Font Rendering is Seriously Off in Outlook email and other thoughts about Mac/Outlook/Office

On the Windows side of Office the Outlook email composing tool that is used is Microsoft Word - you just don't see it as Microsoft Word while you are using Outlook.

For some reason, on the Mac side Microsoft has chosen to give Outlook its own light-weight email composing tool, which doesn't play well on the PC side, as many have discovered. The Outlook composing tool supports all the languages of Mac OS X and uses Apple's spelling and grammar checker. If you use Hebrew or Arabic or any other language supported by Mac OS X but not the rest of Microsoft Office, you can still compose messages. So there are pluses and minuses to this special, light-weight Outlook composing tool.

On the Mac side, you can use Microsoft Word as the Outlook composing tool. Whenever you want to send something more complex than just text, open Microsoft Word and from the View menu choose Web Layout. Then compose your message. When you're ready to send, in Word choose File > Share > Send HTML. Yes, it's not as convenient as having Word being the default composing tool like it is in Windows, but it does work better for more complex messages and cross-platform compatibility.

"On the Mac side, you can use Microsoft Word as the Outlook composing tool. Whenever you want to send something more complex than just text, open Microsoft Word and from the View menu choose Web Layout. Then compose your message. When you're ready to send, in Word choose File > Share > Send HTML. Yes, it's not as convenient as having Word being the default composing tool like it is in Windows, but it does work better for more complex messages and cross-platform compatibility."

This is a classic kluge.  I will try it. It's better than having to go the VM and send the email there in the more robust version of Outlook.

Yesterday, the CEO of Microsoft canned a number of high level executives for either not performing or no longer being needed by MS.   The same should be done with the executive leadership that is overseeing Outlook for the Mac because this situation with inconsistencies at incompatibilities is utterly pathetic.

Yes - and there are situations where my suggestion won't work.

Outlook for Mac has always been more "Mac-like" than "Office-like." Office for Mac supports Applescript, but not Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications making cross-platform automation solutions impossible.

My own impression is that for the past 5 years Mac users want Microsoft Office on the Mac to be more "Office-like" than "Mac-like." To me, that means having feature parity and as much cross-platform programmability support as possible. I think the Mac audience in 2004 was the opposite - where we wanted Mac-only features and were willing to compromise when it came to cross-platform capabilities. 

I would love to see everyone's thoughts about this.

@Jim - I'm new to the Mac after using Windows since it first came out. I'm obviously in the camp that wants parity.   As far as your workaround solution for sending complex emails, it worked reasonably well, but fell short when it came to images.

I was not able to do a cut and past of the work I did in Word.  Even the table would not past correctly.

Overall the Word version of Mac 2016 is closer to its Windows counterpart that Outlook. Outlook seems closer it Outlook Webmail (OTA). 

The biggest headache I have with Microsoft Outlook for Mac at the moment is its inability to export my personal folders to a PST file to allow swapping back and forth between the PC and Mac versions.  Now that I've switched to Outlook for Mac in the hope of never again needing a Windows Boot Camp partition or VM, I'm now stuck with it and can't go back to the superior Windows application.  

If it weren't for the lack of a Microsoft Visio or Project variant for OS X I'd have moved away from Windows permanently and never looked back.  I'm not impressed with Windows 10 and would prefer to rely on one operating system for all my needs.  Someone else on this forum has already argued that Adobe provides comparable Windows and Mac versions of its Creative Suite; why can't Microsoft do the same?

I don't speak for Microsoft. My conclusion is that Microsoft certainly could, but doesn't want to provide feature parity with Office for Windows.

I also have a few machines I'll dual boot into OS X/ Windows. I have done almost everything I can to avoid the windows side as my work is more important than becoming a full time IT guy trying to keep a windows box running. As an engineer and a scientist I use a lot of special software. I'll share with you that for Microsoft Project on the mac side I use iTaskX and it took no time to get up to speed with it. Except of reporting, it is a good alternate for Project and it will read and write .mpp files. 

As for Visio, A favorite, I have done everything in Omnigraffle and it will also read vision files, etc. 

So you might try those and while the MS Office for Mac is not perfect compared to the PC version, I still find it a better tool than iWork. IMHO. 

Just FYI, use or toss

re: the headache you are having, here is a possible RX:

I am transitioning away from Windows to the Mac. My Windows machine is still running, but I am no longer using it except for the moving/migrating of data.  Major challenges on the iMac are lack of a robust clipboard app on the Mac, and weaker versions of Office apps, especially Outlook for Mac 2016 which is really an embarrassment for MS and missing tons of features.

I have installed the Parallels Desktop for Mac VM program on both of my Macs.  I have an 11gb  .PST file that holds nearly a decade's worth of emails. I am now using th0e Exchange server client for all of my emails and have been doing so concurrently for two years, maintaining the .PST file on a singles Windows machine as the default data file, trying to keep it in sync through rules.  Now the .PST file will no longer be my primary mail store. Exchange is now my default data repository.

I have Office 2013 installed in a Windows 8 VM on both my iMac 5K desktop and MBPro.  In each VM, I have overwritten the initially created PST w/the PST from my Windows Desktop which is now frozen in time.  I  have it around for archival and search purposes and to copy some the the emails that are important to my Exchange account.  (it doesn't appear that Outlook for Mac allows the UI to show favorites folders so I will have be get used to that as well, another glaring and unfortunate lapse of judgment by Microsoft).

I also imported the .PST file into Outlook into Outlook for Mac 2016. It was as simple painless process.  The default account is now the Exchange Server.

If I need to compose an email that includes tables and images and Outlook for the Mac is not up to the task, I can go into the VM and use Outlook 2013. I have tried the workaround of sharing a Word Doc to Outlook as HTML - it works OK, but its a kluge.

 Because Microsoft does not render its OS or Office apps particularly well on ultrahigh definition displays like the 5K iMac, it looks less polished on the screen than the Office Mac 2016 counterpart.  Text is not as crisp although it is still retina.  My guess is that it would look similar in Bootcamp.    

That's my workaround. Since I am using an Exchange client for my mailstore, exporting has become irrelevant. I have the more robust versions of office at my fingertips. I really don't care how their being stored as long as I can retrieve them from Exchange server.

Translation of course between both version of Outlook is far from ideal as I have pointed out in other posts.  it's obvious the real smart people are not manning this project for MS.  They're getting the leftovers, the really top notch talent have fled to Google, Apple, Facebook etc.  The folks who created Outlook for the Mac 2016 have no vision.