Update Notes

This page supplements our release notes, providing additional detail on "breaking" and other important changes between versions. Before updating Macabacus software, be sure to check here to understand important differences and incompatibilities between Macabacus versions that may affect your deployment. These notes apply to all versions of Office, unless otherwise noted.

v9.7.2

Foreign Currency Cycle Removal – This tool was primarily useful for our largest customers working with multiple currencies. As part of our effort to streamline Macabacus, we have removed the Foreign Currency Cycle. You can either (a) combine this cycle with the Local Currency Cycle, which is being renamed to Currency Cycle (this update will be applied automatically upon upgrade), or (b) use custom style cycles to create your own Foreign Currency Cycle.

Center Cycle Removal – The Center Cycle tool, which has always been somewhat redundant to the Horizontal Cycle, has been removed. This change helps reduce confusion stemming from having both options. You can either (a) use the Horizontal Cycle for centering, or (b) use custom style cycles to create your own Center Cycle.

v9.6.5

For Enterprise customers who use Macabacus with Microsoft Entra ID, you can specify an Azure – or “Entra” – tenant ID when installing the msi from the command line. For example, the following install string has been confirmed to work in Intune:

msiexec /i "Macabacus-9.6.5.msi" EULA=1 EntraTenant=[Tenant ID] /qn

This will create or modify an “AzureTenantId” registry value in the Macabacus key (i.e.- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Macabacus\Macabacus 2016).

That registry value is the one displayed when opening the “Azure with options” window during an Azure sign-in. The idea is to allow you to automate the setting of that registry value for all their users when installing or upgrading the Macabacus Add-in. That way, users don’t have to fish for that value and copy/paste it into the window themselves.

In v.9.6.5 onwards, the Entra ID button will appear greyed out if Macabacus does not detect a Tenant ID on the user's machine.

In this scenario, you have two options to deploy the Tenant ID and un-grey the button: 1) Use an installer switch (per the above); or 2) Push out the registry value.

If you wish, you can simply push out the “AzureTenantId” registry value in the Macabacus key (i.e.- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Macabacus\Macabacus 2016)

A user who is currently signed in successfully via Entra ID (i.e., not a new user) should already have this key on their machine.

v9.5.6

This update combines Explorer and Super Find capabilities in Excel into a new Super Find tool with an improved UI and new features.  The Explorer tool is no longer available as a dedicated tool.  In both Excel and PowerPoint, the Tab Browser is removed as it offers capability that is largely redundant to other Macabacus and native Office/Windows functionality.

v9.4.0

This update changes how slides in presentation templates are treated. Before this update, they were simply ignored by Macabacus and we recommended their removal. As of this update, they are included by default in new presentations. If you had inadvertently left slides in your template while using a prior Macabacus version and now find that their insertion into new presentations is undesirable after updating to v9.4.0+, remove the slides from your template and republish your template.

v9.3.0

This update changes how inline text links are implemented in PowerPoint. They are now implemented as hyperlinks, which offers improved reliability and other improvements. To support legacy inline text links, you must enable compatibility mode for inline text links in the General > Linking  section of the Settings  dialog. Inline text links created in PowerPoint using v9.3.0 and newer will not be recognized as links in older versions of Macabacus.

v9.0.0

This major update includes many improvements, primarily to shared libraries. There are many issues to consider when upgrading to v9, so we have a dedicated page on this topic.

v8.11.11

This update combined the slide number sequencing options from the Slide Numbers dialog and ability to insert blank slides as necessary to support duplex printing into a new pagination utility that also incorporates facing slides as a new feature. You can no longer use the Slide Numbers dialog to toggle the visibility of individual slide numbers, but you can do this almost as easily natively.

v8.11.5

This update removed the ability to paste slides linked to non-library presentations. Usage data suggests this feature was rarely used. Slides inserted from the library can still be linked.

Library content and data is now managed from dialogs accessed from the Settings menu, rather than within the Settings dialog.

v8.9.11

This update removed the classic Excel 2003 tab—time to move on.

v8.9.7

This update removed forward-compatibility of links—links created by this and subsequent versions of Macabacus will no longer work in v8.8.2 or older. However, backward-compatibility is unchanged—links created by older versions of Macabacus will continue to work as they did previously. Teams and organizations sharing Office documents linked using Macabacus should consider updating Macabacus software for users running v8.8.2 or older if others are running v8.8.3 or newer.

v8.9.0

This update overhauled the  Settings  menu and consolidated various settings-related dialogs into a single Settings  dialog.

v8.8.3

This update removes support for linking between PowerPoint shapes.

v8.7.0

This update introduces MasterShapes, which are now used to implement slide stamp functionality. Slide stamps are no longer configured using the Template Wizard, and can now be inserted from the MasterShapes  menu rather than the Slides  menu. In addition, the Text Box  button used to insert a text box with formatting derived from the slide master has been moved to the MasterShapes  menu.

v8.5.9

This update reverses the increased dependency on chart names introduced in v8.5.5, while still allowing changes in worksheet names without breaking chart links introduced in v8.5.5. The net result of the changes to chart links introduced in v8.5.5 and v8.5.9 is simply that you can now rename worksheets containing linked charts without breaking the links.

v8.5.5

This update changes how Excel charts are linked in PowerPoint and Word. Prior to this update, if you had linked to a chart embedded on a worksheet and subsequently changed the name of that worksheet, the link would be broken. This made chart links unacceptably unreliable, since worksheet names may change often. As of v8.5.5, chart links are independent of the worksheet name.

The side effect of this change is that chart links now rely more heavily on unique chart names (as shown in Excel's Selection pane). Since chart links are no longer scoped to a specific worksheet, greater care must be taken to ensure that Excel charts have unique names prior to linking. Also, Macabacus is now more likely to reference an incorrect chart for linking purposes when multiple charts have the same name.

Overall, this change gives users greater control over the integrity of chart links, while increasing the likelihood of mislinks if chart names are ignored. See the section of this documentation on how chart linking works for more information.

v8.0.0

This major update primarily adds new charting tools and improved existing charting functionality in Excel. Additionally, this update implemented a new versioning convention using a single version number, replacing separate version numbers for Macabacus add-ins for individual Office applications.