Available this October, Office 2011 will be unleashed onto an unsuspecting public, hopefully making everyone’s life happier, easier and more fulfilling. That said, there are a handful of things that you may want to know:
1.) Entourage is being retired and for the first time in almost a decade, a version of Outlook will honor the Mac OS with it’s presence. This means that there is now native support for the PST email archiving protocol as well as both Skydrive and Sharepoint integration. This also means, in theory, better Exchange integration, performance and support. Another key feature is that the monolithic file structure of the mail database as been replaced with one that is file-based, which is apparently faster and more stable when used with Time Machine.
2.) The Template Gallery has been redesigned, allowing you to quickly pick templates from either the pre-installed vault or from Microsoft’s online library.
3.) A key feature that Microsoft is trumpeting as revolutionary is the “Ribbon.” It is being described as the the “evolution of the Office 2008 Elements gallery, while utilizing the classic Mac menu and Standard Toolbar, giving you the best of both worlds.” Translated, this means that the most commonly used commands and features are easily accessible.
4.) Greater multi-language support. MS has added both Russia and Polish to it’s stable of localized language support.
5.) Visual Basic makes it’s triumphant return! Having been dropped from Office 2008 due to porting issues with the Intel processor, MS has recompiled the software so that it’ll work on the Intel platform, making this latest version of Office much more compatible with it’s sister-counterpart on the Windows side of things.
With all these good things going for the app, there has to be a drawback, right? Sadly, there is: Office 2011 is only a 32-bit application. This means that it won’t be able to fully utilize the multiple processors in most systems, will be a bit slower and not as secure as it’s 64-bit sister counterparts.
So there you go, a quick overview of what’s coming down the road from Microsoft. Overall, it seems that Microsoft has made a real effort in delivering a sold product that will greatly benefit the Mac community.
Update: If you can’t wait to get your hands on Office for Mac 2011, Microsoft is giving away free upgrades with any Office for Mac 2008 purchase. Call The Foundation at (612) 465-0700 for more details on Microsoft’s Technology Guarantee.
