Third Office for Mac 2011 Beta Reveals New Icons, Splash Screens, more

[Steve B. 467]

Looks great to me, wish that Notebook view was available in Word for Windows :(

[KiHu 115]

Communicator is a centralized chat system for use in corporate networks and the like. It's actually very useful (Y)

Amen on the useful part!

[Denis W. 734]

Looks great to me, wish that Notebook view was available in Word for Windows :(

I much prefer how OneNote automatically saves pages and organizes them into notebooks. You can turn on ruled lines in OneNote but it isn't as pretty or functional (no obvious way to snap text to ruled lines) as Word for Mac's notebook view.

[KoL 36]

Looking good. The icons are pretty cool.

[.Neo 1,834]

With Office 2008 / Messenger 7, Communicator is a part of Messenger 7: the corporate contact list. Apparently they split the two up with Office 2011 / Messenger 8.

Seeing how all apps got a UI refresh, I'm beginning to fear Messenger 8 won't see a new interface.

[LingeringSoul 11]

The icons don't look too bad to me. They're not great by any means, but I don't think I'll be inclined to change them or anything.

As for Office 2011, I just hope that they improve Excel so that it's actually up to the level of the PC version. The graphing in Excel 2008 is especially awful compared to the graphing in Excel 2007. Things got so bad that now I just use Office 2007 in Parallels. Runs faster and I get a version of Office with no missing features.

Office 2011 looks promising, though. I do like the customization of the user interface.

[SaltLife 14]

As I stated previously, they do infact look better in hi-res. The ribbon effect is easily seen and I welcome the immaculate changes

[rawr_boy81 41]

I wonder if part of the change with Messenger 8 which is still Beta 3 and the place holder graphics whether the separation between the code and front end thus to product communicator and messenger will result in a refresh in the interface. Truth be known I've never really had an issue with Messenger apart from features lacking from it when compared to the Windows counterpart. Is in the included support for video mean that Microsoft has finally upgraded the MSN protocol that messenger supports? I hope that'll translate in better file transferring because right now Messenger still uses the old protocol which means all transfers go through the msn server rather than going directly from peer to peer.

[crazzyyfool 29]

Outlook.

[rawr_boy81 41]

Outlook.

Very sexy; is that running on your computer? does it perform as good as it looks?

[crazzyyfool 29]

Very sexy; is that running on your computer? does it perform as good as it looks?

Yes, on my MacBook Pro. Outlook "feels" very fast and responsive and launches quickly. I'm actually preferring it to Mail. Still a bit buggy though, lots of icons are still placeholders and trying to delete mailboxes doesn't always work. When it goes final, I think I'll be using it over Mail to be honest.

[rawr_boy81 41]

Yes, on my MacBook Pro. Outlook "feels" very fast and responsive and launches quickly. I'm actually preferring it to Mail. Still a bit buggy though, lots of icons are still placeholders and trying to delete mailboxes doesn't always work. When it goes final, I think I'll be using it over Mail to be honest.

I remember Microsoft saying that they're going to release it towards the end of the end (second half of the year) so I am wondering whether we'll see another couple of Betas as the interface is finalised. I know for me that I'll grab it as soon as it comes out :D

[.Neo 1,834]

I've noticed some interface changes on Messenger 8 Beta 3 as well:

- New status icons (red, yellow, green and grey squares)

- Removal of the huge round "Send" button

- The font and emoticon menus have shifted to the "Send" button instead

- When clicking a user's status icon, a pop-up menu will appear with options (such as send email, send IM etc.)

Except for maybe the status icons nothing deserves a beauty price at this moment...

[revanmj 25]

Does anyone know if "Save to SkyDrive" in Word, Excel and PowerPoint and "Online broadcast" in PowerPoint was already available in Beta 2 version?

[.Neo 1,834]

Does anyone know if "Save to SkyDrive" in Word, Excel and PowerPoint and "Online broadcast" in PowerPoint was already available in Beta 2 version?

We're at Beta 3 now. The options are there, not sure if it works as I don't use SkyDrive.

Edit: Doesn't seem to work yet.

[Xtreme $niper 51]

Thanks for the screenshots guys, it's looking good!

I'm interested in what features Outlook will have that will drag me away from Mail.app. I'm not loyal to Mail.app by any means, but it better be worth the effort of transferring all my emails. I won't be doing it unless I find it to provide more/better features, and also not be a killer on my resources like Office 2008 already is sometimes.

Mail.app is small and nimble. If Outlook doesn't end up using more RAM than it, then they might have a chance.

[Inklin 28]

Microsoft always make better icons for the mac platform, their icons on the windows platform are way too complicated and look very ugly in comparison, maybe they should just use one design on both platforms. :s

[Ironman273 1,096]

So... can anyone answer me at least if it's available to legally download from somewhere, because if it's not I would hate a link to an "inappropriate" site be PMed to me.

[ThothTD 1]

I've noticed some interface changes on Messenger 8 Beta 3 as well:

- New status icons (red, yellow, green and grey squares)

- Removal of the huge round "Send" button

- The font and emoticon menus have shifted to the "Send" button instead

- When clicking a user's status icon, a pop-up menu will appear with options (such as send email, send IM etc.)

Except for maybe the status icons nothing deserves a beauty price at this moment...

and where could I get hold of this beta 3 of office and/or messenger?

[revanmj 25]

We're at Beta 3 now. The options are there, not sure if it works as I don't use SkyDrive.

I know, but I wanted to know if it's a new feature or not, because I forgot to look for it in Beta 2.

[.Neo 1,834]

I'm interested in what features Outlook will have that will drag me away from Mail.app. I'm not loyal to Mail.app by any means, but it better be worth the effort of transferring all my emails. I won't be doing it unless I find it to provide more/better features, and also not be a killer on my resources like Office 2008 already is sometimes.

Mail.app is small and nimble. If Outlook doesn't end up using more RAM than it, then they might have a chance.

My main beef, and reason why I probably won't ever use it, with Entourage / Outlook for Mac is that it doesn't integrate with the OS at all. So it won't retrieve my contacts from Address Book, won't retrieve my appointments from iCal, (etc.) nor does it sync with my iPod touch.

I see no point in using Outlook for email only.

[saxondale. 15]

How stable is messenger now .Neo?

[crazzyyfool 29]

My main beef, and reason why I probably won't ever use it, with Entourage / Outlook for Mac is that it doesn't integrate with the OS at all. So it won't retrieve my contacts from Address Book, won't retrieve my appointments from iCal, (etc.) nor does it sync with my iPod touch.

I see no point in using Outlook for email only.

Surely turning on Syncing is the way to go?

[.Neo 1,834]

Does that also sync my appointments with iCal, Notes and email?

[Xtreme $niper 51]

That imagefra.me is possibly the worst image hosting website I have ever clicked on. There are 30 ads per 1 actual image that I want to see, not to mention various pop-ups (thank god for blockers) and auto-playing videos with loud audio.

Please... stop torturing my mac. lol.

My main beef, and reason why I probably won't ever use it, with Entourage / Outlook for Mac is that it doesn't integrate with the OS at all. So it won't retrieve my contacts from Address Book, won't retrieve my appointments from iCal, (etc.) nor does it sync with my iPod touch.

I see no point in using Outlook for email only.

My main usage for Mail.app currently has nothing syncing. No contacts, no calendar events, nothing... So I guess I wouldn't have as big of an issue moving over.