Hands on with Microsoft Office for Mac 2011

By on Apr 23, 2010 at 7:59 AM
Exclusive April 23, 2010

office-mac-2011-excel-2

Over the past few days we’ve been playing around the latest beta release of Microsoft Office for Mac 2011. Many of the changes made are hard to appreciate without actually seeing the application suite in use, and for that reason alone we have assembled a massive gallery of screenshots. On the other hand, images can be meaningless without a bit of an explanation so we’ve put down a brief summary of our initial thoughts. You can check them all out after the jump.

Across the board, each application has had its UI completely overhauled as Microsoft has made the wise decision to redo the entire layout of the application suite. Instead of the awful configuration found in Office for Mac 2008, 2011 draws from both Office 2007 and Office 2010 for Windows. In fact, it did such a good job that we can’t think of a reason why someone who is used to one OS wouldn’t be able to jump into the other and get work done in Office. One of the main reasons for this is Ribbons. Microsoft has finally conceded that people don’t like using the attractive but horribly implemented Toolbox found in previous versions of Office for Mac. Yes, the option to use the Toolbox is still there, but it’s no longer nearly impossible to get away without using it. One nice thing we will say about the Toolbox is that if you’re heavily into incorporating multimedia into your documents, the Toolbox is now fully integrated with iPhoto, iTunes, Photo Booth and Garage Band. It works phenomenally well. Speaking of things working, Excel finally has working support for macros. We can’t even tell you how happy this makes nerds like us. But back to Ribbons. They just make life so much easier. Basically every option you could ever want to use is attractively presented to you through the ribbons. What this does is allow you to save yourself an awful lot of time navigating the menu bar, hence why Microsoft calls the Ribbon a “Fluent User Interface”.

Sadly there is a pretty big weak link in Office 2011: Outlook. It seems that Microsoft simply sacrificed brains for beauty. Don’t get us wrong. It’s definitely the best and most powerful email client we’ve ever used on OS X, but after using it for 10 minutes we honestly gave up on it. Why? Because it simply requires more work to get simple tasks done than on the Windows version. It sucks to say it, but given the choice between using the new Outlook for Mac and virtualizing Outlook for Windows, we’d go with the latter any day. We’ve got more that 50 screenshots lined up for your eyes to feast upon, so check them out, ok?

Click on over to our Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 gallery!

Tags:
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
62 Comments

Related Articles

  • http://www.ricktakagiphotography.com rt425

    Does anyone know if the new Outlook will have data detectors in place? That’s a killer feature in Apple mail and could be a deal breaker for Outlook.

  • JD

    Will this be available on MS Technet?

  • spence

    I’ve heard nothing about bringing the Mac version of pivot tables up to speed with the Windoz version. This is a BIG missing link.

  • jsk

    Why on earth do they insist on wasting the top 1/2″ of screen real-estate on buttons for New, Open, Print, Cut, Copy, Paste, etc. Do people REALLY need them?!?!? Is Command/Control P really THAT hard to remember?!??

    Please tell me you can turn that off.

    • http://seriousmobile.wordpress.com Donny

      yes apparantly you CAN revert back to the Office 2008 toolbox layout.

      Regarding Pivot Tables … I totally agree this is THE KEY function many consultants in the large corporate space rely on; as well as banks.

  • http://www.withinwindows.com Rafael R.

    Exclusive? This build has been in the wild for days, hardly exclusive. Why don’t you source where you got the build from?

  • Smoghat

    Ya,

    The ribbons suck. Anybody using a modern Mac hates anything that consumes the top of the screen. Luckily, even if it a little brain damaged (it still puts some crap on top of the screen) there is indeed a full screen mode and yes… You can make the ribbons go away… What fool needs to use a mouse to save or print a file in this day and age

  • jawman

    BGR posting about MICROSOFT OFFICE!? What the hell!?
    Oh, wait, that’s right, it’s for Mac. Duh. It makes perfect sense now!

  • Bob

    How is the suite compared to iWork ’09?

  • bonesb

    Thanks for the gallery, though most of your “Next” links don’t work – the URL’s are incorrect.

    Hating on the Ribbon, that’s my personal preference – learned from Office 2007. The Mac upgrade price for essentially what’s going to be 1) putting the Cocoa Ribbon Interface, 2) getting a rebranded Entourage OWA with a few tweaks, and 3) getting back the VBA engine we used to have in Office 2004. I’m hoping MS will get their act together and hone Outlook into a beast of a communications app, but I’m kind of disappointed with the Mac BU’s effort so far.

    I’m also wondering if MS has finally quashed the print setup bugs that exist in their .xlsx workbooks but not in their .xls workbooks – their multiple sheet .xlsx workbooks won’t retain multiple layout styles? It’s a PITA when I’m exchanging workbooks with clients who insist on using the .xlsx file format.

  • Molo

    Does it support right to left languges like Hebrew and Arabic?

  • Alan Sky

    does Word and Outlook support VBA ?
    We use macros and Add-in on Windows and our Mac users are stuck in Office 2004 because of the VBA dismissal in 2007.

  • BAP

    Tell me about VBA, or let me play with the beta.

    VBA did not work very well with 2004, at least not for Word, and not at all with Intel. Many 2004 macros would crash under emulation on Intel.

    All of my video and music is in OSX, but I am still using two titanium laptops with OS9 and 2001 for proprietary VBA in Word that was too much trouble to debug into 2004 if I could still only use legacy laptops.

