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miamialley

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jul 28, 2008
3,611
1,088
California, USA
I'm happy with it from what I see so far. I have noticed one bug...in Word when I make the page always change with the window size (page width) sometimes it doesn't change. It's a nice looking suite and seems easy to use.
 
Office 2011 is a breath of fresh air for the Mac. One of my main gripes with it is that they were touting PST support for Outlook 2011 all this time but as it turns out you can only import PST file data, not simply mount them. :mad:
 
Office 2011 is a breath of fresh air for the Mac. One of my main gripes with it is that they were touting PST support for Outlook 2011 all this time but as it turns out you can only import PST file data, not simply mount them. :mad:

That sucks. My pst file is over 10GB. Importing it every time I want to sync my PC and Mac Outlook is just not acceptable (I assume it will take a long time for something this large -- Christ it takes 5+ min just to copy the file over!).
 
That sucks. My pst file is over 10GB. Importing it every time I want to sync my PC and Mac Outlook is just not acceptable (I assume it will take a long time for something this large -- Christ it takes 5+ min just to copy the file over!).

I feel your pain so as a work around I simply imported my old Windows PC directly into VMware Fusion and using Outlook 2007 with my older PST files. Sigh....thanks for the half assed solution Microsoft.
 
I really like the ribbon implementation, except that they left out "space above" and "space below" from the layout tab in Word. With what they did to default formats in Word 2007, the weird 10pt after a Normal paragraph and such, those were invaluable; I was only annoyed that it wasn't included on the Home tab instead.... OH, never mind, just found those are available through 'ribbon preferences'! And they ARE on the home tab when enabled, that's really cool :).

I really like the formula bar finally being docked in Excel. I haven't done anything 'hardcore' with functions or macros since upgrading, but I really look forward to the touted increased speed of the product.

I really like that PowerPoint finally remembers window size and position, almost perfectly.

I don't like that the interface to customise toolbars and menus still shrinks the main window and doesn't regrow it on closing. This also applies to any non-docked toolbars you show and then hide. In fact that interface seems like the only thing they didn't change at all.

Other than that it's just still the LACK of built-in OS stuff like cmd-ctrl-d to look up a word, and direct access to the special characters pane from all but PowerPoint. So in short it does seem like a pretty nice release. We had a conference keynote speaker relying on PowerPoint 2011 yesterday, pretty brave for a brand new MS release, but all went well :). Later in the day a few people blamed the Mac for messing up their slides :(, but it was on a machine still using 2008 by then. I'd have been keen to see how 2011 handled those.
 
The issue I am seeing may be limited to my system but it is a deal breaker for me. I get a completely blank window when I click on the Font Color icon in either the Toolbar or the Ribbon (same icon, different location). Holding the cursor over the blank window will show the "hint" description of the color you are hovering over (of course I can't see the color, and "accent 1" is soooo helpful....
This may be fixed in the non-corporate version to be released soon, but as it is, without the easy coloring of fonts without going to the format drop-down menu, I cannot consider buying a personal copy, as I need that function for quick editing. - Just deleted the whole suite, back to Office 2004, which is slow but it does work. A blank window is just so lame....Do they even test their own software on different models including the MBPs? My MBP has only the nVidea 9400 (M?) card, no 9600M. Anyone else seen this?
 
I just installed it last night and haven't had a chance to do much with it, but here are some first thoughts:

Likes:
  • Unlike the Windows version, we have both the Ribbon and the old menus.
  • Importing information and settings from Entourage is pretty easy

Dislikes:
  • Outlook doesn't handle multiple identifies as easily as Entourage did. Instead of switching within the program, you need to exit Outlook, hold Option while clicking the Dock icon, select the new identity from Database Manager, and restart Outlook.
  • Some of Outlook's default settings are different from Entourage (such as how e-mails are grouped)
 
Office 2011 is a breath of fresh air for the Mac. One of my main gripes with it is that they were touting PST support for Outlook 2011 all this time but as it turns out you can only import PST file data, not simply mount them. :mad:

This outrageous!

You mean i cannot use one big pst file that you have with Outlook 2007???

I have been looking forward to Mac office 2011 to migrate to Mac.....
I guess I won't be a 100% Mac freak then. Thank you, MS for fooling me.
 
Sort Pivot Tables

Anybody figure out how to sort Pivot Tables? Cannot find the "More Sort Options" menu selection.
 
This outrageous!

You mean i cannot use one big pst file that you have with Outlook 2007???

