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First Screenshots of Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 Surface

HLdan said:
I have both iWork and Office 2008 and prefer Pages, but I have good reasons for using Pages. I'm a bit uneducated about Word in terms of what more it can do. Could you or anyone explain what Word can do that Pages cannot do, and please leave out the compatibility stuff because I am well aware of that. I'm just curious what's special about Word, because I don't see it.
Click to expand...

Word supports many advanced features that, last I checked, were not in Pages. For example, Table of Authorities comes to mind.
 
makkystyle said:
Sadly MS can't figure out the basic functions people need to actually use the product on a daily basis. I was trying to create a digital letterhead for my company last year. We made a nice Illustrator document and then proceeded to export it in PDF as a page background. Dropped it into Pages and save as a template and bam done.

Then on to Word. We tried PDF, TIFF, JPG, PNG, you name it, we tried. We also tried as a background, as a 100% opacity watermark and just as an embedded image. Either the background would move when you carriage returned from the beginning of the document, or it would automatically resize itself and get out of whack, or it would print the background in low-res. I did finally get the template working on my mac (with some compromises to position and resolution) and that template wouldn't work on the PC's and vice versa.

It is 2010! How hard can MS make it to embed an image in a document? I should note this was Office 2008 also. It's completely ridiculous how clueless MS is to some of the most basic functions of their software.

What's crazy is that in EXCEL I have insane multi-sheet spreadsheets with huge calculations and the app runs those no problem, whereas Numbers just crashes upon opening because it's calculation engine blows. Numbers still blows away Excel in formatting of the documents though. Again, what should seemingly be the easiest fix escapes MS release after release.
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I agree that Word/Office have a lot of catching up to do. But one some call bloated others see as needed functionality.

One thing I hate about Word is the floating palette. I don't have anything against palettes but Word gets it all wrong. It's always in the way and kludgy. I hope they get it right, or at least much better this time around.
 
Horrible timing to show this right after I spent a half hour looking at the iWork apps for the iPad, which make the Office products look like the relics from the last century that they are.
 
I'm still confused why they're using a toolbar and a ribbon. The ribbon is designed to replace the toolbar and the menu, and yet they've left them both! Of course, you don't have a choice with menus in OS X; that's fine--just get rid of the useless, space-hogging toolbar.

I really do like the ribbon in the Windows version and I think it could work well on the Mac, but all it's doing right now is taking up space. Granted, it's a heck of a lot better than the floating tool palettes...but they really should get rid of the toolbar. I know you can (probably) turn it off, but what I'm saying is they'd better move these functions to the ribbon if applicable, or just leave them in the menu bar. That way, turning off the toolbar won't make you miss out on easy access to whatever functionality it might be providing.
 
It seems they still won't be able to succeed this time either.

Lots of screen space wasted at the top.

WTF? not everyone has 24' monitors.

Look at the toolbars... Nothing in the name of GUI consistency.

They suck every time...
 
cmaier said:
Because I want to write all that stuff myself instead of buying it off the shelf? Or because I don't want my files to be 100% compatible? ;)
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What *would* you like your files to be 100% compatible with?
MS Office?
Which version?
On what what OS?
On what version of that OS?
With what printer configured as default?
With what version of the printer driver?

(Admittedly, I haven't run into the last two as problems since we were working with a mixed Office 97/2K environment at work, but then again everywhere else I've been we've all been hooked up to the same network printer by default.)

Even MS can't provide 100% compatibility (as defined by having the output look the same) between a single version of Word on two different versions of the OS. Even if everything else is the same, there will be subtle differences between how documents print and/or display. Open Office actually handles older versions of the Word format better and more consistently than the current version of Office in many cases.

Besides, the only standardized file format MS Office supports is ODF, which is the same format used by OpenOffice.
 
Shadow said:
It looks okay, except they're still using the damned "Formatting Palette". It's a nice idea but it's too constricting - I don't want all my commonly-used tools (like font-changer) hidden underneath a ton of menus; just keep it for the rarely-used stuff.

But really, as long as they sorted out performance it'll probably be a hit. Does anyone know if it's using Carbon or Cocoa?
Click to expand...

In particular, it is unacceptable that certain features are ONLY available on the formatting palette (at least in the current version). This means they cannot be bound to keystrokes, included in applescripts, etc.
 
GQB said:
Horrible timing to show this right after I spent a half hour looking at the iWork apps for the iPad, which make the Office products look like the relics from the last century that they are.
Click to expand...

