Microsoft Office 2016 Forum

I don't know about you guys, but I am disappointed that Codeweavers seem to promote Office 2016 working well on Linux when everything indicates it doesn't. Is that to trick people desperately in need of Office 2016 under Linux to buy the license, just to realize afterwards, it simply doesn't work?

I've tried different flavours of ubuntu and LinuxMint and while it may run on a distro I wasn't able to run, if it doesn't run on Ubuntu or LinuxMint which cover a large share of the market, you can't simply can't state "runs well". What does everyone else think?

Anybody got it to work without crashing, black screens, "all working except for Outlook" etc.?

Thanks!

I alas have to agree with you, the number of stars given for linux functionality seems to be against the grain of problems reported.. I can only guess it has that rating for the few number of people that somehow have managed to get it working. I have tried Ubuntu, linux mint, latest kernels myself.. standard graphics card, no special drivers and the best I can get is a blank unusable window.

I don't think codeweavers are doing themselves any favors on the marketing point of view, as your average joe will look at the star rating for office 2016 on linux and think it will install and be usable without any problems whatsoever.. chance would be a fine thing. At a bare min, it needs an install guide, esp. given the many different variants of 'microsoft office 2016'

Here is my experience:
1 - With the full ISO downloaded off MSDN, it does not work at all. I get an error when attempting to run the installer.
2 - With the minimal EXE downloader now used by Microsoft, it downloads and installs, but gives an error. However, upon inspection it actually works and installs, but presents a blank screen which is fixed via installing libxinerama1:i386 libxcomposite1:i386 libv4l-0:i386 as described in the forum. Once that is done, I have had no issues with the programs I use (word, excel and publisher) though I havent tried the others.

Thank you, Tyler. I didn't realize the install actually did work.

Yeah neither did I. All messaging indicates that it doesnt work, but upon inspection it appears to actually install. If you have trouble activating, I found it was solved for me by installing Internet Explorer into the same bottle as Crossover, and it loaded and activated just fine afterwards!

Hello all,

I'm sorry that Office 2016 performance has been disappointing. We have faced challenges trying to keep up with updates to the Office 2016 installer and appreciate your feedback on our marketing and ratings during that time.

We have just released CrossOver 17.1 for macOS and Linux, which includes critical bug fixes for Office 2016 installation. If you have experienced problems installing Office 2016, please upgrade to 17.1 here (https://www.codeweavers.com/CX171) or contact our support team for more information.

Thank you for your patience as we have worked to resolve this issue.

Hana
CodeWeavers

Given that my experience with Word and 17.0.0 was consistent with that of others (template error trying to create a new document, corruption error when trying to open existing documents) listing Office as "runs well" definitely doesn't do CrossOver or CodeWeavers any favours. If there are substantial fixes apart from to getting it installed in the first place in the minor version increment release, that would be good to know.

Thanks for all your replies. I also appreciate the Codeweavers team stepping in. However, if you look at the "tips & tricks" section on how to install Office 2016, "works well" still is false advertising to me. In some countries in Europe, consumer protection agencies could actually sue you for this... Hence I'd appreciate if you call out that it's not working well, however can be made to work if you follow the how to article...

It's essentially like buying a car that you have to assemble yourself just to find out that half of the functionality isn't working.
Please inform your customers that Office 2016 today is still at best "EXPERIMENTAL" for Linux...

Thanks.

I am curious as to the "minimal EXE downloader" that you used? I tried using https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=49117 with not real luck. The installer completed but there are no Office files / directory structure installed in the bottle. Did I miss something?

I guess I should have kept reading the threads before responding .. I grabbed 17.1, installed it and then installed Office 2016 Plus.

Office did install on my PopOS (Unbuntu 17.10) system just fine - WOOT!

It appears that you must activate via phone... Internet activation did not work for me, kept throwing an error.

This issue has been forwarded to the Official CodeWeavers Ticket System. If you have observed this issue and would like to report it as well, please open a support ticket or send an email to info@codeweavers.com with a description of what you are seeing and a link to this post.

Thank you!
The CodeWeavers Team

Hi
I have pbs with office 2016 on Linux via Crossover too. I'm surprised by notes given by users. Itr's not easy to activate the suite.

The reason the ratings are the way they are is because they apply to the experience as a whole; implying those able to get beyond the activation step are experiencing only minor issues. Yes, there are multiple options for activation, and some don’t work as well as others, but these things aren’t common enough to drag the overall rating down.

Haven't tried again since, but at the time of listing main applications were unusable with some unable to create files and/or open them. "Works well" is an extremely misleading (if not fraudulent) label if it's based on whether it's possible to get something to install or activate.

https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/crossover/tips/microsoft-office-2016/current-overall-status (as at January).

word 2016 on cxoffice 17.5, performance is very poor. The file browser (needed to open a word file) is amazingly slow - it takes minutes to show a list of files.

Font rendering is very poor (I'm running on Fedora 28).