I have been looking forward to Mac office 2011 to migrate to Mac.....
I guess I won't be a 100% Mac freak then. Thank you, MS for fooling me.

In another thread, someone pointed out what's likely the reason for this. A PST is a huge file that contains your entire mailbox. Any new e-mail or deletion changes the file, and thus Time Machine would need to back up the whole file.

Office 2011 can import PST files, but saves e-mails in individual files so that Time Machine works more efficiently. Entourage couldn't read PST files at all, so this is an improvement.

IOW, unless you need to maintain a large PST file for some reason, then you can migrate from Office 2007 on Windows to Office 2011 on the Mac. Just import your PST files and Outlook 2011 will store all your old e-mails in its new file format. It was much more difficult to move e-mails over to Entourage.
 
Did anyone else notice that in the Excel VBA editor you can't get help with F1?

For example enter the word range anywhere in a module. Put the cursor on it and press F1 or Fn-F1, and you get no help. Type the word range in the help search box and you get nothing to do with range. I even tried the online help and the topic of range is not covered there either.

Anyone know what I'm doing wrong? In Windows Excel all these efforts work.
 
In another thread, someone pointed out what's likely the reason for this. A PST is a huge file that contains your entire mailbox. Any new e-mail or deletion changes the file, and thus Time Machine would need to back up the whole file.

Office 2011 can import PST files, but saves e-mails in individual files so that Time Machine works more efficiently. Entourage couldn't read PST files at all, so this is an improvement.

IOW, unless you need to maintain a large PST file for some reason, then you can migrate from Office 2007 on Windows to Office 2011 on the Mac. Just import your PST files and Outlook 2011 will store all your old e-mails in its new file format. It was much more difficult to move e-mails over to Entourage.

However, if the calendar in the Outlook 2011 cannot sync with anything else, that's nut!
 
I really like the ribbon implementation, except that they left out "space above" and "space below" from the layout tab in Word. With what they did to default formats in Word 2007, the weird 10pt after a Normal paragraph and such, those were invaluable; I was only annoyed that it wasn't included on the Home tab instead.... OH, never mind, just found those are available through 'ribbon preferences'! And they ARE on the home tab when enabled, that's really cool :).

You do know that you can make your own default file in all of these versions. I always use this just to get rid of 1" margins. And anything else like you mentioned.
 
Did anyone else notice that in the Excel VBA editor you can't get help with F1?
I haven't tried that, but I have older files (.xls, from v2003) with password protection on the VBA and I can't get into the VBA, won't take the password in 2011. Haven't figured that one out, yet.
 
Strange the option to create a PST file isn't available. This means once you go Mac, you can't go back. A person can't decide the Mac isn't for them and go back to a cheap PC and use Office 2010 and expect to transfer all their Mac Outlook email over to their PC.
 
Strange the option to create a PST file isn't available. This means once you go Mac, you can't go back. A person can't decide the Mac isn't for them and go back to a cheap PC and use Office 2010 and expect to transfer all their Mac Outlook email over to their PC.

Once you go mac, you can't go back.... that kind of mentality makes me hesitant to go mac...

many people i know left their wives because their wives have that mentality.
 
Strange the option to create a PST file isn't available. This means once you go Mac, you can't go back. A person can't decide the Mac isn't for them and go back to a cheap PC and use Office 2010 and expect to transfer all their Mac Outlook email over to their PC.

I can't vouch for whether this would work, but one of the MVPs on the Microsoft board suggested trying this out:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...e2-ea2b-4088-af2c-2fd497e2a6f8&displaylang=en

It was for converting Outlook 2001 files.
 
I just installed Office yesterday and like it so far but here are my little quirks so far:

You can't change the Subject on an email. So, if I get an email and then want to change the subject before I file it away, I can't. Not a huge deal but I don't know why you can't do it.

Contacts. I moved my contacts from MobileMe/mac address book and that all was quite easy. However, my contact pictures show up in Outlook but aren't syncing to my iPhone. I'm using a hosted Exchange 2010 account. If I add a contact pic on my iPhone, it syncs to Outlook but not the other way around.

Also, it doesn't look like I can delete a contact picture in Outlook. I can change and resize it...but can't remove it.

Hopefully, these are things that will improve with updates.
 
Like it if...

I would like "11" if it would perform on my G4 powerbook without limitations. All other requirements considered, has anyone tried it yet on a non-intel and came away without cursing that they wasted the money?
 
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