LagunaSol
macrumors 601
Be fearful. Office for Mac always seems to fall far short of expectations.
Indeed. Apple, if you have to launch 3 separate mini-applications to manage your simple daily office tasks, you failed.
Microsoft Highlights Compatibility, Graphing and Photo Editing in Office for Mac 2011
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Be fearful. Office for Mac always seems to fall far short of expectations.
Indeed. Apple, if you have to launch 3 separate mini-applications to manage your simple daily office tasks, you failed.
LegendKillerUK
macrumors 6502
great... now that office is finally up to par with the windows version.
work on that darn Messenger For Mac... because it's still total crap after all these years, while the windows version is improving and improving, getting updates frequently.
By the time the new messenger is released it will be a year and half since. Also, it is getting very bloated now with all this social network integration.
Still can't hold it up to the screen on Windows versions and do this. (which other programs could do on Mac in the 80s) Baby steps for Microsoft? They wouldn't want to hurry or anything.
MRU
macrumors Penryn
Office for Mac 2011 opens substantially quicker than Office 2008 and faster than iWork 09.
MRU
macrumors Penryn
Absolutely hit the nail on the head. As a beta tester for Office 2011 I can testify to how spot on both of your comments are. Microsoft have upped the ante considerably with Office for Mac 2011.
My experience with the Beta echoes what you have already written.
I don't quite agree. I don't care how many apps I have to launch, as long as they work seamlessly together. Apple has done a bit of this, such as letting you use and modify your Contacts from within Mail, but it's certainly not seamless. I care only about how easy it is to accomplish my task, not what app takes the credit!
telecomm
macrumors 65816
Collaboration is difficult when working in LaTeX (which is a typesetting tool, not a word processor - one might as well recommend InDesign or TextWrangler!). Sometimes you just need to write a business letter...
At any rate, LaTeX output is nice, but what if you need to send the document for revision to someone who doesn't use it?
Word used to fill that gap, until they changed the default document format to .docx. Sure, you could create Equation Editor/MathType equations in .docx files, but you lost Mac/PC compatibility (equations created on one platform weren't editable on the other).
After that fiasco, I'm just about ready to give up on Word for good.
I don't know about this comment at all.
powers74
macrumors 68000
talking head
Does it come with a free mustache ride?
That's a good point. I mean take a look at iTunes.
Does it come with a free mustache ride?
That's a good point. I mean take a look at iTunes.
Yes, LaTeX is a typesetting language, feel free to use any capable text editor. For example BBEdit has a lot of word processor features including spell checking. And it can be used across many platforms, all producing the same final PDF output - the same can't be said for word.
The problem is word is a crutch for a poor education system that is obsessed with WYSIWYG computing for high school students. This is a shame as while Word may be good to bang off a quick rough report, it does not scale very well.
Try compiling a book, thesis or 100 page report and word will work against you more than with you. LaTeX, has a steeper learning curve, but the scalability is insane. For example I wrote an analysis program in R (opens source S-Plus) that outputs graphs to a directory (about 400 in total), which LaTeX then took and inserted into a report (I actually even R to output a lot of that LaTeX code).
New data set this year, ran the R code. Produced the new set of graphs, compiled the LaTeX document and this years report was 90% done in 5 minutes. In Word you would be spending 3 weeks erasing and updating and resizing each graph.
Here is something that happened to me yesterday in Word 2008.
Part of my style "Normal" and part was in a style I call "Body Text."
The styles are similar visually, but "Body Text" has a taller line height.
I was in a hurry and didn't want to find all my stray paragraphs in Normal, so I went into properties and changed the style's line height to 16pt.
Guess what? ALL MY D$#$JKCING images ALL OF THEM were cropped to 16 pt.
So I really don't care about creating "beautiful" documents. I'll learn TeX if I need a beautiful document. I need to pound out documents and not have to fight my word processing software every step of the way.
Part of my style "Normal" and part was in a style I call "Body Text."
The styles are similar visually, but "Body Text" has a taller line height.
I was in a hurry and didn't want to find all my stray paragraphs in Normal, so I went into properties and changed the style's line height to 16pt.
Guess what? ALL MY D$#$JKCING images ALL OF THEM were cropped to 16 pt.
So I really don't care about creating "beautiful" documents. I'll learn TeX if I need a beautiful document. I need to pound out documents and not have to fight my word processing software every step of the way.
