Hello, So I'm in a world I know absolutely nothing about Macs. My girlfriend has recently started a new contact at a company that only supplies Macs to it's workers. She has been given a Mac Book Air which is fine as most applications she is working on are web based. However she has a requirement in her job to use Visio. At the moment she is carrying both the Mac and a Dell laptop to work everyday.
Microsoft Visio is one of the most popular and capable diagramming tools out there, and it’s the first choice for a lot of amateurs and professionals alike, seeing how it’s been bundled with the Microsoft Office Suite. However, if you’re favouring a Mac over Windows, you might face a major. I would like to add Visio to Office 365 but I am not sure how well the Mac and Visio in Office 365 will work together. In other words can I use.
I want to let her just carry the mac so I'm looking at ways she can use viso on the Mac. I've already tried putting Visio on a VM at the datacentre but she doesn't always have good internet access. I think the best option would be windows running in a VM on the Mac Book Air. So to my questions.
What is the best bit of software to do this? I assumed something like VMWare by after a quick google there seems to be many many different options.
Is a Mac Book Air upto running a VM? Am I correct in thinking you can't get Visio for the Mac? Ram is cheap. I think it cost me like?40 to upgrade my mbp to 8gb you can't upgrade the macbook air's ram as it's soldered.
However when it comes to ram issues, 2gb shouldnt really be a massive issue as the macbook air will probably have an SSD, and it's so fast that you can barely notice when it runs out of ram. To give you an idea (I do have the 4GB version, though i'm always maxing out the ram), I have open at the moment: Photoshop CS5, Pages, Espresso, Mail, Paralles - In parralels, 2 x visual studio projects, few folders, chrome, firefox, filezilla and SQL manager. It says I have 27mb of ram free, but it's using the SSD as ram, and I barely notice. Sounds like it might only be worth it if it's the 4Gb version. I need to see it this weekend for myself.
Knowing that I know nothing about Macs where would I find if it had 4Gb. Or is there a marking on the actual MBA that tells me if it's a 4Gb version.
Discusing it with her last night she anounced she was so fed up with the Mac she was going to ask IT if she could just give it back and use her own Laptop. I don't think it's the fact its a Mac but a MBA, she writes alot of stuff and finds the MBA keyboard not to her liking espicaly the lack of certain keys. But hey it's my girlfriend she will probably change her mind and I'll be back working on this again next week. Thanks for your comments it has been very helpful.
Hi James, Visio Pro for Office 365 is a standalone subscription. You need to purchaes it seperately then add it to Office 365 plan. It allows each user to install Visio on up to five PCs running Windows 7 or Windows 8. But Visio is not support for Mac, it doesn't work on Macs. If there is anything that I can do for you regarding this issue, feel free to post back.
Best regards, Greta Ge TechNet Community Support It's recommended to download and install, which is developed by Microsoft Support teams. Once the tool is installed, you can run it at any time to scan for hundreds of known issues in Office programs. Office 365 is the name of the marketing program where you lease Microsoft Office instead of purchase. The Office 365 program includes Mac and Windows versions of Office. So yes, you could install Visio Pro Office in a Windows partition and boot directly to Microsoft Windows using Apple's built-in Boot Camp, or you could run Windows and Mac OS simultaneously using a virtual machine in Parallels (or competing VMWare but I prefer Parallels). You can run Office for Mac in Mac OS X - or Office for Windows in Windows under the Office 365 program. I know this thread is a bit old but it's clear there's still a lot of misunderstanding regarding whether you can use Visio with Office 365 on Mac.
Since I've been in this situation and resolved it, I thought I would add my 2 cents. The simple answer is, without a virtual machine, you cannot run Visio Pro in Office 365 on Mac.
Office 365 is tied to the desktop version of Microsoft Visio which isn't available for Mac. However, if you were to install and run Windows on your Mac in a partition, you could then use Office 365 on a Mac. I tried this workaround though and found it was very laggy and made using the Mac very slow at times. I'm currently trying a few Visio alternatives - there's many suggestions here: some of which can also edit Visio files.
I'd much rather use a native Mac or cloud solution than try to run a virtual environment all the time. Sorry rant over - hope this has helped others!