Office For Mac 2011

[giga Veteran]

Ribbon

Most notably, there's a new Ribbon at the top of each document window. (If you want a preview, check out Office for Windows; the ribbon is already in there, although the Microsoft Mac team members we spoke to said they had learned a lot from the criticism the Ribbon took when launched on Windows.) The Mac version of the Ribbon doesn't replace any menu bars, but it does replace Office 2008's controversial Elements Gallery, which took some fire from Mac users for its size and inflexibility. This new Ribbon is designed to give users quick access to each program's most commonly used tools. Unlike the Elements Gallery, the ribbon is customizable and, if you want more screen space, completely collapsible.

The new suite will also feel more Mac-like than Office 2008. For example, the Ribbon is built entirely using Apple's Cocoa development framework, and takes takes advantage of Apple's Core Animation system. (As a result, Ribbon tabs will slide smoothly when you rearrange them.) If you click on some Ribbon tools, they will expand smoothly into popovers that don't obscure the document you're working on. We even spied a non-modal search box on the right side of the toolbar, right where you'd expect it to be, allowing you to quickly search through documents without having your content blocked by a floating box.

Outlook

The other big news in Office 2011 is the demise of Entourage and the return of Outlook.

The new Outlook will support PST imports (allowing you to move an Outlook installation, including all your old e-mails, from a Windows PC to a Mac). It will also support Microsoft's Information Rights Management (IRM), which allows senders to specify what recipients can do with messages (print, forward, and so on). Previously-Windows only, IRM is required in some corporate settings. IRM support in Office 2001 is aimed at Mac users in cross-platform environments, Schmucker said: "It's been a blocker for some companies because the Mac support was not there."

And Microsoft has re-engineered the Outlook message database system to be a series of small files, so it's more easily backed up with Time Machine and searched in Spotlight. "Outlook's new database is more reliable, faster, and fully supports Time Machine and Spotlight," Schmucker said.

Compatibility and collaboration

To that end, the new version of Office will incorporate document-collaboration features that take advantage of Microsoft's online storage features. With Office for Mac 2011, Mac users will be able to share files and collaborate on documents with other Mac and Windows users via Microsoft's SharePoint, SkyDrive, and Office Web Apps.

Those online tools will allow users to collaborate on documents with other Windows and Mac Office users in real time, much as you can in Google Docs now. You could, for example, create a document in Word on your laptop, save it to SkyDrive, then share it with others. A pop-up in Word will show you who's working on the document; click on that list, and you'll be able to send them a message (as long as everyone is using Outlook or Microsoft's Messenger IM application). The paragraphs your collaborators are working on will be locked out until they're done. You'll also be able to edit those same documents from any computer, using Office's Web apps. Mac users will have the same experience in the their versions of Safari and Firefox as Windows users get with their browsers, Schmucker said.

Finally, power users will be glad to see the return of the Visual Basic macro language. Visual Basic was dropped from Office 2008 in part because it was to technically difficult to port it to the Mac's then-new Intel CPUs. Microsoft says it began work on that port as far back as 2008—before the last Mac Office shipped. That work is now complete. And the Mac suite will be using the most up-to-date version of Visual Basic, so it'll be much more compatible with Office for Windows than the Visual Basic in previous versions of Office for Mac.

http://www.macworld....l?lsrc=rss_main

[Rudy]

Wow major fail on the UI

[NienorGT]

The Ribbon don't look good as in the Windows Edition, but it's well welcomed. The big problem for me is if Office 2011 still lack OneNote...

I will just pretends to hope that Microsoft could finally do something right and stable on OSX...

[Migra]

I like it, It could be better but I like it, Can't wait for it, above all for Outlook I hope they release Outlook Connector for hotmail just like PC

[KoL Veteran]

Well that is better than Office 2008

[SaltLife]

I personally like what I see... I may hold off on purchasing 2008 now. I just recently purchased a mac and downloaded the office 2008 trial. Coming from a Windows perspective the 2011 varient of office looks to have more similarities with the current offering for Windows.

Is this a public beta?

Sorry, put 2010 not 2011 - I may have to purchase 2008 afterall

[LittleNeutrino Veteran]

Yeah, the UI is a bit lacking, not a fan.