AidenShaw
macrumors P6
Aren't there times when you are so happy for the UNDO button?
I was able to undo that, but there have been times in Word and Excel when the programs respectively tilt their heads and go "Huh?" when I hammer CMD-Z.
But I won't pick on them for that since I've seen other programs with a similar problem.
costabunny
macrumors 68020
I am not too bothered to be honest - objectively the new suite does indeed look far better than 2008, but I still want OneNote for Mac. It was the only reason I paid for the windows version.
Imagine Onenote for Mac and iPad - wow killer (in my opinion anyways).
I will try the trial (if/when its released) but I doubt there is enough in there for me (I've gotten used to Apple mail now).
Imagine Onenote for Mac and iPad - wow killer (in my opinion anyways).
I will try the trial (if/when its released) but I doubt there is enough in there for me (I've gotten used to Apple mail now).
Cross platform compatibility would be great - if they can deliver it. Even more important is to fix that bug where Excel files change their server set permissions or "file open" status when loading from a server but then don't change them back when saving back to the server. This results in other users getting locked out of files, even if they created them originally. According to the Networking forums, this behaviour occurs on both Windows servers and Mac servers.
Microsoft are beginning to move in the right direction though, but only after having lost two pretty big court cases (one in the US, one in the EU) over the way they behaved as a corporate entity.
I do hope formatting features and controls aren't buried in three different places though. I can never find my way around in Word, which is why I prefer Pages from iWork. I don't care about the features, I don't care about the graphics, I just want to be able to quickly create and print text output. Pages does this so much better than Word.
Microsoft are beginning to move in the right direction though, but only after having lost two pretty big court cases (one in the US, one in the EU) over the way they behaved as a corporate entity.
I do hope formatting features and controls aren't buried in three different places though. I can never find my way around in Word, which is why I prefer Pages from iWork. I don't care about the features, I don't care about the graphics, I just want to be able to quickly create and print text output. Pages does this so much better than Word.
macintoshtoffy
macrumors 6502a
I'm excited but for no other reason that Office 2008 set the bar so damn low that any version after will be a blessing upon all concerned. Word 2008 is ok until you start hitting the file sizes that are in the megabytes with graphics, charts and so forth. Office 2011 apparently addresses many of the performance issues - but I guess the biggest thing I am actually waiting for is Messenger 8.0 which will include webcam support plus more.
From the video:
"good art in documents"
good? GOOD??? What sort of marketing speak is that? That's horrendous!
Throw in 'magical art', 'pristine AAC', or 'phenomenal visual effect' in your descriptions please. Good.... nobody wants good.
I'm just really dismayed with 2008 for many reasons...
I had a Word 2007 doc with an embedded spreadsheet for doing employee reviews... and well, decided to work at home doing a bunch of stuff up, only to find embedded spreadsheets work like a dog in Office 2008. The embedded spreadsheet can only be modified in Excel, where you save your changes, and the Word doc appears to be modified.
Fine. A severely awkward pain, but I'll fight thru it.
Get the docs back in the office, open with Word 2007... looks fine. Print...
Embedded Excel information disappears from the printout.
I had to go in to each doc, double click in the embedded Excel spreadsheet, and edit slightly... (Realize how awesome it is to work within Word while still modifying the spreadsheet data), then resave before printing again for the data to appear.
...and... WHY do I have to install Rosetta on Snow Leopard to get Office 2008 working?
What do you do? Outlook is head and shoulders above Apple Mail or any other mail client out there. Nothing beats the Office suite within Windows... just nothing worthwhile on the Mac from what I can tell.
"good art in documents"
good? GOOD??? What sort of marketing speak is that? That's horrendous!
Throw in 'magical art', 'pristine AAC', or 'phenomenal visual effect' in your descriptions please. Good.... nobody wants good.
I'm just really dismayed with 2008 for many reasons...
I had a Word 2007 doc with an embedded spreadsheet for doing employee reviews... and well, decided to work at home doing a bunch of stuff up, only to find embedded spreadsheets work like a dog in Office 2008. The embedded spreadsheet can only be modified in Excel, where you save your changes, and the Word doc appears to be modified.
Fine. A severely awkward pain, but I'll fight thru it.
Get the docs back in the office, open with Word 2007... looks fine. Print...
Embedded Excel information disappears from the printout.
