Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 - Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community

FanIn80 · 11-15-2010, 04:58 PM

I just got my hands on a (legal) free copy last Friday. I haven't had a chance to use it much, since my MB is in getting some work done.

From what I have been able to play with, though, I have to say it seems really nice. I might actually dump iWork in favour of it. Native compatibility with the Office ecosystem is a pretty attractive lure, it's just that the 2008 version really annoyed me for some reason. This new one has the ribbon from 2010 (PC), and it even has VBA (finally, still don't know why they dropped it in 2008).

Anyway, anyone been using it at all? The copy I have includes Outlook, but I'm a little hesitant to switch from Mail. I have 15+ years of experience troubleshooting Outlook on a PC, but 0 experience working with a MS mail client on a Mac...

silentsim · 11-15-2010, 05:01 PM

It's an excellent update. Be sure to run Microsoft update as the update released a week or two is critical. Programs launch in less then half a second haha

New iWork will be "coming soon" according to a recent email from Steve Jobs to a customer. Rumoured features include ability to "airplay" it to an appletv..(a slideshow-not many places have aTV's but this is cool). Will see the new iWork but even Apple somewhat promotes Office due to it's popularity (last Keynote)

FanIn80 · 11-15-2010, 05:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by silentsim

It's an excellent update. Be sure to run Microsoft update as the update released a week or two is critical. Programs launch in less then half a second haha

New iWork will be "coming soon" according to a recent email from Steve Jobs to a customer. Rumoured features include ability to "airplay" it to an appletv..(a slideshow-not many places have aTV's but this is cool). Will see the new iWork but even Apple somewhat promotes Office due to it's popularity (last Keynote)

I also noticed that if you go to their online store and configure a Mac, MS Office is grouped with the main selections, while iWork is now down at the bottom with the optional addons. Used to be the other way around with Office 2008.

Edit: Oh wait. Never mind, it's not like that anymore. It was the day 2011 launched, but it looks like they just added it in the wrong spot on the config pages.

silentsim · 11-15-2010, 05:04 PM

Yep. my thought on iWork vs Office has always been
Word>Pages
Excel>>Numbers
Keynote>>Powerpoint

If the Mac app store comes out and sells the apps individually I would still buy Keynote.

FanIn80 · 11-15-2010, 05:05 PM

Yeah, Keynote is really nice.

Flames0910 · 11-15-2010, 07:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by silentsim

Yep. my thought on iWork vs Office has always been
Word>Pages
Excel>>Numbers
Keynote>>Powerpoint

If the Mac app store comes out and sells the apps individually I would still buy Keynote.

ditto.

llama64 · 11-16-2010, 08:26 AM

I bought Office 2008 with the idea that I could upgrade to 2011 when it came out.

Apparently I had about a week window to cash that offer in and I missed it by 2 days.

My opinion of Microsoft has never been lower.

Office is decent (even 2008), but it's far too heavy for what most people use it for. I prefer to do everything in Pages/Numbers. Works for what i need it for - bought Office just to format proof myself incase clients absolutely needed special table formatting or some stupid crap like that.

sclitheroe · 11-16-2010, 08:48 AM

Outlook 2011 is very, very nice. Nice enough that I switched from the Exchange integration in Mail.app (not to mention some really weird behavior in mail.app for Exchange 2010 accounts - what you see in mail.app is NOT necessarily what is actually in your inbox!)

If you support Mac users, getting them off Entourage and its monolithic DB storage engine is a god-send. Entourage was terrifyingly bad to support, with many quirks and gotchas lurking in its bowels

FanIn80 · 11-16-2010, 08:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by llama64

I bought Office 2008 with the idea that I could upgrade to 2011 when it came out.

Apparently I had about a week window to cash that offer in and I missed it by 2 days.

My opinion of Microsoft has never been lower.

Office is decent (even 2008), but it's far too heavy for what most people use it for. I prefer to do everything in Pages/Numbers. Works for what i need it for - bought Office just to format proof myself incase clients absolutely needed special table formatting or some stupid crap like that.

When did you buy it? The offer is valid for purchases between August 1 and November 30, so you're still good.

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/office-2008-upgrade

llama64 · 11-17-2010, 07:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FanIn80

When did you buy it? The offer is valid for purchases between August 1 and November 30, so you're still good.

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/office-2008-upgrade

If you were in front of me, I would so be licking your face right now.

Thanks!!

Apparently I was staring at the wrong upgrade page. I spent a good 2-3 hours googling and searching the various MS product sites too... is it so hard for them to send a reminder email?

FanIn80 · 11-17-2010, 08:16 AM

Haha, yeah they don't always make it easy to get the right info.