Office2011
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Office 2011: Mountain Lion-ready, says Microsoft
Nothing but love for the lightly-updated iWork, but millions of Macs in SOHO, business and enterprise settings depend on Microsoft's Office 2011 suite for productivity mojo every day. The Office for Mac team noted on its official blog that Office 2011 is Mountain Lion-ready and fully supported, as is (somewhat surprisingly) Office 2008. The O4M team offers up two quick tips for making sure Office 2011 is current. First, check that the AutoUpdate feature is enabled & run any available updates; you can find AutoUpdate by going to the Help menu in any Office app and choosing Check for Updates. Second, it looks like the standalone Office updater packages you can download from the O4M site will not play nicely with Mountain Lion's Gatekeeper binary signing, at least not with the default security settings in place. The recommendation is to use AutoUpdate (which is signed) to run any necessary Office patches. Regarding Gatekeeper (which we'll talk about more later today), two quick reminders: Any application that is on your Mac at upgrade time is automatically marked as OK to run under Gatekeeper and does not need to be a signed binary. Also, you can bypass the Gatekeeper settings on an app by app basis -- without switching your whole system to the less-secure mode -- if you right-click/control-click an application icon and choose Open, that opens a dialog for "whitelisting" that particular app. Once you launch it once, it will be OK in perpetuity. [hat tip Macgasm & SlashGear]
Office for Mac 2011 and 2008 ready for OS X Mountain Lion, procrastinators groan
So you updated to OS X Mountain Lion and, gosh darn it, you're not sure that Office for Mac 2011 (or Office 2008 for Mac) will be in perfect harmony. Time to put off finishing that accounts receivable spreadsheet until IT sorts it all out, right? Unfortunately for anyone looking to catch a break, Microsoft just certified that the two most recent Mac versions of Office will purr with Apple's latest big cat. About the only hiccup remaining is the inability to manually download and install future updates as long as Gatekeeper is on full lockdown. If you've been spending all day making paper planes, it's time to knuckle down and get back to work.
Microsoft's reportedly working on Office 2011 for Mac SkyDrive update
Microsoft did quite a decent job of keeping us entertained with yesterday's unveiling of its most recent Office package and all of its proficient integration with SkyDrive. Still, Redmond left out any mention of how the cloud service would play out for OS X users working on Office 2011 for Mac. Well, according to The Verge, Microsoft's informed the site an update that'd bring some of the features introduced in Office 2013 to the Mac crowd is indeed in the works. The SkyDrive refresh is said to be coming at the same time as the official launch of the 2013 Office bundle, which means you'll have to stick with your current workflow at least for a few more months.
MS Office 2011 14.1.3 update patches some Lion-related issues
Microsoft has issued an update to Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 with a bushel of bug fixes, outlined below. Installing the update (available at the link above) requires you to be running Mac OS X 10.4.9 or later. Improvements for Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 Office documents open in all browsers This update resolves an issue that causes Office documents not to open in certain browsers. Improvements for Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac 2011 Stability is improved in PowerPoint This update fixes an issue that causes PowerPoint to close unexpectedly. This issue occurs when you press the Command and Tab keys to open another application when you are in Presenter view. Improvements for Microsoft Excel for Mac 2011 Stability is improved in Excel This update fixes an issue that causes Excel to close unexpectedly in the following situations: When you move worksheets to a new worksheet or workbook. When you save some files. Improvements for Microsoft Word for Mac 2011 Citation options in Dutch appear correctly. This update fixes an issue that causes the Dutch version of Word to change the citation options to English after you install Office for Mac 2011 14.1 Service Pack 1. PivotTable field setting enabled. This update enables the PivotTable field setting Show Items with no data. Improvements for Microsoft Outlook for Mac 2011 Contact images display in the Contacts Search box This update fixes an issue that causes Outlook not to display contact images in the Contacts Search box. Import from Apple Mail is disabled in Outlook on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion This update disables the option to import from Apple Mail in Outlook because it does not work as expected in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. The "Remove from View" option is enabled for shared calendars This update fixes an issue that occurs when the user adds shared calendars and opens the contextual menu for the shared calendar. The Remove from View option is disabled from the contextual menu. Free/busy information for Exchange 2003-based mailboxes displays correctly This update fixes an issues that causes the display of free/busy information for Exchange 2003-based mailboxes to be off by one hour when scheduling a meeting. Time zone information is updated This update provides updated time zone information.
