It has, Microsoft promises, fewer incompatibilities with the Windows and Web-based versions of Office applications.To recap, Office for Mac 2011 has three other enhancements over the current 2008 edition. Desktop apps run faster, there are no little waits for the network when saving changes, and I can keep my email and scheduling separate from all the browser windows and tabs I pop open while researching and writing assignments. Gmail handles Outlook events automatically, sticking them into my Google calendar, but I’d be much happier running my email and calendar in a combined desktop app on my 24-inch iMac, rather than wrangling them inside Google Chrome browser tabs. And Office calendar events for meetings are how most of my business contacts schedule and manage meetings at their own offices. Word, Excel and PowerPoint are the most widely understood and supported file formats among many knowledge workers. Despite Google Docs, Zoho and many other Microsoft competitors, nothing makes my editors at national print publications happier than when I fire up Word to write an article for them.

The essential teammate would be more accurate. Is Microsoft Office the mythological perfect fifth element? I don’t think that’s what they meant. The press release dubs Office for Mac 2011 “the quintessential teammate.” I’m snobby enough to guess that whoever wrote that doesn’t know the etymology of the word “quintessential,” which comes from the age of alchemy. Especially if you’re a freelance writer like me who schedules meetings and trades mail with nearly a hundred Outlook-using PR people and entrepreneurs all day, every day. If you don’t hate Microsoft with all the bile in your heart, this is great news. PST file format used by the Windows version to store messages and other items. Finally! “The communications app will be built in Cocoa for the latest Snow Leopard integrations and appearance,” PC Magazine reports, adding that Outlook for Mac will work with the same. “The suite has new connections to Microsoft services,” a prepared Microsoft statement says, “so you can work together more effectively, an updated user interface making tasks easier, and essential compatibility to ensure your documents look the way you made them when shared.”īut the best news is Office 2011 will dump the little-used Entourage email client in favor of a Mac version of Outlook.

Office mac 2011 outlook