Microsoft Unveils Office for Mac 2011
0Overall Score

Microsoft has announced that its new Office for Mac 2011 will be available later this year. The new suite claims to have new connections to Microsoft services, an updated user interface, and improved compatibility.The new Office for Mac 2011 comes with new co-authoring tools that claim to give users the ability to work on a file from Word, PowerPoint or Excel from different locations, regardless of platform.

“Co-authoring improves the processes of working together, removing the pain and frustration of multiple versions, lost edits, or even trying to set a time for the group to meet. With this new feature you can keep track of your team with the Presence Everywhere feature that gives real-time status updates on who is working on the document directly in the application,” says the company.

Office 2011 also delivers a connection to Microsoft Office Web Apps from the application, giving you a simple way to access and share Office documents from any machine with an Internet connection.

In addition, the Office 2011 suite has an all-new interface to make things simpler.

“The new design is an evolution of the Office 2008 Elements Gallery and uses the classic Mac menu and Standard Toolbar giving you the best of both worlds. You can even collapse the ribbon and the Toolbar for more screen space or for the more advanced users who rely on keyboard shortcuts,” added the company.

 

Along with the updated user interface and quick access to the Office Web Apps, the MacBU announced last August that Outlook for Mac is coming to Office 2011, replacing Entourage.

“Outlook for Mac is a new application that leverages the Exchange Web Services protocol and is being built using Cocoa, allowing for improved integration with the Mac OS. Today we are also announcing that Outlook for Mac will import .PST files from Outlook for Windows,” continued Microsoft.

As announced last year, Outlook for Mac features a reliable, high-speed, file-based database with Spotlight search and back-up support from Time Machine. Outlook for Mac also provides Information Rights Management to help prevent sensitive information from being distributed to or read by people who do not have your permission to access the content.

“Outlook for Mac provides an integrated solution for managing your time and information and, when it is used in conjunction with Microsoft Exchange Server, you benefit from increased collaboration capabilities and security enhancements,” concluded Microsoft.

Office for Mac 2011 will be available later this year.