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Microsoft Highlights Compatibility, Graphing and Photo Editing in Office for Mac 2011

I'm not sure what line of work all of you are in - but this is an important release for business/enterprise users.

Apples iWork is great for home use but is unusable in the office environment. I know because I have both.
 
oh and one question for you beta testers on here. does the new mac outlook support public folders?
 
Oh finally, a worthy business office suite for Mac. Can't wait to uninstall iWork '09.
 
I'm planning on buying MS Office 2011 with a student discount. I like iWork, but it doesn't do everything MS Office does. Here's hoping Microsoft have improved it enough for it to be a worthy purchase.
 
blunderboy said:
I'm planning on buying MS Office 2011 with a student discount. I like iWork, but it doesn't do everything MS Office does. Here's hoping Microsoft have improved it enough for it to be a worthy purchase.
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I'm waiting to see what are features and improvements in the next version of iWork.
 
Thanks Batchmaster -

unfortunately the public folders is way of life at my work. We have large reports genreated overnight which are about 20 megs with in total and they were being sent to each employee. It was killing our server so they have now have 1 email address for reports which sits in the public folder and everyone can access when they need to.

Do you know if there is a current work around for this in snow leopard mac mail? because I keep having to use my windows machine when i need them.
 
Žalgiris said:
I'm waiting to see what are features and improvements in the next version of iWork.
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I'm hoping Apple added some more stuff in there. As I said, I like it, but I also think having MS Office alongside it would be a good choice, too. I do think that Keynote blows PowerPoint out of the water. That's what I got iWork for, anyway.
 
GadgetAddict said:
They've added this in the new version. I've seen in (and used it) in the beta version.

Now if they could lower the price that would be great. Compared to iWork, MS Office is way too expensive.
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When iWork was updated every year & MS Office for the Mac was updated every 4 years MS Office would come out much cheaper than iWork. But now with Apple only updating iWork on a 2 year or so basis because the Mac seems to be a platform that they want to quit & that MS updated on a 3 year basis this time the cost of staying current is higher with Apple, but is now a little closer. Also because iWork is still growing to become a useful program for more Mac Users, one must purchase the new version. Because MS Office for the Mac can already do so much more than iWork one can skip updating much of the time.

The only way that iWork can come out cheaper than MS Office for the Mac is if the person only purchases one version of each. But that means no changing once the program is purchased.

I for one have owned every version of both MS Excel from the beginning & also the rest of MS Office for the Mac since the time that Word 6 came out.
 
heisetax said:
When iWork was updated every year & MS Office for the Mac was updated every 4 years MS Office would come out much cheaper than iWork. But now with Apple only updating iWork on a 2 year or so basis because the Mac seems to be a platform that they want to quit & that MS updated on a 3 year basis this time the cost of staying current is higher with Apple, but is now a little closer. Also because iWork is still growing to become a useful program for more Mac Users, one must purchase the new version. Because MS Office for the Mac can already do so much more than iWork one can skip updating much of the time.

The only way that iWork can come out cheaper than MS Office for the Mac is if the person only purchases one version of each. But that means no changing once the program is purchased.

I for one have owned every version of both MS Excel from the beginning & also the rest of MS Office for the Mac since the time that Word 6 came out.
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Apple didn't release a version of iWork in 2008—there was over a year between iWork '08 (released in late summer 2007) and iWork '09 (released in January 2009). Interestingly, that was another year in which Apple were more focussed on the iOS than they were Mac OS X. (Leopard was released, but that had been in the works for a while.)
 
Well, upgrading to Office:mac 2011 is a no-brainer for me given the comparatively cheap price of the new edition and the fact that I am still using Office:mac 2004 on a new iMac. Compatibility with work is the #1 most important thing to me and hopefully this edition will deliver that with Office 2007. What worries me is the way that Kurt talks about Mac users like we only produce leaflets or brochures and that layout and art tools are important. I'm not saying that these tools are not important to me but I don't see the difference in requirements between when I'm using Office for Windows and when I'm using Office for Mac. Given this what worries me is that Office:mac may be concentrating on areas that are less important.

The other thing that worries me is Outlook. Words cannot describe how much I hate that application for Windows and I do not understand why people are looking forwards to it coming back to the Mac.