For some productivity is much more important than the looks of a program.
 
The MS Office price hasn't been an issue for me. The student version does everything I want. I avoid Word like the plague, but love Excel.

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac was really buggy and slow at first, until they issued patch releases, so I'm worried about getting burned on bugs and performance again. I don't think I'll be an early adopter this time.

The ribbon? Thumbs down. I still can't believe they ever tested it on real people before foisting it on Windows users with Office 2007. But I put up with Microsoft's habit of making the interface more annoying with each release in order to get the few new-and-improved features that make a difference to me.
 
Office 2011

Guess they have to work harder on making a pro version sized for the Ipad now... I have to admit, I rarely use MS Office 2008 on the Mac... I have a lot of fun working with Keynote, Pages is Just perfect and fast. I do some Excel work. The current version is very slow (i.e. loading the program + all the fonts i have)... In any case, I prefer the mac version to the PC version I use at the office.

So Mac BU Team at microsoft: deliver something for the Ipad please!
 
Word 2011 for Mac

If this "ribbon" is anything like WORD 2007 for PC - then I don't want it. I just hope they can either give us a choice of the interface; or just leave it like the 2008 version. Can't learn (don't want to learn) a new interface every 3 years - and when I have to use a PC and it has Word (Office) 2007 - I hate it and most people hate it. (Of course many in the PC world run Office 2003 to avoid the mess of 2007!)

Don't fix it if it ain't broke kinda situation. Please don't complicate this, MS - you are not known for cool and easy-to-use interfaces you know. (MS-DOS anyone?)

Appreciate the MS support for Mac all these years - but please don't mess to much with Word 2008.

Best regards,

Steve Schulte
Monday 29 March 2010
 
tbrinkma said:
What *would* you like your files to be 100% compatible with?
MS Office?
Which version?
On what what OS?
On what version of that OS?
With what printer configured as default?
With what version of the printer driver?

(Admittedly, I haven't run into the last two as problems since we were working with a mixed Office 97/2K environment at work, but then again everywhere else I've been we've all been hooked up to the same network printer by default.)

Even MS can't provide 100% compatibility (as defined by having the output look the same) between a single version of Word on two different versions of the OS. Even if everything else is the same, there will be subtle differences between how documents print and/or display. Open Office actually handles older versions of the Word format better and more consistently than the current version of Office in many cases.

Besides, the only standardized file format MS Office supports is ODF, which is the same format used by OpenOffice.
Click to expand...

I have never had a single document produced in any version of Windows Word not open correctly on my Mac's version of Word (or vice versa). Yes, I agree that it is likely that there are documents out there that would cause trouble, but since I have never run into one, that's good enough for me (whereas with OpenOffice and Pages, I have seldom had anything more than a two page memo properly maintain its formatting).

As a intellectual property lawyer I work with complex documents all day long, frequently with things like tables of annotations, hundreds of tables, annotation by a dozen people, equations, hundreds of embedded images, full-page backgrounds, etc. These things simply don't survive the trip from Office to/from Pages/OpenOffice, whereas they transparently make round-trips to my PC Office-using brethren.
 
Windows 2007 ribbon

I've been using Office 2007 for about six months now and I've really tried to give the ribbon a chance but I do not prefer it. I'm sad that the Mac version is going in this direction.
 
cmaier said:
I have never had a single document produced in any version of Windows Word not open correctly on my Mac's version of Word (or vice versa). Yes, I agree that it is likely that there are documents out there that would cause trouble, but since I have never run into one, that's good enough for me (whereas with OpenOffice and Pages, I have seldom had anything more than a two page memo properly maintain its formatting).

As a intellectual property lawyer I work with complex documents all day long, frequently with things like tables of annotations, hundreds of tables, annotation by a dozen people, equations, hundreds of embedded images, full-page backgrounds, etc. These things simply don't survive the trip from Office to/from Pages/OpenOffice, whereas they transparently make round-trips to my PC Office-using brethren.
Click to expand...

Thats why we're changing the entire workflow to PDF. We're going to have 2 linux boxes soon and some Mac workstations. The mac documents dont already make the round trip as .Doc as the New Zealand Govt document templates have some funky out of print area formatting issues.
 
Get rid of the damn floating palette in Word - I HATE that thing on so many levels.

Im not utterly convinced by Outlook, it does look awfully busy. Mail.app suits me fine right now, although if Outlook is streamlined I would defiantly consider trying it. Nothing to persuade me to upgrade right now, however.
 
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