Office for Mac 2011 SP1 Coming Next Week With Outlook Sync Support

[MacRumors]

The Loop reports that Microsoft is preparing to release Office for Mac 2011 Service Pack 1 sometime next week, bringing a number of fixes, enhancements and new features to the company's flagship productivity suite. The most significant new features are said to come in Outlook, including support for syncing calendars to iOS devices via Sync Services.

The update will enable calendar syncing between Outlook for Mac and Apple's Sync Services. This means you can now sync your Outlook calendars, as well as your contacts, notes and tasks with any service or device that supports Sync Services.

That includes your iPhone and iPad. Microsoft's Senior Director of Product Management, Pat Fox, told The Loop that this was one of the most requested features from Office for Mac 2011 users.

Unfortunately, Apple is discontinuing support for MobileMe calendar syncing via Sync Services as of May 5th, preventing users from utilizing direct Outlook-MobileMe syncing.

Outlook will see a number of other new features, including support for server-side rules in Exchange, redirect and resend buttons for mail, and editing of existing messages. Excel will reportedly also see new integration of Solver functionalities.

Article Link: Office for Mac 2011 SP1 Coming Next Week With Outlook Sync Support

 

[nefan65]

Sounds ok, but I'm getting more/more turned off by any MS products. I'll upgrade to SP1 for Word/Excel. I'll continue to use Mail and iCal for Exchange access. Entourage and Outlook 2011 are bloated, and buggy [IMO], and not worth the problems.

 

[iWonderwhy]

Great, just what I wanted from Outlook. Overall, this has been Microsoft's best Office for Mac suite, really no complaints.

 

[theheadguy]

...Unfortunately, Apple is discontinuing support for MobileMe calendar syncing via Sync Services as of May 5th, preventing users from utilizing direct Outlook-MobileMe syncing.

Why?

 

[Starflyer]

Outlook has constantly crashed, failed to send messages and has been super slow syncing with our exchange server. I moved all my stuff over to Mail and iCal for the time being. I may give SP1 a chance though.

 

[KindredMAC]

Unfortunately, Apple is discontinuing support for MobileMe calendar syncing via Sync Services as of May 5th, preventing users from utilizing direct Outlook-MobileMe syncing.

This doesn't affect MobileMe syncing between Macs and iOS devices correct?

 

[iStudentUK]

Why?

To make mobileme even more of rip off!

 

[KiraDouji]

All Outlook needs to do is support the dang standards - CalDav/WebDav and sync services wouldn't be NEEDED to sync the calendars. Ridiculous it wasn't there to begin with, ridiculous it still isn't.

 

[fhall1]

About f'n time.....I'll reserve judgement until I see how much "improved" Outlook is after SP1 is installed (assuming installing SP1 doesn't break something).

 

[cmaier]

Maybe word will stop crashing on documents with to many tables, and PowerPoint will stop crashing on large presentations editing animations.


Maybe.

 

[MacLawyer]

MobileMe

<<Unfortunately, Apple is discontinuing support for MobileMe calendar syncing via Sync Services as of May 5th, preventing users from utilizing direct Outlook-MobileMe syncing.>>

I am amazed how a company like Apple can produce such great products while pushing out something as crappy as MobileMe.

 

[KiraDouji]

<<Unfortunately, Apple is discontinuing support for MobileMe calendar syncing via Sync Services as of May 5th, preventing users from utilizing direct Outlook-MobileMe syncing.>>

I am amazed how a company like Apple can produce such great products while pushing out something as crappy as MobileMe.

I've had pretty good experience with mobile me, tbh...

... But to be even more honest, if I was the one paying for it, I wouldn't be.

It's not the services, it's the price. :/

 

[Kwill]

Office Mac, bla, bla, bla.
Tell me more about the future of MobileMe Sync services.

 

[timfucius]

Too late.

They actually had a blog out: http://blog.officeformac.com/outlook-for-mac-and-your-calendars/

Lots of angry people there.

MS basically shipped the suite half-baked. It's amazing that Sync was left out for a future (much later in the future like TODAY) release.

We've migrated everyone to Mail, Address Book and iCal. No complaints so far. Having to run 3 apps at the same time was weird in the beginning but we're all happy campers now. Sans Microsoft.

But guess what comes after SP1? SP2!

 

[Xenious]

most request thing

and here i thought the most requested thing was to make outlook actually work with older exchange servers. booooo

 

[farmboy]

I would be happy if they could just make Excel 2004-2008 formatted spreadsheets display properly in 2011. Very tired of resizing columns and fonts to get what we had before.

 

[ten-oak-druid]

I cannot get outlook off of my computer. I deleted everything I can think of but once in a while when my computer has a problem, when I restart there are recovered items in the trash and one is always an outlook file of some sort.

 

[VulchR]

Maybe word will stop crashing on documents with to many tables, and PowerPoint will stop crashing on large presentations editing animations.


Maybe.

... and crashing when refreshing or editing a graph in Excel when a cell in the PivotTable from which graph was drawn is selected. I am working with a 114 MB Excel document and I am not amused when this happens....

Still, Office is great. I just wish they'd spend more time getting rid of obvious bugs in the Mac version.

 

[ghostface147]

My only complaint is the slowness of Outlook syncing with Exchange 2010. There's at least 20 seconds delay when getting email on my iOS device before Outlook 2011 opens it. Outlook 2010 is instant.

I am not a heavy user of Office products.

 

[supasubu]

Outlook's Good

...finally, outlook support! I was beginning to think the default app was the only refresh this year. Thank you Microsoft.

 

[lyzardking]

The most significant new features are said to come in Outlook, including support for syncing calendars to iOS devices via Sync Services.Unfortunately, Apple is discontinuing support for MobileMe calendar syncing via Sync Services as of May 5th, preventing users from utilizing direct Outlook-MobileMe syncing.
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Not sure why you would want to sync via MobileMe....

I sync directly with the MS server (on multiple devices) and it works well. (and I don't have to worry about it overwriting existing contacts etc)

Am I missing something?

 

[nesl247]

My only complaint is the slowness of Outlook syncing with Exchange 2010. There's at least 20 seconds delay when getting email on my iOS device before Outlook 2011 opens it. Outlook 2010 is instant.

I am not a heavy user of Office products.

This is annoying for me as well. But I believe it's due to the way that Outlook 2011 has to connect. Outlook 2010 uses MAPI whereas Outlook 2011 uses EWS. I'm guessing EWS doesn't support push, or is limited to only checking once a minute.

 

[SeniorGato1]

How about support for exchange 2003????

 

[nesl247]

How about support for exchange 2003????

That's never going to come. Microsoft has moved away from WebDAV. It's not included in Exchange 2007/2010 if I'm correct. And the only reason Windows versions of Outlook still work is that they are using MAPI currently, which I believe Microsoft is also doing away with.

 

[skeep5]

Too late microslap, I gave up on Entourage ERR outlook a long time ago