Microsoft working to add Lion features to Office 2011
Like it or not, Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac is the most widely-used office suite for Mac users in the enterprise. While the existing version doesn't support OS X Lion features like Auto Save, Versions, and full-screen mode, MacNN is reporting that Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is hard at work adding those and possibly other features to Office. Don't expect an update tomorrow, though. According to Microsoft Office team member Pat Fox, the wait for an updated Office 2011 will be "measured in months." If you're a user of Communicator for Mac, you can get an update right now that resolves some crashing issues in Lion. It's available through Microsoft's AutoUpdate, and can also be downloaded from the MS Download Center. The company also noted that Office for Mac 2004 will never be Lion-compatible, since it was originally written for PowerPC-based Macs. If you're still trying to coax that old copy of Office for Mac 2004 along as you move forward to Lion, it's time to make the upgrade to Office 2011 ... or consider alternatives like Apple's iWork suite. It will also be fascinating to see if Microsoft decides to bring Office 2011 to the Mac App Store, either in whole or as separate parts à la iWork. Only time will tell.
Microsoft releases Office 2011 Service Pack 1
Office 2011 version 14.1 (Service Pack 1) is now available from Microsoft's website. As announced on April 6, the update includes a variety of improvements to the new Outlook for Mac, including built-in support for Apple's Sync Services which allows users to more easily synchronize Outlook data with other Mac OS X software (like iCal and BusyCal) and devices (like the iPhone and iPad) through iTunes. The update also includes the usual fixes for "critical issues" and patches a security vulnerability that could allow an attacker "to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code." Microsoft offers more details about the software update on its official Office for Mac blog. Even if the update isn't showing in Office's AutoUpdate utility yet, you can download the 246 MB package here. [via MacUpdate]
Office 2011 Service Pack 1 due next week, improves Outlook compatibility
The upgrade from Microsoft Office 2008 to 2011 has not been without its drawbacks; for users of Entourage who moved to the all-new Outlook for Mac, in particular, there have been a few holes in the feature lineup. None of them are necessarily showstoppers, but the collection of odd omissions has given the flagship mail/calendar/contact management platform an air of unfinished business over the past few months. Good news, though: Microsoft's Office for Mac blog reports that we will be seeing Service Pack 1 for Office 2011 next week. The big-ticket returning feature for Outlook is calendar support in Sync Services, meaning that Outlook calendars may once again synchronize locally with iCal, BusyCal or tethered iPhones, iPod touch or iPad units through iTunes. Outlook's punch list also includes editing support for Exchange's server-side rules (which last appeared on the Mac in Outlook 2001 for Mac OS 9!), the return of the Redirect and Resend options in addition to simple message forwarding, and editing of messages in the Inbox. Excel is also getting better Solver integration, and there are sure to be hundreds of other bug fixes and minor improvements. While the Sync Services calendar support is welcome, it's slightly ironic that it's coming back to Microsoft's PIM at the same time that Apple's MobileMe calendars are transitioning to CalDAV -- which in turn is breaking Sync Services support for those hosted calendars via iCal and BusyCal. That means there still won't be a supported way to get MobileMe calendars to synchronize with Outlook for Mac (or Entourage 2008, for that matter), at least in the short term. There are some Outlook users who will be able to synchronize to MobileMe's CalDAV servers... but they aren't using Mac OS X. 32-bit versions of Outlook 2007 or 2010 on Windows can indeed sync up to MobileMe, with the help of Apple's MobileMe control panel on Windows XP, Vista or 7. The Office 2011 SP1 download will be available sometime the week of April 11; we'll let you know when it drops. Hat tip to The Loop.
