Office for Mac 2011 Launches October 26th

[MacRumors]

Microsoft today announced that Office for Mac 2011 will launch on October 26th, with pre-orders available through Amazon beginning today. The company also posted one final behind-the-scenes video from the Office for Mac team, highlighting speed improvements, dynamic reordering of layers in documents and presentations, and full screen view improvements.

Macworld has already published reviews for the new versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, finding the suite to be a significant improvement over Office for Mac 2008, although not without a few issues.

Word for Mac 2011 brings more than 30 new features and improvements, with Macworld finding that it offers the same look and feel as its Windows counterpart, but "more refined and better organized". A solid implementation of the Ribbon toolbar, new enterprise tools, Spotlight integration, the return of Visual Basic for Applications, and speed enhancements all contribute to a vastly improved experience.

The bottom line is this: Microsoft Word for Mac no longer feels like a second-string word processing program in the Microsoft Office suite. It is in fact a powerful tool for creating all your personal and business documents and for collaborating with others. More importantly, Word 2011 now makes it possible to insert a Mac into nearly any business environment and offer Mac users the same set of features found in Word for Windows, without compromise.

Macworld calls Excel for Mac 2011 a bigger step forward than either the 2004 or 2008 version, with the shift to the Ribbon toolbar, macro support, sparklines, conditional formatting improvements, table improvements, and new sharing and protection features all making a significant difference for many users. Macworld did, however, find some uneven performance, particularly some slowness in scrolling, although Microsoft claims that the slowdown was intentional due to complaints from users about it being too fast in earlier versions. Excel 2011 also departs from the traditional Mac experience with its uses of custom dictionary and thesaurus, lack of support for Services, and other minor inconsistencies.

Should you upgrade to Excel 2011 if you're using an older version? I definitely think so. The new interface and improved functionality make short work of even large projects, while the protection and sharing features make it easier to work with others - both on the Mac and on that "other" platform. There are only a few negatives with Excel 2011. I feel scrolling has been overly slowed down, the live window resizing is jumpy, and the lack of support for Services is troubling, as that's an OS X feature that I rely on daily. However, these things are not big enough issues to really affect Excel's performance and features - the program just works, and has many new features and improvements that spreadsheet users have been asking for. Excel 2011 is a solid program for anyone whose work involves a heavy dose of spreadsheet duty.

Finally, PowerPoint for Mac 2011 is again seen as a significant improvement over its predecessor with the Ribbon toolbar, dynamic layer ordering, and enhanced media options making their debut. Animations now offer new features such as motion paths, but lack an advanced timeline for coordinating multiple animations and fail to offer several useful animation options found in Apple's Keynote.

PowerPoint for Mac 2011 boasts more than a handful of worthwhile improvements, including greatly enhanced support for QuickTime movies, path animations, features for sharing and collaboration, and an improved interface. Despite a handful of miscues, it's Microsoft's strongest upgrade of the program since 2004. If you're using an earlier version, updating to PowerPoint 2011 should be an easy decision.

Pre-orders for the various versions of Office for Mac 2011 are available now through Amazon:

- Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Student 2011 - Single License ($119.99)
- Office Mac Home and Student 2011 - Family Pack (3 Licenses) ($149.99)

- Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Business 2011 - 1 Pack ($199.99)
- Office Mac Home and Business 2011 - 2 License Pack ($279.99)

Note: Pre-order purchases through these links financially benefit this site.

Article Link: Office for Mac 2011 Launches October 26th

 

[Virtualball]

It's been available for a week elsewhere...

 

[Oh-es-Ten]

Is Entourage er.. I mean Outlook still horrific when dealing with Exchange?

(What I mean is for places that are still using Exchange Server 2004 etc - which is a lot of people)

I heard Outlook is still using MAPI (like Entourage), so it's a real kludge to book meeting rooms and such..Luckily I'm not working there anymore so it does not matter but this was a real annoyance for the Mac users in the business...

 

[Hastings101]

Yay, no more iWork.

 

[Mattie Num Nums]

Is Entourage er.. I mean Outlook still horrific when dealing with Exchange?

(What I mean is for places that are still using Exchange Server 2004 etc - which is a lot of people)

I heard Outlook is still using MAPI (like Entourage), so it's a real kludge to book meeting rooms and such..Luckily I'm not working there anymore so it does not matter but this was a real annoyance for the Mac users in the business...

Entourage used WebDAV.

 

[Digitalclips]

I'll pass thanks. Now we have MLS here for my wife in West Florida on a Mac without the need for Parallels or VMware I think I will spend the rest of my life MS free. It's been a long road and to be here at last is sweet

 

[giosaccone]

I love iWork

 

[Hellhammer]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1019600/

There has already been discussion and user reviews from MR users, including me. Maybe that thread could be linked to the article?

