Office for Mac 2011 Previewed Ahead of Launch Scheduled for Later This Year

I wonder if having a native version of Office for OS X is still as critical as it used to be. For so long it was considered absolutely necessary for the Mac to survive. But now...?

In any case, good to see M$ still updating it.

Late last year I started transferring all my business documents to iWork and haven't looked back. I've used more versions of Office than I care to count, but never again.

Outlook for Mac! Importing of PST files! I'll finally be able to read all those emails I abandoned on my PC in 2003 when I switched to the Mac

This is good news for Apple trying to make further inroads into business.

Although I have to say I HATE the ribbon. Maybe I just need to get used to it, but after using Office for almost two decades, it's frustrating for me to poke around everywhere like I'm 7 years old trying to figure out how to get something done.

AdeFowler said:

Late last year I started transferring all my business documents to iWork and haven't looked back. I've used more versions of Office than I care to count, but never again.

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That could work well if you are in business on your own, but if you need to frequently share documents and collaborate with others, in my experience you really do need to have Office. Some folks get by with OpenOffice, etc., but more often than not I find I am fixing up little formatting glitches left over by those apps. At my church we project using a Mac with OpenOffice and iWork installed, and for a while we didn't have PowerPoint -- we figured it wouldn't be necessary because both those apps could open PPT files, right? After a few embarrassments where guest speakers brought in PowerPoint files and they didn't look right or were missing key elements, we decided we really needed to get Office.

Another Yay! 2 Yays in one day, that's too much. I need a valium.

My favourite word processor is Word. Maybe because I've been brought up using it, and the whole industry standard compatibility stuff, but the layout etc I find far better than likes of Pages. Same with Excel.

I'm not a big fan of PowerPoint - I prefer Keynote.

Glad to see it being updated.

Glad to hear they're improving the interface. The current one is a pain to use.

But, screen shots or it doesn't exist!! Come'on Microsoft!

I'd be really excited about Outlook for Mac, except that Snow Leopard has built-in Exchange support with all the features I use.

Ribbon? Meh. I use Windows 2007 at work, it still sucks. The palette on 2008 for Mac is far easier to use, and I may have to switch to Pages whenever Office 2008 is no longer supported, even as much as I prefer Excel to Numbers.

I wanna see the ribbon!!!

I hope it's similar to the MS Office 2007/2010 for PC...

Og

I hate Office 07 and its ribbon.

I'm so happy as I work on Office Mac and its palette.

I hope we aren't forced to use the ribbon or have functionality limited by not using it.

I'm glad a new version is coming. I would like some features for Excel since it's what I use the most. Should be good.

Glad to hear support is continuing for the platform, but I was never fond of the "Ribbon" interface implemented in Office 2007 for PC... The transition from Office 2003 turned a lot of very experienced Excel users into Office newbs, and it was frustrating.

I know VB is a Mickey Mouse language and all, but it would also be nice if I could port all my VBA stuff over to Mac... last I heard, though, there were even plans to eventually drop VBA from the PC version, so I doubt that's going to happen any time soon.

Any predictions of whether they'll try to create iPad versions to compete with the iWork-iPad suite just announced?

Would be great if Pages caught up to Word someday, but I think for now Word is king..

Chemdraw finally?

Let's hope this version will work with ChemDraw. Many of us are still stuck back in 2004. Actually, if I could go back to Word 5.1 I'd do it in a heartbeat. That was the best version ever.

Will this version of Office have a cloud element to it as well?

Awesome can't wait to download it through Pirate Bay. Yeah I just can't get used to Pages. Like the other poster said, maybe it's cause I grew up with Word. I go as far as to use Word 07 in windows 7 using Parallels. Just can't grow out of an old habit.

There's literally only ONE thing that Microsoft need to do to get me to buy the new Office - make it decently fast! Even on my iMac 27/Quad2.66, Office 2008 is sluggish and very slow to load. Unforgivably so, in fact, although it has definitely greatly improved over the years since it was released as they've tweaked and patched it.

But remember this MS - speed, speed, speed! I definitely don't need any more features.

Oh, and don't screw up the UI if you can avoid it! I want to keep the menus and maximise the screen real estate - if you have to have a ribbon, make it easily collapsible so that it doesn't eat up screen space I want to be able to use for the content I'm trying to focus on.

Microsoft does a lot of things wrong, but 'Word' is most certainly one of the things they do right.

And the Mac version is often better than their Windows version, I think. I'm very interested to see what they come out with this time.

Honestly, I do use Pages at home but that's only because it's cheaper and I don't need a word processor all that often. If I had to use it every day I'd probably find some way to find the money for Word.

I've been using 2003 for years and just within the last month started using 2007 with ribbons. Does it work? No not really. I liked my floating toolbox with all my favorite most used items that didn't take a mass of screen realestate (yes I know you can minimise).

Word has it's good points and it's absimal points - formatting indents with track changes for example where the inserts jump around.

Word has more features than Pages but to be honest the only thing I think Pages lacks are good referencing and grammar checking. Yet slowly Word is driving me insane bit by bit.

I use Pages at home in preference to Word, the only reason I have it is because sending CVs often requires doc/docx (anyone that's attempted to really use Page's doc/x save will admit the output is unusable).

I don't think I'll update my Orafice:mac but I may be interested in iWork'11/12 depending on features.

Ambrose Chapel said:

I wonder if having a native version of Office for OS X is still as critical as it used to be.

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It's not. iWork saves in all MS formats and does a good job of it.

For quick-n-easy docs I use iwork mostly for it's speed. Keynote is much better than Powerpoint but I still have to use Word and Powerpoint sadly if the client requires it to be edited on their end.

I just wish Office 2008/11 could get a major speed boost to loading and working in general. (Why is is laggy on a quad 2.66 machine??)

I hate the ribbon!! *jumps out of window*

I haven't had Office Installed on my Mac for a year or so now. Just using Open Office (set to automatically save things in Office Format) and iWork. 98% of the time this suffices but as others have mentioned every now and then a slight formatting incompatibility occurs. It would be nice if iWork became more robust without losing it's unique qualities and Open Office would become more straight up compatible. But they are close enough for me already.

Hope it's not another crap that takes a minute to launch

More speed!

ncollingridge said:

But remember this MS - speed, speed, speed! I definitely don't need any more features.

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Agreed, launching alone needs to be sped up by a factor of 5 or more!

And I hate doing finds in Word, find-next is painful.