One advantage of the Mac version is that it uses both the ribbon and the standard Mac top-line menu, for maximum ease of access to its many features.
I wish Microsoft had included an option to use the Ctrl-F1 keystroke that the Windows version uses for the same feature. In the Mac version, if you want to hide or reveal the ribbon using the keyboard, you need to press Option-Command-R. For example, the ribbon on the Mac version includes tabs for traditional charts and the text-based SmartArt charting feature, but puts mail-merge features on a drop-down menu instead of on a tab as in the Windows version. It's similar to the ribbon on the Windows version, with a few changes that reflect the graphics-oriented world of the Mac. I tested this by editing documents at the same time from a Mac and a Windows machine, and the whole procedure was surprisingly smooth, although I needed to click a Save button on each machine before the actual content that I had created on one machine was visible in the other.īut the best thing about the new suite for most real-world users will be its jackrabbit speed-unlike the pokiness that made the previous version almost unusable.
The most newsworthy changes in the suite include the shiny new Outlook and the collaboration feature that lets multiple users edit a document simultaneously when the document is stored on Microsoft's free SkyDrive cloud-based storage or on a SharePoint server.
The Home and Business version matches the Home and Student version plus Outlook 2011, which replaces the Entourage mail, calendar, and contact manager app in recent versions. The Home and Student version includes Word 2011, Excel 2011, PowerPoint 2011. Office for the Mac comes in two versions, a Home and Student Version (single user package, $119 three-user family package $149) and a Home and Business Version (single user package, $199 licensed for two machines, $279). Overall, it's the best office suite ever for using the Mac as a serious platform for getting work done. Office for the Mac still has some minor weaknesses, and at least one feature that's less powerful in than the previous version-Office no longer syncs calendars with iCal. For the first time, OS X has an office suite I can imagine using full-time. I used to suspect Microsoft of deliberately holding back Office for the Mac so that Windows users wouldn't be tempted to abandon Windows for OS X. If you're a casual, light-duty office-suite user or a student, iWork '09 ($79, 4 stars) is still a great option, but if you've got heavy-duty work to perform on the Mac, you'll want Office for the Mac 2011. It even includes a few features that outclass anything in its Windows-based counterpart, Microsoft Office 2010 ($499, 4 stars). Compared with Office for the Mac 2008 and its predecessors, Office 2011 is innovative, better-designed, startlingly faster, vastly more powerful, and far more compatible with Office for Windows. After a string of disappointing releases, the new Mac version of the world's most widely-used office suite is a spectacular success, and an unexpected triumph for Microsoft's Macintosh group.
Although an understandable counter-piracy measure, it could be inconvenient if you have to deploy Office on an office full of computers.With Microsoft Office for the Mac 2011 (Home and Student version, $119 Home and Business version, $199), Microsoft has finally gotten it right.
Previous versions simply required a license key, but Office 2011 now has to validate itself with Microsoft's servers during installation before it will work so you therefore can't use the same licence non-concurrently on a desktop and a laptop as you could with previous versions. The Visual Basic for Applications scripting language for creating macros has returned - an especially important feature for Excel power users.Ī less noticeable and potentially less welcome change is the introduction of product activation to Office. It is designed to make it easier for users to discover and use the wealth of available features in each program. Among them is the Ribbon interface, which will be familiar to Office 20 Office for Windows users. There are plenty of changes affecting the entire suite though. The biggest change in this version of Office is the replacement of the previous email program, Entourage, with a brand-new Mac version of Outlook. Each of the Office programs is full of features and foibles, so we've dedicated individual reviews to each one: Word 2011 Excel 2011 PowerPoint 2011 Outlook 2011