By 

R. Ferguson (Earth) –

  

  

  

When I reviewed the prior version of Office, I recommended that users stick with Office 2004. Finally, I can strongly recommend upgrading to Office 2011. I would wager that this will be the major version for the next five to six years, in the same way that 2004 has been widely adopted and stable for the last six years.

I should state at the outset that I am primarily a user of Word for the production of long, annotated documents. I also use Excel and Powerpoint, but would not consider myself a power-user of these applications. I have been using Microsoft Word since 1986. This review is mainly for people who have been Word/Office users and are wondering whether to upgrade.

All three versions of the Office for Mac 2011 suite contain Word, Excel and Powerpoint. The Home & Student version does not contain Outlook; the Home & Business and Academic versions DO contain Outlook. Outlook replaces Entourage. If you do intend to use Outlook, keep in mind that this version only syncs with Exchange Server 2007 or newer (check with your I.T. people to see if you are okay). Furthermore, Outlook is not merely a renaming of Entourage; some functions change and/or disappear. You can do a custom install of Office 2011 and keep Entourage if you wish.

As of late 2010, many of the negative comments about this version revolve around Outlook (missing features, syncing, import problems). If you are a power Outlook user, I would take this as a big warning flag and a potential reason to wait for the next update from Microsoft.

[Update 4/11: Microsoft released the first service pack for this suite in April of 2011. The update fixes a number of problems/shortcomings across the suite, including some that led to highly critical remarks about Outlook. For a list of changes, do a search for Microsoft Knowledge Base article 2525412.]

[Update 7/11: Office 2004 for Mac does NOT work under the recently released OS X Lion. This is a good opportunity to upgrade to Office 2011. Microsoft's Mac group has indicated, however, that it will be some months before this latest version exploits Lion's new features (e.g. autosave). I am finding no compatibility issues, however, between Lion and Office 2011.]

My snapshot of Microsoft’s latest release:

Pros:
-Office 2011 is faster. It loads faster. It closes out faster. There seem to be very few delays in moving through very long documents. There is no sluggishness on my computer (2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo iMac with 2 GB of memory).
-The interface is improved from earlier versions. While I have qualms about it, I think it is the best one that Microsoft has offered for Office. After using the suite for the last 9 months, I have come to appreciate the context sensative ribbon. I find that I am spending less time digging for obscure commands.
-VBA support is back (critically important for many people; if you don’t know what it is, you probably don’t need it).
-Side-by-side arrangement of multiple documents. This sounds minor, but if you compose using multiple document windows, this will have you rejoicing. Why it has been so difficult to implement is a mystery (you could do it in earlier versions by tweaking Word or by sizing the windows manually). Now you can do it quickly from the “Window” menu. Thank you. Thank you. A million thank yous.
-Better ability to browse and import media from elsewhere on your Mac.
-I am intrigued by the new notebook view; it allows for scribbles and audio inputs.
-There is a new full screen mode which helps me focus on the document; I really like this feature but other people will find it hokey.
-Built-in support for collaborative document creation/editing and cloud computing.

Cons:
-The interface may be improved from earlier versions, but the intent was clearly to make it more like the Windows version of Office rather than exploit OS X. I think the Mac group at Microsoft is between a rock and a hard place on this one: they can choose to make Office more consistent across platforms (think about the demands placed on corporate I.T. departments that support PCs and Macs), or they can create something more unique and native to the Mac (i.e., fully optimized for the Mac). I would prefer the latter, but the former wins. Office for the Mac is handcuffed to Windows.
-I find the interface easier to use than old versions, but I still find myself fighting with it at times (e.g. the Excel sort button toggles between A to Z and Z to A each time you press it… why?).
-For power Excel users, this version does not yet have an Analysis Tool Pack.
-I would have liked to see a bit more discipline in how options are presented. To give an example, when choosing how to look at a particular Word document there are no less than four different places where one can specify some aspect of the page…

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