I'm also wondering what the obsession is with Web Services interfaces. Last I heard compatibility with Exchange and SharePoint required that both had Web Services enabled in order for the Mac applications to interact with them. I am 99% certain that they are not enabled on my company's servers which essentially means that the applications are not compatible. Moving to the future is nice but it doesn't seem to be helping in the present.
 
koach said:
I would hope not. I would be concerned if there are people who ARE excited about buying an office program.
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I'm excited about new versions of the MS Office suite. If you're in a job that requires you to work in Excel 50% of the time, these things matter. From the testing I've done with Office 2010 (Windows) and Office 2011 (Mac), it looks like very welcome enhancements that will improve my day-to-day work flow.

I don't use Mac at work, but with Outlook for Mac it seems like the platform finally gets a business class email software. Apple's Mail just doesn't cut it (works fine for my personal email though). I'm sure there are plenty of users who look forward to Office 2011 for Mac.
 
batchtaster said:
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.
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Great post batchtaster.

It strikes me that Microsoft are genuinely trying to go that extra mile with this release, and regardless of where your opinions / loyalties lay in regards to Microsoft, you have to give credit where credit is justifiably deserved - and I honestly believe Office for Mac 2011 development team deserve a pat on the back for the work they have done on it.
 
Opstech said:
You are acting like a child with that assumption!
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I am too, I suppose. I had difficulty looking beyond his mustache. The audio in the clip was also poorly mixed.

And what was with the flashes to him smiling big and laughing in several points of the clip? We can't take a Microsoft propeller head seriously about Office 2011 unless we get a feel for how playful and human they are? :p
 
Synaesthesia242 said:
Yeah I'll probably get this too. I agree about Outlook. Mail and iCal do a great job. Especially in Snow Leopard.
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They do, but if Outlook steps up its syncing game, a lot of people might switch. Mail and iCal are very good, but miss some more complex features that Outlook does have.
 
If Office 2011 activates back to Microsoft and has any Genuine advantage ******** I am not buying it. This is why I left the Windows world. If not, I'm buying.
 
Marx55 said:
What about Microsoft Office for iPad? That would be a real winner.
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Ha ha ha!

First they will wait for a windows tablet that balmer is talking about for a looong time. Touch office will be debuted as the "must have" enterprise feature/asset for that platform. Of course, it won't be compatible with any other versions of office for a long time.

In 3 years, may be, just may be, they will think about bringing it to iPad, provided iPad is continuing its steady penetration into academia and enterprise.

I am not holding my breadth :rolleyes:
 
Compatibility incomplete...

Office for Windows and Office for Mac will never be 100% compatible.

Why? One major component.

Access. OSX is will turn 11 years old in January.

There isn't, and according to Microsoft never will be, a Mac version of Access.

So Mac users have 2 options for using it: get a Windows PC or put Windows in a virtual environment. Either way, you have to buy a copy of Windows and Office for PC. Price that out will ya. :(
 
Its good that they are finally working on the bootup time of Office, my friend who has a MBP, showed me how incredibly slow the old version of Office opened, which shocked me, seeing how my copy of Office 2010 for Windows booted, (about 4 seconds from clicking the Word icon to be able to type)

But I guess it works both ways, my copy of iTunes can usually take around 20 seconds to appear on my desktop after clicking, and then a further 15-20 seconds before it's capable of playing music. If I plug my phone in, iTunes is unusable for about a minute.
 
GadgetAddict said:
They've added this in the new version. I've seen in (and used it) in the beta version.

Now if they could lower the price that would be great. Compared to iWork, MS Office is way too expensive.
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Well, Office does have many more features than MS Office. Does Numbers have AppleScript support yet? How about pivot tables?
 
BayouMan said:
Office for Windows and Office for Mac will never be 100% compatible.

Why? One major component.

Access. OSX is will turn 11 years old in January.

There isn't, and according to Microsoft never will be, a Mac version of Access.

So Mac users have 2 options for using it: get a Windows PC or put Windows in a virtual environment. Either way, you have to buy a copy of Windows and Office for PC. Price that out will ya. :(
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Option 3: don't use Access. Access is terrible. I wouldn't use it, even if I used Windows.
 
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