 

[DaveSM]

I'm wondering if Word and Excel 2011 wil be able to boot faster then Word and Excel 2008.

Having moved toward LaTeX lately I'm not too sure if it's worth the upgrade this time...

 

[pubwvj]

I don't want new features. I want less features. I want a smaller memory and hard drive footprint and faster speed - e.g., drop the feature bloat.

 

[shollingsw3]

Any information on the availability of the Academic edition?

 

[Erwin-Br]

I don't want new features. I want less features. I want a smaller memory and hard drive footprint and faster speed - e.g., drop the feature bloat.

It's called TextEdit.

 

[Hellhammer]

I'm wondering if Word and Excel 2011 wil be able to boot faster then Word and Excel 2008.

They open faster than iWork '09 apps for me. 1-2 bounces and Word opens. Extremely fast and responsive.

 

[igazza]

looks pretty good, i will buy

 

[cyfenton]

We have had the Gold master available to our Enterprise account for the last 7 days. Outlook for Mac 2011 is GREATLY improved over Entourage. Sounds dumb - but I CAN NOW SEE PUBLIC FOLDERS!!! IN an Exchange based enterprise, that is a big deal!! I've finally killed off Entourage completely (and almost all of my VM Fusion/outlook 2010 setup)

Excel and Word boot up significantly faster that 08 versions. It ships with the Microsoft Document Connection, which gives good integration to Sharepoint doc workspaces (and Skydrive if anyone cares) and the Sharepoint check in check out finally works correctly from Word and Excel.

My only major issue so far is that for some reason, my server side rules and filters can't be accessed by Outlook 2011. Maybe it's an Exchange version problem? Overall - much improvement!!

 

[homsar]

From the full review:

"Word 2011 now has a built-in equation editor that makes it easy to add and edit mathematics equations. The equation editor, which appears as an Equation Tools Ribbon when you add an equation to your document, gives Word a leg up on Pages, which requires that you buy MathType for the same functionality."

Finally, a reason to buy it! (Presuming, of course that it works as well as the version in Word 2007)

 

[Westside guy]

I don't have any need for it personally - iWork fits the bill very nicely.

I do know some people that have been waiting for this for a while, though, especially Outlook. While I realize some people actually do need features like Excel macro support, the folks I deal with are more along the lines of switchers who just don't want to learn how to use a new mail program. It seems funny to think of Outlook as the "killer app" for anyone, although I've wanted to kill Outlook on numerous occasions...

Sounds like, this go-round, their IMAP support is a bit less half-*ssed at least. Now if they'd figure out how to not break long URLs in plain-text mode, they'd catch up to every other email program on the planet.

 

[skeep5]

i just threw up in my mouth a little

 

[roadbloc]

It's still a bit pricey.

 

[BeSweeet]

Can't wait! I've been using the betas of Office 2011 for quite some time, and really love it. I actually enjoy using Office 2011 compared to previous versions of Office, as well as iWork, which I completely hate.

All the apps open instantly, mostly thanks to my new SSD, but they still opened within 5 seconds on my 7200RPM HDD.

All the apps are a joy to use, including Outlook, although I think that some functionality is broken in the betas. I'll easily switch over to Outlook (from Mail) once the official version is released.

Can't wait. Should be $34 when my university gets it.

The prices are a bit high, but I'd go for Office over iWork any freaking day. Heck... I'd even use OpenOffice over iWork!

 

[Mattie Num Nums]

I'll pass thanks. Now we have MLS here for my wife in West Florida on a Mac without the need for Parallels or VMware I think I will spend the rest of my life MS free. It's been a long road and to be here at last is sweet

As long as you use the Internet you will never be MS free.

 

[stellaclose]

I've been playing around with this for the last few days and noticed that there is no way to sync Outlook with ical for iPhone/MobileMe syncing. It seems like the only way to get this is to use a MS Exchange Server instead to get cloud syncing of your calendars. I hope they release a fix as even Office 2008 Entourage used sync services to sync calendars.

Currently Outlook 2011 sync services only supports Address Book syncing.

 

[Sky Blue]

Outlook 2011 is good, not great. Certainly better than e-rage, but not close to Outlook 2010 yet.

 

[elppa]

Word 2011 now makes it possible to insert a Mac into nearly any business environment and offer Mac users the same set of features found in Word for Windows, without compromise.

Tactical blunder here I feel on Microsoft's part.

 

[Mattie Num Nums]

Outlook 2011 is good, not great. Certainly better than e-rage, but not close to Outlook 2010 yet.

Its a start. Outlook 2011 has been pretty damn solid for the past few months I have been testing it. We usually have at least 1 Entourage DB crash a day, I have only seen one on Outlook 2011 and that was from a corrupt PSD file.