[Quillz]

I wonder how many people will instantly dismiss it just because it's made by Microsoft?

Anyway... I think it looks fine. Naturally, it's not completely built in Cocoa, so it's never going to have a completely native feel, but it looks "good enough" and should be plenty functional. It's an office suite, so as long as it looks decent and gets the job done, it really doesn't matter to me.

[Elliott]

The ribbon just doesn't fit with the wait they've integrated it. I think I'll be sticking with iWork.

[giga Veteran]

Jason Snell of Macworld said it looked pretty good, so I'll reserve my judgement until I use it myself:

[Stetson]

The change is welcome and a positive one, but I'm not sure if I like the specific UI choices. I'm not so sure it would have been to bad to just throw the ribbon on there almost exactly like it is in Office 2010. If you're using Office 2010 check out the black/dark grey theme for an idea of what that might look like.

The Windows versions of '07 and '10 seem to have really strong blanding and this looks really plain. I know they're trying to stick to the OSX user interface standards but they didn't seem to care about Windows UI standard when they created Office '07.

[what]

If I can choose to have just the ribbon open and not the standard toolbar, then fine, I think it will be useful. I think the ribbon UI in Windows is excellent and don't really care if it isn't a native interface in OS X, as long as it works. The stuff in the standard toolbar is very basic and I don't think I've ever had to click on them in Office 2008 - I naturally head for the keyboard shortcut. Having the ribbon is better than the toolbox in 2008 where a lot of features were crammed into a tiny box, and I never really was a fan of that. However, if I can't minimise the standard toolbar without losing the ribbon as well, then that is one massive fail on Microsoft's part - I know it's possible in Office 2008, but the 'ribbon' in 2008 wasn't a ribbon at all, but a coloured piece of ****, and I would have expected it to be demonstrated in these preview screenshots if it's possible in 2011.

I really want to see some screenshots of Outlook.

[rajputwarrior]

can they just make it run better? runs like crap on my macbook, slow, unresponsive and doesn't work well with spaces

[NeoXY]

can they just make it run better? runs like crap on my macbook, slow, unresponsive and doesn't work well with spaces

Thank you. I really don't care about how it works. As long as its bloody quicker.

[#Michael]

How does one test this?

[.Kompressor]

when is the retail date?

[Quillz]

How does one test this?

Wait for a beta/RC release, I suppose. Dunno if one is available right now, though.

[osirisX]

If this gets rid of that god awful Inspector then I for one welcome our ribbon overlord.

[Quillz]

If this gets rid of that god awful Inspector then I for one welcome our ribbon overlord.

What's wrong with the Inspector? Many Mac OS X applications, including iWork, make use of it.

[StandingInAlley]

I don't like inspector too. I'm there in the beta, waiting for it to update and give us a build to test.

[osirisX]

What's wrong with the Inspector? Many Mac OS X applications, including iWork, make use of it.

The Word Inspector goes past my screen and has 50 bajillion options in it. The iWork one is nice and compact.

[LunarFalcon]

Well that is better than Office 2008

I agree. I actually think the UI is a nice improvement. More consistent with the Windows version but still fits in with other Mac applications. It's a good balance.

[sn00pie]

How do I enter the beta?

I've been using Office 2008 for awhile now after having problems with iWork and reading .doc documents. I've found that overall Word is still a much better word processor then Pages 09' thus why I'm happily waiting for Office 2011.

The new UI looks fantastic, looks like it will be much faster too.

[.Neo]

I wonder how many people will instantly dismiss it just because it's made by Microsoft?

I for one dismiss Microsoft Office because its slow as hell. The initial few versions of Word 2008 took longer to launch than Adobe Photoshop CS4 does. Granted, they more or less fixed it after two years. Here's hoping 2011 is a lot faster.

I don't get why they're trying to add Windows elements to a Mac OS X applications. Starting Microsoft Office 2011 we get the Menu Bar, Toolbar and Ribbon?! Wow.

Can't wait to see how the next iWork stacks up to this.

[+John. Subscriber¹]

Good improvements! Looking forward to it.