    Both 2001 and 2004 required significant patching with Applescript to plug bugs. I never did find a reasonable workaround for a VBA command that worked in 2001 but crashed in 2004, hence my continued use of OS9.

    To me, VBA is the only issue. I got around macros in excel by using extra worksheets and tables, but that doesn’t work for what I do in Word, which involves over 40 userforms and several hundred macros.

    • BAP

      I am still using Office 2001 with Word on titanium laptops due to the issues with VBA in 2004. It was very buggy and lost several commands present in 2001. I had already patched issues noticed with 2001 with Applescript – yes you can call Applescript in VBA and actually had cross platform capabilities with a check to see which computer was running. Using 2004 on Intel was just plan bad, the emulator could not handle any complex instructions and would crash on a regular basis. As my macros often renamed and moved files from folder to folder, this could get messy.
      I have offered to beta test the new Word, but have not gotten any responses – I have several hundred macros with over 30 userforms and could test a large cross section of the VBA implementation.
      I use Intel iMacs for the rest of my business needs and have Macs at home as well.

  • http://www.zanjero.de Alex

    First, I hate it, when on a landscape-oriented monitor the upper quarter is wasted for something called ribbon. Second, the ribbon is nothing but a graphic menu without pull-down-ability. Third, the toolbox is awesome (maybe they should have optimized it), because it gives more space to my document. Fourth, I dont like to waste space for nothing on my screen. To properly work with ribbons I should magnify the windows, to properly work with my document (intending to read more than four lines) I will end up with a scenario as shown in your screenshots, where nearle half of the screen (left and right to the document) is just meaning- and useless gray (not even enabling me to reach windows behind).
    Can Office work modeless now? (Do I have to click “apply”/”ok” in dialog-windows to make a setting or will it be set the moment I select an option like iWork does)
    I am not sure whether the mac and windows version should be so much alike, since I always thought the mac-version to be superior to the windows-version due to its toolbox and the windows-version inferior to the mac-version due to its space-wasting ribbon-interface that is neither real menu nor real toolbar.

    • bap

      I use a command key to toggle on and off toolbars in 2001 and 2004 – could not be bothered with 2008 – this may work for you

  • Troy

    Does Office 2k11 for Mac, specifically Outlook support PST files? It was rumored by the team at MSFT working on this project that it would support PST import/export… Any info on this?

    • C Los

      Any word on the PST files. I would make PC to MAC life a LOT easier. Especially when you work in an industry that is dominated by a PC…

    • AJ

      yes outlook on mac supports pst files at least in the beta version 4 which i found.. having outlook is just amazing…
      i downloaded the beta version so far so good….
      good luck..PS: not supporting Arabic so far… or right to left or at least i have not found it…

  • http://twitter.com/gr Gabriel Radic

    Anyone can tell if Outlook’s support for threaded conversations is any better?

  • ReVeLaTeD

    I’m apparently a lone wolf, but I love Entourage. I dare say I enjoy it more than Outlook and I’ve been using Outlook since before it went by that name. Just as functional, for what I need it for, on Mac as Outlook 2007 is on PC, with the only notable absences being search folders and EmailXtender support. Beyond that it’s so solid I would almost never need my work laptop.

    I am not a ribbon fan but I got used to it – it’s not that bad.

  • David

    Updated GUI is a nice touch but won’t Cloud or Azure (or whatever Microsoft will end up calling its Office in the cloud) make the software itself irrelevant? Interested to see how this pans out…

  • http://www.collectiveeffortsunion.com jayson

    Any way to convert Entourage mail to Outlook?
    There’s no option for Entourage in the wizard

  • Jacob

    Would you mind posting a full screen screenshot?

  • http://www.nathaliemensinga.nl Harrij

    Try to export mail for use in another programm !!
    Yep, NO WAY You’ve either lost all your mail or stuck with Outlook.
    The .olm extension is NOT supported by any program

    • MikeD

      The easy thing to do is setup an IMAP server on your desktop, then map to it in Entourage/Outlook. Then simply drag your messages from your local folders into the IMAP folders.

  • and1

    i already have it,its pretty awesome:D

  • NK

    Does it have any advanced shortcuts? Beyond copy and paste, i’m looking for the equivalent of Alt+E+S+T for copy format, shortcut to insert rows/columns, real shortcuts that make life easier and so much more efficient.

  • bodiddly

    MS is clearly focused very much on users who have to use a PC at work but a Mac at home, hence the decision to abandon Entourage I guess. But what about users who just like Entourage as a mail client? (and I’m not one of them, but I do have to support them). Based on past experience, you will probably have to uninstall MS Office 2008 to use 2010, and I can virtually guarantee that, when you try to convert your 10+ GB identity database to Outlook, something is going to go wrong. And once that database is corrupted…there will be some very unhappy users.

  • Starclassic

    I have tried Outlook 2011 for Mac and I was initially excited at the fact that it could work with PST files. Although I soon realised that it would only import PST files rather than work with them directly, I was a little disappointed but figured it’s all good since I should be able to export them back to PST as necessary.

    Then I got the shits.

    It seems that Microsoft, in all their wisdom, didn’t consider that some of us actually have a PC and a Mac and would like to share the PST files back and forth as required. There is no option to export from Outlook 2011 for Mac to anything other than the .olm format.

    Get with it Microsoft, you pack of dopey monkeys! Not everyone wants to set up IMAP servers just to be able to share their data between a PC desktop and a Mac laptop.

1 2
blog comments powered by Disqus