I had to go in to each doc, double click in the embedded Excel spreadsheet, and edit slightly... (Realize how awesome it is to work within Word while still modifying the spreadsheet data), then resave before printing again for the data to appear.
...and... WHY do I have to install Rosetta on Snow Leopard to get Office 2008 working?
What do you do? Outlook is head and shoulders above Apple Mail or any other mail client out there. Nothing beats the Office suite within Windows... just nothing worthwhile on the Mac from what I can tell.
RMo
macrumors 65816
You disagree that that is its intent, or you disagree because it's not what you want? Certainly, you mean the latter.
Unfortunately, Word isn't meant to be "write once, look the same everywhere." Like I said before, either use styles to get the document to behave in a desireable manner regardless of issues like pagination, use LaTeX if you really care, or use a PDF (now that is a format designed to look the same) if you need pixel-perfect rendering.
A Word document is not a PSD.
Same problem with embedding trying to swap between 2003 and 2007, just saw that last week in our dept. Because Office is one behind on the Mac, regardless of what they or beta testers are saying:
Mac:Win
2004=????
2008=2003 (except for VBA)
2011=2007
????=2010
notjustjay
macrumors 603
This picture seemed appropriate.
(Yes, I'm aware of the ironic spelling mistake )
(Yes, I'm aware of the ironic spelling mistake
)Synaesthesia242
macrumors member
batchtaster
macrumors 65816
They're looking at it, however they've made it clear that it doesn't make sense to just do exactly "Microsoft Office" again but for iPad; if you expect that, then frankly you're delusional, because you won't use Office for iPad the same way as you use Office for Desktop. Apple doesn't do "iWork" the same for iPad as Mac. And it's not different just to artificially limit you, it's because it's a different kind of device that's used a different way, so it's designed with specific features suitable for it. And the same applies to Office apps on iPad. So you need to tell Microsoft exactly what you actually want to be able to do on an iPad, so they can build apps that do the job. Top of the list would certainly be presenting PowerPoint presentations and Word's Notebook view.
Office 2011 loads some components in the background after the app loads. It is much faster to load than 2008. It is also much faster at doing just about anything, including crunching large sets of numbers.
They may all be under the same "Microsoft" banner, but the MacBU has been a separate entity since it was spun off in the 90s. This was done to get some focus on their Mac products, instead of having them be created by the same bozos who write Office for Windows. MacBU has been integrated back into the Business Group, as of a few weeks ago. This means that they work alongside the Office and Exchange guys, which has enabled them to do massive amounts of compatibility work. Compatibility is not just the file formats - TextEdit supports doc and docx. And frankly, the file format itself is largely irrelevant. No matter the format, the application needs to handle the data the same way. And the new versions will. The Mac guys have made substantial contributions to Exchange, and as a result, Outlook for Mac+Exchange do things that were not possible before. Many of the business-oriented features were not available in Entourage because they were built into the Windows OS. Well, the Mac guys have gotten many of them built into Exchange via the Exchange's Business Logic Layer.
You would be dumbfounded by how serious Microsoft are about this version. I spoke to the product manager about it a week or so ago, and Office 2011 is massively improved over 2008, in ways you wouldn't imagine. VBA is not just back, it's the exact same version as Office 2010 (Office 2004 had an older version than the equivalent Office 2003).
I see people making cracks about the paper overlay test. That whole "everything in exactly the same place, to the very pixel" thing is so non-trivial. You think it's like, duh, but even Adobe doesn't get it right, and they're the desktop publishing/printing specialists.
So, clearly you know for a fact that the images on those slides are not 100MB apiece.
The Ribbon is of course optional. It is also not the same Ribbon that people lambasted in Office 2007. Even Office 2010's Ribbon is not the same as the one from Office 2007. I've used the Ribbon in all the Office 2011 apps, and found it useful and reveals features that I didn't know were even present (eg: setting permissions controls on emails sent from Outlook 2011). It's on by default, and unlike Windows you have the option to turn it off due to the Mac's persistent menubar, but do try it before you dive for the preference panel. And Resolution Nazis are boring.
Doesn't automatically make it bad either. Otherwise YouTube would have to shut down entirely. It conveyed the information it needed to. (Although you instead chose to ignore the information because of spite and some video production snobbery.) "Their colors are off by <some small margin of color..... ness>. My eyes! I cannot watch!! Oh woe my ability to perceive color may be forever damaged!" Whatever. It's an in-house, ad-hoc video not broadcast TV. Your loss.