course is that you have to disable rootless mode

        • Re:advice != information (Score:4, Informative)

          by phayes ( 202222 ) on Saturday October 03, 2015 @05:10AM (#50650293) Homepage

          Ars covered SIP in detail here [arstechnica.com] including the config file /System/Library/Sandbox/rootless.conf.

          Other than dev tools like dtrace, few well written tools should be impacted. Yeah, some people are going to have to find other ways of doing things than throwing them into /System, /bin, etc.

          Most stuff from across the 'Net isn't installing in SIP protected locations anyway & if they were, they needed to be rewritten.

  • Got Office 2016 on Yosemite (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cigarky ( 89075 ) on Friday October 02, 2015 @06:50PM (#50648623)

    Not having any problems. I like the new layout and appearance much better than 2011. Email is going out without a problem.

  • lesson learned (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xombo ( 628858 ) on Friday October 02, 2015 @07:38PM (#50648885)

    I've had so much trouble with Apple updates in the last couple years. I ended up stopping doing upgrades, completely. I'm still on Mavericks and iOS 7 and will remain here until these machines fall to pieces, at which point I'm just going to order something cheap on Alibaba and stick Linux on it. The whole point of buying these overpriced products is that they're supposed to "Just work." They just don't live up to the promise, anymore. Apple is looking more like Microsoft each day.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by gnupun ( 752725 )

      The purpose of updates is to slow your machine down, so you that you will buy a brand new one. If the OS is eating a good amount of CPU processing power and RAM for every update, without any perceivable benefits, what's the point of hardware upgrades with their miniscule increase in app performance?

      OSes are a very mature technology... stop releasing new versions every year or so.

    • I learned to always wait for the .1 some time ago. 10.4 had a really nasty bug where, if you used File Vault (home directories were encrypted disk images), everything went fine. You could continue using the system and there were no problems. Until after the first reboot (which is something that typically happens less than once a month). At which point, the OS would be unable to mount your home directory and would give you a new, empty, one. The encrypted disk image containing your home directory was co

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ecuador ( 740021 )

      I'm in the same boat. For a while now, every update has made things worse for me, usually having to do with my multi-monitor desktop. If I remember correctly the most functional OS X for me was Snow Leopard, it sort of went downhill from there, but I had been forced to do an update every now and then because I had to use a current version of Xcode. Until Yosemite that is - it became so dysfunctional that I got a separate machine as an Xcode box to run Yosemite (and upgrade to El Capitan when Xcode makes me)

    • 10.6 Snow Leopard has an interesting bug where it works until you get a new router that supports IPv6, and you configure it with your old SSID and password. WiFi appears to work... but then it doesn't... and then the whole OS beach-balls... you can't even shutdown and have to hard-power off.

      The solution is to disable WiFi on the router, power on the Mac, go into network prefs and disable IPv6.

      Details here if anyone ever needs it. [plus.net]

    • The whole point of buying these overpriced products is that they're supposed to "Just work." They just don't live up to the promise, anymore. Apple is looking more like Microsoft each day.

      You mean they're supposed to be flawless, because Apple, because reasons. Five people out of five million purchases report a problem with an Apple product, and Tim Cook better be calling Kerry Washington because they've got a scaaandal on their hands.

      Think that's hyperbole? At the height of Bendghazi, Apple had reports

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by xombo ( 628858 )

        Out of every Apple product I've bought since around 2012, all but one has had to go back to the Apple store for serious service or replacement. That's multiple iPods, iPads, iPhones, MacBook Airs, and iMacs affected. Luckily Apple replaced them within the warranty period, but if that's the level of hardware quality I can expect from now on I think I'll just buy some cheap shit off AliBaba that won't make me feel like my wallet was just torpedoed when the device falls apart.

  • Honestly Office on OSX has ALWAYS been a steaming pile of crap. It's one of those MS apps that remind us why Microsoft hates anyone not on windows.

  • Wait - it's 2015 - and people are still using Outlook as their mail client? On a Mac, no less?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Gryle ( 933382 )
      Seconding the part about Macs. I use Outlook at work and while it's not a completely horrid piece of software I don't like it nearly enough to try and port it to another OS.

  • ... when old stuff still work fine and more stable. Sure, unsupported. :)

  • Nearly every upgrade before El Capitan used to result in something getting messed up on my Macs. This time it was very smooth, and with the exception of one minor upgrade to Little Snitch v3.6, there was absolutely no problem with the video and image editing software I used day in and out. Photoshop, Capture One, Avid media composer, iMovie, Office 2011, VMWare, OpenVPN and a whole bunch of other software I use just work fine. That said, El Cap has still not solved the horrible bluetooth audio stutter issu
  • First off was the failure to boot from cold after the upgrade with a kernel panic. After some searching around, I found some discussion about kext (from SyncMate) that upset El Capitan .. after manually hacking those out from the recovery mode, the machine was back again. It wasn't until today, that I found I couldn't use airplay to display video on the TV using my jailbroken AppleTV 2. Apparently El Capitan insists on a new encryption which is only available when Apple TV is running the latest version of i

  • cause in the old days, people would just tell you how great apple is

    at least now we have an element of realism: apple sucks just like everyone else

    a few years from now...people will recall those horrid power connector plugs, and say, typical apple crappo hardware...

  • Apple gave fair warning to vendors that they wanted sandboxed applications to be the standard for the platform. Sandboxed applications do not run out of system directories, they are basically "jailed" in their own sandboxes. Microsoft, like most software vendors, ignored Apple. So now the vendors are reaping the rewards of what they sowed.

    The bigger problem with El Capitan lies with virtualization and VPN software. These need to make changes to the system routing and interface tables to properly route packe

    • I use Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client (Version 3.1.06073 - Copyright 2004 - 2014) and it works with El Capitan..... Based on the copyright not being updated, I don't think this is the latest version either..... and it works fine.... so El Capitan does not "break" all VPN clients....

  • Downloaded El Capitan last night, haven't pushed the button yet. Manage to use my Macbook Pro in place of the shitty Dell laptop corporate IT pushes on me. This makes Outlook fairly mandatory, but I can use RDP to a Windows machine to resolve it. Better I know now.

    Surprisingly, I've been a fan of MS Office, and have been tickled that Microsoft has offered such great support on the Mac platform. I feel they've (finally) adopted the, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!" crowd. This is great, and I use MS p

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