Office 2011 gets hefty discounts for Black Friday
The official Office for Mac blog just posted a list of places interested buyers can get Office for Mac 2011 at reduced cost throughout the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend. Here are the prices you'll get if you buy during the US Thanksgiving holiday weekend from these retailers (note the special savings from Amazon): Apple Stores (US & Canada): $20 off Home & Student Family Pack for $129 (regularly $149 ERP). Best Buy and MacMall (US): $20 off Home & Student 1-pack for $99 (regularly $119 ERP) and $20 off Home & Student Family Pack for $129 (regularly $149 ERP). Amazon (US): $40 off the Home & Student 1-pack, cost of $79 (regularly $119 ERP) and Home & Student Family Pack for $109 (regularly $149 ERP). OfficeforMac.com (US): $20 off Home & Student Family Pack for $129 (regularly $149 ERP). Office for Mac 2011 was released at the end of last month and has gotten generally favorable reviews, especially for its speed increases. If you're in the market for an Office upgrade, it looks like next weekend is the time to buy.
Office 2011 puts pedal to the metal with demonstrable speed bumps
As we've been diving into the Microsoft Office 2011 application suite, we've been focusing on the new features going from 2008 to 2011, and the relative value versus alternative tools like Apple's iWork suite. One thing we haven't really nailed down, though, is speed. Although it's easy to see in the first few moments of using it that Office 2011 is bringing a lot of performance optimizations to the table, exactly how much faster is it? Enter our friends over at MacTech magazine, who have polished their stopwatches and lined up a slew of test machines to get at the raw numbers and compare Office 2011 to both Office 2008 and 2004 across the entire suite. The whole article is worth a read, but the gist is that Office 2011 is quite a lot faster everywhere you care about speed: application launches, file open/save (noted as faster with the XML formats than with the legacy .doc, .xls etc. files), key operations, and more. In particular, Excel has gotten a serious turbo injection, with operations like fill range and charting timing out as "orders of magnitude" faster than in the previous version. MacTech suggests that Excel users who lean heavily on the charting capabilities "run, don't walk, to get the upgrade." On the Mac Mojo blog, Microsoft's own Erik Schwiebert posted an interesting look inside the development process and philosophy that drives the speed optimizations seen in Office 2011. From the user perspective, you might not think that squeezing a few milliseconds out of a particular function would lead to worthwhile improvements, but Schwiebert lays it out well and explains the cognitive science behind perceived application performance -- worth a read. His video demo of Excel's launch speed improvements is in the 2nd half of this post.
Microsoft updates Office for Mac 2011
Microsoft has released an update to Office for Mac 2011 today. The 14.0.1 update weighs in at 110 MB and includes critical fixes for issues that might cause Office 2011 applications to stop responding or quit unexpectedly. Other issues the update addresses include: Excel: Excel-calculated cells are updated when revisions are made to related data. Reliability is improved when the FORMAT macro command is used. Word: Stability is improved when you build equations. PowerPoint: Stability is improved during slide shows. Compatibility with PowerPoint 2007 and PowerPoint 2010 is improved. Outlook: Reliability is improved when you delete messages from multiple IMAP accounts. Email passwords are retained in the keychain after new accounts are imported into Outlook. The update is recommended for all users of Office 2011 and can be downloaded here.
