More Screenshots and a Hands-On of Microsoft Office for Mac 2011

MacRumors · Apr 23, 2010

Last month, Boy Genius Report released some screenshots of Microsoft's upcoming Office for Mac 2011, due for launch later this year. Among the featured items in the handful of screenshots was Outlook, which will replace Entourage as the email and calendaring component of Office for Mac.

Boy Genius Report now offers a hands-on review of the beta version of Office 2011, along with a "massive" gallery of over 50 screenshots highlighting the upcoming productivity suite.

Across the board, each application has had its UI completely overhauled as Microsoft has made the wise decision to redo the entire layout of the application suite. Instead of the awful configuration found in Office for Mac 2008, 2011 draws from both Office 2007 and Office 2010 for Windows. In fact, it did such a good job that we cant think of a reason why someone who is used to one OS wouldnt be able to jump into the other and get work done in Office.

In particular, the report points to Microsoft's shift to the "ribbon" toolbar display as being a tremendous improvement over the "toolbox" format used in current versions of Office for Mac. Fans of the toolbox format, however, should note that the option to use it still exists. IN addition

On the downside, the report suggests that the new Outlook component could still use some work. While calling it the "best and most powerful email client we've ever used on OS X," the report claims that simple tasks require too much effort to accomplish. Fortunately, Microsoft still has some time left to refine things as it moves towards the end-of-the-year release.

Article Link: More Screenshots and a Hands-On of Microsoft Office for Mac 2011

stockcerts · Apr 23, 2010

Would you be able to use Outlook for your Apple e-mail account?

jamesryanbell · Apr 23, 2010

I'm going to write the ultimate fanboy comment, and I totally don't care. I just don't want this to be as good as iWork. Something's weird about running MS software on a Mac platform.

NathanCH · Apr 23, 2010

I wonder if the improved launch speeds to less than 3 minutes...

giosaccone · Apr 23, 2010

stockcerts said:
Would you be able to use Outlook for your Apple e-mail account?

I think so

cluthz · Apr 23, 2010

Wonder if they manage to make equations made on PCs to work on Mac and make VBA and statistics package to work too.

nealeholl · Apr 23, 2010

Mail Syncing

Do we think that Outlook would sync with other Macs over MobileMe??

CartoonHeroII · Apr 23, 2010

Vba

What's the word on VBA coming back to the Mac? Maybe this edition? Planned for the next one (what, 2015?)? Or just a big "forget you!" from MS?

ghostface147 · Apr 23, 2010

NathanCH said:
I wonder if the improved launch speeds to less than 3 minutes...

I don't know what the deal is on your particular machine that it runs on or someone's that you know it runs on, but MS Word:Mac bounces open in 7 seconds on my MB Pro.

I look forward to this release.

emon878 · Apr 23, 2010

I already have it its on torrentz.

jo0 · Apr 23, 2010

see. apple can even make ms look sessy.

auxplage · Apr 23, 2010

Talk about a waste of screen real estate.

It makes no sense "to have it both ways." The Ribbon adds no value, unless they replace the entire menu bar at the top of screen, which I am not sure is possible unless some sort of full screen mode is in order. I have no idea.

Winni · Apr 23, 2010

jamesryanbell said:
I'm going to write the ultimate fanboy comment, and I totally don't care. I just don't want this to be as good as iWork. Something's weird about running MS software on a Mac platform.

Microsoft software has been running on Macs since the very first Mac was shipped in 1984. There's nothing weird about that. Maybe you're just too young to know that Microsoft's application suite was the software that made the Mac a usable alternative to DOS boxes. If it wasn't for Microsoft's Mac support, the Mac would have never been a success.

Substance · Apr 23, 2010

WOW, just wow, MS brings all the UI garbage from the PC to the Mac.

I hate the ribbons, just hate them. Their toolbars on steroids, morphing into all sorts of different shapes and sizes. They make for nice screenshots but are a pain to use. They really thing that was better than menus?

And they still haven't learned that that combining Mail, calendar and Task apps together is just a mess (let them talk to each other, but reside as separate apps).

Looking back, Office 2004 was probably the best version of Office, on any platform, period.

ValSalva · Apr 23, 2010

I've been running the beta in VMWare and it looks pretty good. The ribbon is not the same as the Microsoft version unfortunately. Why some things are in the menu bar and some in the ribbon is an open question.

It's nice having Outlook but it still has some rough edges.

MS has been listening to feedback with Windows 7 and Office 2010 so there's hope that by the time this releases it could be much better than Office 2008.

iWonderwhy · Apr 23, 2010

jamesryanbell said:
I'm going to write the ultimate fanboy comment, and I totally don't care. I just don't want this to be as good as iWork. Something's weird about running MS software on a Mac platform.

Don't worry, it won't be as good as iWork, it'll be 100X better.

masteroflondon · Apr 23, 2010

nealeholl said:
Do we think that Outlook would sync with other Macs over MobileMe??

