Microsoft showcases co-authoring capabilities of Office 2011 for Mac
Microsoft continues to offer a closer look at features of the new Office 2011 for Mac set to launch in October, with the latest update focusing on the co-authoring, Web apps, Scheduling Assistant and Broadcast Slideshow features.
The Office for Mac team on Wednesday revealed more features in the upcoming release of Microsoft's software suite. Details were given on the team's official blog, and also through a new video that demonstrates some of the features.
Kurt Schmucker, senior evangelist with the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft, said the co-authoring feature in Office for Mac 2011 will allow multiple authors to work on a Word document, Excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation at the same time.
"It used to be the case you had to mail around a document among multiple authors," he said. "Who has the latest copy? Is this the last one? Is this the final? The final, final, final? And this happened all of the time. Those sort of problems become a thing of the past in this new scenario."
Co-authoring relies on cloud storage from Microsoft, offered in the form of SkyDrive for consumers, and SharePoint for business customers. These documents stored in the cloud can also be edited on a machine that does not have Office installed, thanks to the inclusion of Web apps.
"When it comes to working together, Office 2011 not only helps you collaborate, it helps you coordinate," Schmucker said.
The full list of details released by Microsoft Wednesday are as follows:
Co-authoring: Worry free co-authoring tools give you the capability to simultaneously edit the same Word document, PowerPoint slideshow, or Excel worksheet with other people in different locations. Documents can be stored in the cloud using SkyDrive for consumers, and SharePoint for business users.
Office Web apps: Online companions to Office 2010 and Office for Mac 2011, Office Web apps allow you to get things done when and where you want, from virtually any computer with an Internet connection. You can view your documents in high-fidelity, make light edits on the web, and then open them again in your Office 2011 applications to continue editing with access to all of the functionality you need.
Scheduling Assistant: Improved in the brand new Outlook for Mac, this feature allows you to see your calendar in-line with your mail to create a more efficient workflow. If you?re an Exchange user, you can view more of your co-workers shared calendar details in the scheduling assistant and easily track attendee responses right from your meeting request.
Broadcast Slideshow: You might have heard about this cool feature that was unveiled in PowerPoint Office 2010, and now we are very excited to confirm that it will also be included in PowerPoint for Mac 2011. This is a great cross-platform feature that lets you literally broadcast out your presentation giving you control over what is seen and when ? all that is required is a browser connection.
Last month, Microsoft showed off compatibility features in Office 2011 for Mac, including consistency between software available for both Windows and Mac. Users can also do basic photo editing tasks within Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2011, including background removal and color correction.
Office for Mac 2011 will ship in late October with a lower price per installation for all editions, starting at $119 for the Home and Student edition, and $199 for the Home and Business version. The 32-bit software suite will be available in 13 languages: Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish and Swedish. Two new languages were also added to the mix for this year's update: Polish and Russian.
For more, see AppleInsider's previous coverage of Office for Mac 2011:
Office for Mac 2011 to feature co-authoring, ribbon interface
Road to Office 2011 for Mac: A New Hope
Road to Office 2011: New looks, support for Exchange, VBA
Microsoft officially unveils key Office 201 for Mac features
The Office for Mac team on Wednesday revealed more features in the upcoming release of Microsoft's software suite. Details were given on the team's official blog, and also through a new video that demonstrates some of the features.
Kurt Schmucker, senior evangelist with the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft, said the co-authoring feature in Office for Mac 2011 will allow multiple authors to work on a Word document, Excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation at the same time.
"It used to be the case you had to mail around a document among multiple authors," he said. "Who has the latest copy? Is this the last one? Is this the final? The final, final, final? And this happened all of the time. Those sort of problems become a thing of the past in this new scenario."
Co-authoring relies on cloud storage from Microsoft, offered in the form of SkyDrive for consumers, and SharePoint for business customers. These documents stored in the cloud can also be edited on a machine that does not have Office installed, thanks to the inclusion of Web apps.
"When it comes to working together, Office 2011 not only helps you collaborate, it helps you coordinate," Schmucker said.
The full list of details released by Microsoft Wednesday are as follows:
Co-authoring: Worry free co-authoring tools give you the capability to simultaneously edit the same Word document, PowerPoint slideshow, or Excel worksheet with other people in different locations. Documents can be stored in the cloud using SkyDrive for consumers, and SharePoint for business users.
Office Web apps: Online companions to Office 2010 and Office for Mac 2011, Office Web apps allow you to get things done when and where you want, from virtually any computer with an Internet connection. You can view your documents in high-fidelity, make light edits on the web, and then open them again in your Office 2011 applications to continue editing with access to all of the functionality you need.
Scheduling Assistant: Improved in the brand new Outlook for Mac, this feature allows you to see your calendar in-line with your mail to create a more efficient workflow. If you?re an Exchange user, you can view more of your co-workers shared calendar details in the scheduling assistant and easily track attendee responses right from your meeting request.
Broadcast Slideshow: You might have heard about this cool feature that was unveiled in PowerPoint Office 2010, and now we are very excited to confirm that it will also be included in PowerPoint for Mac 2011. This is a great cross-platform feature that lets you literally broadcast out your presentation giving you control over what is seen and when ? all that is required is a browser connection.
Last month, Microsoft showed off compatibility features in Office 2011 for Mac, including consistency between software available for both Windows and Mac. Users can also do basic photo editing tasks within Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2011, including background removal and color correction.
