The long wait is over. Microsoft has released Office 2011 for Mac – one of the most anticipated software on the Mac platform. This latest version of the Office suite aims to bridge the gap between the Mac.
Microsoft has released Office for Mac 2011. The latest version of the Office Suite aims to bridge the divide between the Mac and PC, and it packs a ton of new features, including Microsoft Outlook, collaborative sharing and editing, and an updated interface.
Microsoft decided to forego upgrade pricing this year, charging everyone the same regardless of whether they have a previous version. Are the new features and additions worth the price? Read our hands-on review to find out.
Outlook 2011
With Office for Mac 2011, Outlook makes its triumphant return to the platform. The last time Microsoft made Outlook available on the Mac was with Office 2001 — and that version was only for Exchange users. Instead, Microsoft introduced Entourage.
Three years ago, when I switched to OS X full-time, not having Outlook was a large barrier for me to overcome. Apple Mail was a chore. Since then, Mail.app has improved, gaining native Exchange support and native interoperability with Gmail and other IMAP services. My e-mail needs have also changed and I no longer find myself in need of full Exchange server functionality — and I know I'm not alone. The need for robust Exchange support has dwindled as more businesses continue to move from managed domain-based e-mail to services like Google Apps.
Office 2011 On Mac
When Office for Mac 2008 was released, many questioned whether Entourage was as good as Outlook 2007. The answer was no. Two years later, the question has shifted only slightly: Is Outlook for Mac as good as Outlook 2010? The context on the other hand is dramatically different.
After several weeks of testing, I feel confident in saying that Outlook 2011 for Mac is the first Mac e-mail client that is on par with its Windows counterpart. Not every feature of Outlook 2010 is in Outlook 2011 for Mac, but it's extremely close.
So how is the transition from Apple Mail to Outlook? To test Outlook 2011's prowess, I did something I wouldn't recommend doing under most circumstances: A bulk import of all e-mail messages, accounts and signatures from Apple Mail.
To be clear, I'm a heavy e-mail user. I maintain three active e-mail accounts, each with intricate sets of rules and filters and large volumes of messages. During past attempts, Entourage simply froze, so I was curious whether Outlook would be up to the abuse.
To its credit, Outlook managed to import gigabytes of data without crashing, while keeping my rules intact — though I did have to run them on my various inboxes after the process was finished. I was also able to sync my address book with Address Book for Mac and it pre-populated my work calendar using e-mail invitations.
The one thing that kept the process from being seamless was importing/exporting other calendar events. If you already have calendars setup through Google, MobileMe or iCal, you have to export the calendars and then manually import them into Outlook. Still, any invitations from your inbox will populate themselves in a calendar associated with that account.
The default presentation is three vertical columns, but you can switch to two columns or to a split-column view similar to what Mail.app uses. You can also check the status of sending/receiving mail, and you can view local folders and IMAP mapped folders with ease.
The integration of alarms and alerts for upcoming appointments or events is a really nice touch. I also like how you can have a tear-off 'Today' column for to-dos and upcoming events.
The threaded conversation view is really nice — but it isn't fool proof. It groups together all items sharing the same subject. The problem is that sometimes it confuses itself with the same subjects from different threads. It would be nice if this could be more granulized.
Outlook 2011 is fast, though I'm not sure it's as fast as Apple Mail with the same accounts setup. It also has support for Exchange Server 2007 and 2010 accounts worked without a hitch, even over a VPN. Plus, Microsoft has fixed the way Time Machine backups and Spotlight indexing works, meaning that you don't have to worry about backups taking six times longer (like you did with previous versions of Entourage).
Word 2011
Microsoft Word 2008 for Mac was a solid offering. The improvements to Word 2011 are less visible than the inclusion of Outlook, but they are noticeable.
Review Microsoft Office 2011 For Mac Torrent
There are now more templates and document types available, and many of the features from Microsoft Publisher are added directly to Word 2011.
You can now use the Word co-authoring tool that was introduced in Office 2010 for Windows. It allows teams to collaborate by sharing files using Windows Live SkyDrive or SharePoint.
Microsoft has also improved its Automator support for creating Automator Workflows in Word and other Office 2011 products.
Outlook For Mac
Perhaps the best feature, though, is the new distraction-free writing mode, which long-form writers may enjoy.
PowerPoint 2011
We're just going to come right out with this: Keynote is better. Having said that, the professional world runs on Powerpoint, and there are some promising additions in PowerPoint 2011.
For instance, the ability to collaborate and access files from various locations is a huge win — especially if you are a SharePoint user. This also makes it easy to broadcast presentations online.
Apple has toyed with some of these features in iWork '09, but it hasn't taken it as far as Microsoft with Office 2011.
We would love to see some iOS options for PowerPoint, because the ability to control a presentation from an iPhone or iPad and make edits on the go has become a key feature for Keynote. Microsoft already has the cloud computing aspect with SkyDrive, so it wouldn't be a stretch to release an app.