Yes! It only needs to work with imap, which everything does including Outlook on the PC.

Mail doesn't sync with mobileme the way other stuff does, mail clients independently sync with the imap server. The only thing that does sync, as such, is the the mail accounts setup themselves. These I think will not sync, so you'll need to set up the mail account manually.

fleshman03 · Apr 23, 2010

Substance said:
WOW, just wow, MS brings all the UI garbage from the PC to the Mac.

I hate the ribbons, just hate them. Their toolbars on steroids, morphing into all sorts of different shapes and sizes. They make for nice screenshots but are a pain to use. They really thing that was better than menus?

And they still haven't learned that that combining Mail, calendar and Task apps together is just a mess (let them talk to each other, but reside as separate apps).

Looking back, Office 2004 was probably the best version of Office, on any platform, period.

I agree. Actually I like ribbons, on the PC. They have just been poorly implemented on the Mac. The same is true of the mess of apps.

Why would you resort to his Office 07/11 crap? Apple has plenty of options that do the same stuff. I haven't run across anything that iWork, iLife or Apple core apps couldn't do.

klaxamazoo · Apr 23, 2010

NathanCH said:
I wonder if the improved launch speeds to less than 3 minutes...

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/425149/

Turning off the WYISWYG for the pull-down font menu worked wonders for me. It is a feature I never used anyway (although I can see how others would want it)

danielwsmithee · Apr 23, 2010

Office 2007 on Windows blows away Office 2008 on a Mac. Not too long ago it was the opposite, the Mac version of Office was better. Maybe this update will improve the Mac version of Office, but it has a long way to go.

The Ribbon is a huge improvement over the older versions of Office. These screenshots don't look quite as nice though. The toolbar with ribbon underneath takes up a a lot more room then the ribbon does on the Windows version where the toolbar is integrated into the window frame.

The real question though is performance. I have a Core 2 Duo PC running Office 2007, and an i7 iMac 8GB of RAM running 2008. 2007 runs exponentially better on hardware that is half as capable.

In fact you get a more smooth experience launching a virtual machine and running 2007 from there then you do just running 2008 in OS X. That is pretty sad. Hopefully MS ups their game on the Mac.

TheNewDude · Apr 23, 2010

fleshman03 said:
I agree. Actually I like ribbons, on the PC. They have just been poorly implemented on the Mac. The same is true of the mess of apps.

Why would you resort to his Office 07/11 crap? Apple has plenty of options that do the same stuff. I haven't run across anything that iWork, iLife or Apple core apps couldn't do.

1. It's not "Crap". It's very good software, but then again ur entitiled to your opinion,.

2. I am not 100% sure on this, but isn't compatibility a bit of an issue?? I mean, do iWork documents work on Windows based computers?? That might be an issue for some. For example, my work computers are all PC based, so if i want to bring a file home, I need MS Office to open them...

impierced · Apr 23, 2010

Dammit, same crap!!!

As I expected this is just Entourage renamed to Outlook.

I hate the way the work week view looks in Entourage 2008, and it appears they've kept it the same. The picture has scroll bars for the work week and only displays 11am to 6pm. Give me a work week and a full work day in the view and size it according to how big I make the window, just like Entourage 2004 and iCal. Absolutely rubbish!!!

Outlook on the PC doesn't have an "On This Computer" - this garbage is still Claris Emailer from the late 90s with some Exchange "functionality" included.

danielwsmithee · Apr 23, 2010

TheNewDude said:
2. I am not 100% sure on this, but isn't compatibility a bit of an issue?? I mean, do iWork documents work on Windows based computers?? That might be an issue for some. For example, my work computers are all PC based, so if i want to bring a file home, I need MS Office to open them...

Pages can handle 95% of the Word docs out there. Numbers is lower more like 50%, and Keynote is even better in my experience about 99%.

I do run into problems trying to open some of my work documents at home in iWork since many of my Work documents a filled with custom formatting, templates ...

sishaw · Apr 23, 2010

This is good for those of us who use the new ribbon-style Office on our work computers (we have no choice about whether to use a Mac--we cannot). I mostly use Word, and I am definitely looking forward to no longer having to switch back and forth but having consistency at home on my iMac and at the office. Once you get used to the ribbon, it is very functional. But mainly, in my view, it's about consistency and what you're used to.

TheNewDude · Apr 23, 2010

danielwsmithee said:
Pages can handle 95% of the Word docs out there. Numbers is lower more like 50%, and Keynote is even better in my experience about 99%.

I do run into problems trying to open some of my work documents at home in iWork since many of my Work documents a filled with custom formatting, templates ...

Yeah that's what I'd thought the problem would be with. The formatting and macros and stuff....

Need that stuff for work. Excel is god at work!

More Screenshots and a Hands-On of Microsoft Office for Mac 2011

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