Word 2011 brings ribbons, clouds, and full-screen mode
TUAW dives into Microsoft Office 2011 with reviews of the apps that make up the suite. First up: the pans and praises of Word 2011. It's been a stalwart on the Mac platform since before we said things like "the Mac platform." Turning 25 this year, Microsoft Word is the anchor app for the Office 2011 suite and the one most home, student and many business users will spend the most time in. There's no upgrade pricing for the suite, and the licensing is now locked to an individual machine -- so is it worth it to the average Word user to make the leap? Let's discuss. "Holy toolbars, Batman!" was the first thing I said after launching Word 2011 for the first time. This is the fabled "ribbon" that Microsoft added to the Windows version of Office. I'm told that I'll get used to it. Some even claim to like it after a while. I'm not sure how long that is supposed to take, but it's apparently more than a few days. %Gallery-106848% These are the facts: the ribbon does show a number of different functions, including just about everything a normal person would want to do. Although it is crowded with a bunch of icons (including six different icons that prominently display the letter "A" in one close cluster), the options and settings you might want are all "right there" and easy to discover. Microsoft did a great job making it so that it dynamically resizes as you resize the window. If I made my window the full width of my 24" iMac, the toolbar expanded, reflowed, and the Styles section expanded. If I shrunk it down, it reflowed again; it did this all very naturally while showing a lot of attention to detail. Don't like the ribbon? You can change it, collapse it, tell it not to open automatically with new documents, or disable it entirely. Those settings are easy to find, too, as there's a shortcut to the Preferences window right from the ribbon itself. That's an important point: these are separate preferences. If you are familiar enough with the Mac to go into the regular Word menu to open the preferences, you'll find the Ribbon preferences right there. If you aren't, there's a gear icon on the ribbon itself that will offer to open it for you. Rather than divide up the preferences into two different places, there are two different ways to get to the same place. It's a slight (but important) difference.
Office 2011 for Mac is available today.docx
There are plenty of free, paid, web-based, desktop-bound, cross-platform, or uni-platform alternatives, but there can only be one Office. Microsoft's flagship desktop suite of productivity applications just got a major new update. Office 2011 for Mac replaces Microsoft's Mac-specific Entourage email app with the industry standard Outlook, brings in some interface tweaks from Office 2010 over in PC land, and integrates with those Office Web Apps you've been hearing so much about. The entire "Home & Business" bundle goes for $279, and if you're not so into Outlook, you can get the Word / PowerPoint / Excel "Home & Student" version for $149.
In Brief: Amazon tips hand on Microsoft Office release date
Computerworld points to an October 26 ship date for Microsoft Office 2011, based on Amazon's page updates indicating the 10/26 availability -- the products have since been switched back to "sign up to be notified" pre-release mode. Gregg Keizler's piece also reiterates the discount options for buying Office 2008 and saving on Office 2011; by purchasing the 2008 versions now, buyers can get $25 or $50 off versus the purchase price of the next version. We expect to hear more about Office 2011 features and fancy bits over the next few weeks. [9to5mac rang us up to say they actually posted this at 11:58pm on Sept. 9, 2010. Thanks!]
Share a PowerPoint story, win a custom MacBook Pro
PowerPoint stories are like belly buttons: everybody's got one, but some are more interesting than others. The team at Microsoft's Mac BU wants to hear your exciting, engaging and unique PPT adventures, and they're willing to reward you: the best story might win a major prize. Unlike the "forward this email, Bill Gates will send you money" chain emails that never seem to die, Microsoft's contest is legit. There are a couple of custom-colored MacBook Pros in the pot, delivered to winners selected from those who participate by commenting on the Mac Mojo blog or responding to questions tweeted by the @officeformac account. The computers will be loaded up with Office 2008, and winners will also receive a copy of Office 2011 when it ships. Full details and rules are downloadable (as a PDF, interestingly enough -- remember, Apple's TextEdit can also open Word's .doc format) and the Mac BU will be posting updates on Twitter and on the Mac Mojo blog. Good luck!
Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac screenshots leaked
BoyGeniusReport has posted a series of screen shots from the next version of Microsoft Office for the Mac. The screen shots show the updated versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. They also show the first look at the new Outlook for Mac, which replaces Entourage. The screen shots show how the ribbon display, first brought to the PC version of Office in 2007, will be implemented on the Mac. Microsoft's Mac Business Unit first previewed Office for Mac 2011 in February. Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac is being rewritten entirely in Cocoa and is expected to ship later this year. Click on over to BoyGenius for the full gallery.