Excel 2011
Excel 2008 removed some of the macro support for files created in Excel for Windows, specifically those created with Visual Basic. Visual Basic support is back for Excel 2011 and there are new features that work across platforms.
Like Word and PowerPoint, you can access files using SharePoint or Windows Live SkyDrive.
There are also new tools for managing tables and conditional formatting. Like Word, Excel is just more polished than its already shiny offering.
Performance
The first time you run an Office program, it might take a few seconds to launch, though subsequent program launches get faster. Every time you logout or restart your computer, the process starts over, but launching remained quick. For us, it was a big improvement over Office 2008.
As we said, Outlook did seem a bit slower than Apple Mail, but it wasn't slow and we didn't have any crashes.
Excel and Word seem on par with Pages and Numbers, though we would still give a speed/performance edge to Keynote over PowerPoint.
Interface
Call me crazy, I like the Ribbon. I think Microsoft nailed the concept in Office 2011. It managed to take the best elements from the Windows version but still keep the Mac functionality that makes a Mac a Mac.
Overall
Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 is not only a great Mac release, it's a great Office release. It seems that finally as much care has gone into creating Office for Mac as goes into Office for Windows.
Microsoft Office 2011 Mac Download
Despite the move to the cloud, many of us still use an office suite to do much of our work. Office for Mac 2011 is a great way to get more done on your Mac.
Office for Mac 2011 is $149.99 for the Home & Student edition (three installs), which does not include Outlook 2011. Office for Mac 2011 for Home & Business users is $279.99 (also three installs).
Review Microsoft Office 2011 For Mac Pc
Reference: Our testing conducted on a late-2009 27-inch iMac with an Intel i7 and 8GB of RAM, running Mac OS X 10.6.4.
By Daniel Eran Dilger
Monday, October 25, 2010, 12:00 pm PT (03:00 pm ET)
Office on the Mac desperately needs an overhaul. The last release took a decades old Carbon code base, applied a comically foolish looking layer of user interface glitz, and then stripped away core features that its target audience of corporate users found essential, including Visual Basic for Applications (used in many companies to create automated template documents).
The Good
The new Office 2011 makes major improvements in adding back the VBA support removed in the previous version, and in dialing back some of the more ridiculous aspects of the previous day-glow user interface.
It also strives to integrate Mac users into corporate settings much better, with improved support for Office document interchange with its Windows counterpart, as well as other Microsoft server technologies, including multiuser document co-authoring when used with SharePoint Foundation or Windows Live SkyDrive.
Office 2011 also delivers some of the new features of the Windows Office 2010 suite, such as “Sparklines” data visualization charts that can be integrated into Excel spreadsheets, and support for Microsoft’s online Office Web Apps.
Performance in Office 2011 seems to be significantly improved in many aspects, with Word now launching in as little as six to ten seconds on a new machine, or a bit longer on older models. That’s comparable with the launch times of Apple’s iWork apps, although Pages and Keynote are not exactly speedy to launch relative to other common Mac apps.
The Bad
While the new Mac version of Office has made significant strides toward being a better contemporary of its Windows sibling, it’s still a rather disappointing set of Mac applications.
Office apps continue to ignore Apple’s modern Cocoa frameworks outside of some limited use in the new Outlook. That means for the most part that menu bar configuration is still non-standard and clumsy. Controls often work in oddly unfamiliar ways that are neither Mac-like nor even similar to Windows.
Twenty five years ago, Microsoft helped Apple define how Mac apps should work with its industry leading efforts with Word and Excel on the Mac. However, after years of treating Mac users as second-class citizens as it focused on its Windows products, Microsoft is no longer in a co-pilot position to define how Mac apps work.
When it tries to do so, as it did with the release of Office 2008, its efforts look clownish, awkward and immature compared to the slick sophistication of the user experience delivered by Apple’s own iWork apps, which were created to show off what Mac OS X could do.
Microsoft’s inconsistent efforts to follow Apple’s user interface guidelines and examples results in ill considered adoption of experimental ideas Apple has since largely abandoned (such as the excessive use of candy-colored Aqua controls from a decade ago, or the now boring flip-around windows reminiscent of Dashboard widgets that Microsoft chose to apply to its Reference Tools floating palate), while at the same time failing to support some of the more important and useful features of Mac OS X.
As an example, text input within the Office suite fails to work with modern Mac OS X features such as its system wide auto text substitutions, corrections, transformations, dictionary and thesaurus; you’ll have to configure these features in parallel both in Office app preferences and in Mac OS X System Preferences to have things work somewhat consistently between Office and all of your other apps, because Office continues to roll its own unique text input system and reference tools.
Microsoft has, admirably, followed Apple’s guidelines in presenting a Media Browser that accesses the user’s photos from iPhoto and Photo Booth, audio from iTunes, and movies from the user’s iMovie, iPhoto, Photo Booth and iTunes libraries, even if the Office interface is customized, busier variant of the Media Browser in Apple’s own apps.
On page 2 of 3: The Ugly & Word 2011