Office for Mac 2011 will ship in late October with a lower price per installation for all editions, starting at $119 for the Home and Student edition, and $199 for the Home and Business version. The 32-bit software suite will be available in 13 languages: Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish and Swedish. Two new languages were also added to the mix for this year's update: Polish and Russian.
For more, see AppleInsider's previous coverage of Office for Mac 2011:
Office for Mac 2011 to feature co-authoring, ribbon interface
Road to Office 2011 for Mac: A New Hope
Road to Office 2011: New looks, support for Exchange, VBA
Microsoft officially unveils key Office 201 for Mac features
Comments
Will M$ continue much longer to develop for OS X?
Mac users should be thanking Steve Ballmer for making their machines even more useful than they were previously.
Will M$ continue much longer to develop for OS X?
why not? in academia office is still huge and office for win or mac is a money maker. i personally would like to see it gone for good....
I hope they lower the price to stay competitive. With google docs and tons of free solutions, office is starting to lose it's value
Nope right now nothing comes close to MS Office. If you need advanced features there is no alternative. If you don't need those, go ahead there sure are alternatives (OpenOffice as one of the better examples).
Just wanted to thank the Office for Mac team for making the current edition an incredible update. I will buy this immediately when it is available.
Could have been an option for our company but I don't think MS will price the package right for us customers, so as for now it is iWork.
What, the extra $20 over iWork is a deal breaker for you? Last I checked, iWork was $99 and Microsoft home and student is $119. Office 2008 was a better product than iWork, and I can only assume Office 2011 will be as well, unless your only interested in the most basic functions. For an extra $80, you can make the upgrade to Business version and get Outlook, which is 1000x better than the turd combo of Mail/Address Book/Calendar in OSX... I think you're either complaining for the sake of complaining, or illegally download all of your software anyways.
What, the extra $20 over iWork is a deal breaker for you? Last I checked, iWork was $99 and Microsoft home and student is $119. Office 2008 was a better product than iWork, and I can only assume Office 2011 will be as well, unless your only interested in the most basic functions. For an extra $80, you can make the upgrade to Business version and get Outlook, which is 1000x better than the turd combo of Mail/Address Book/Calendar in OSX... I think you're either complaining for the sake of complaining, or illegally download all of your software anyways.
Check more often. iWork is 79 USD. Outlook is the biggest turd here.
What, the extra $20 over iWork is a deal breaker for you? Last I checked, iWork was $99 and Microsoft home and student is $119. Office 2008 was a better product than iWork, and I can only assume Office 2011 will be as well, unless your only interested in the most basic functions. For an extra $80, you can make the upgrade to Business version and get Outlook, which is 1000x better than the turd combo of Mail/Address Book/Calendar in OSX... I think you're either complaining for the sake of complaining, or illegally download all of your software anyways.
MS 399,95 iWork 79.... say no more, and hey 2008 is NOT a better product!
Office for the mac is a great way to get a mac machine on your deksin a windows environment.
Why do people bash office for the mac? A lot of places heavily use office and openoffice and iwork still cant open everything that can be produced on office.
Office for the mac is a great way to get a mac machine on your deksin a windows environment.
The reason is that the majority of Apple users by far are regular consumers, not "office workers" who are generally forced to use windows at work.
For the average consumer, Office is a gigantic piece of poo. It's clumsy, it's poorly designed and full of acane tricks and gotchas. Office is really a power user product nowadays that just isn't helpful or necessary for the largest section of Apple's users.
This latest update makes this rather obvious. "Document collaboration" (which is the so-called focus of this release), means absolutely nothing at all to the vast majority of regular computer users and Apple customers. It's a high-end "businessy" thing that just isn't needed 99% of the time.
re iwork - apple now has to catch up on the collaborative front - the powerpoint presentation broadcast is great
also, i work in a design studio and at times we have to use office apps to design as we need to fix client and office docs - iwork and keynote are much better apps when dealing with design related and image related functionality however office will remain the ruler of the roost thanks to the necessary compatibility with the windows world.
Mac users should be thanking Steve Ballmer for making their machines even more useful than they were previously.
Will M$ continue much longer to develop for OS X?
Who gives a rats a$$? We have distributed authoring, in-house, at NeXT back in 1995. When Apple wants to release such functionality into iWorks I'm sure they will do so.
Meanwhile, OpenOffice.org 3.3 Beta looks fine.
my biggest issue with ms apps is performance - even on a pretty good machine (dual xeon mac pro with 3gb ram) these apps are too sluggish and take forever to load. I'm hoping this release addresses the balance.
re iwork - apple now has to catch up on the collaborative front - the powerpoint presentation broadcast is great
also, i work in a design studio and at times we have to use office apps to design as we need to fix client and office docs - iwork and keynote are much better apps when dealing with design related and image related functionality however office will remain the ruler of the roost thanks to the necessary compatibility with the windows world.
I have been using the beta for awhile, and the sluggishness is gone. On both my 2009 MBP and new iMac, the suite just zips along.
The reason is that the majority of Apple users by far are regular consumers, not "office workers" who are generally forced to use windows at work.
For the average consumer, Office is a gigantic piece of poo. It's clumsy, it's poorly designed and full of acane tricks and gotchas. Office is really a power user product nowadays that just isn't helpful or necessary for the largest section of Apple's users.
This latest update makes this rather obvious. "Document collaboration" (which is the so-called focus of this release), means absolutely nothing at all to the vast majority of regular computer users and Apple customers. It's a high-end "businessy" thing that just isn't needed 99% of the time.
You are right in some respects. For a lot of Apple's customers, MS Office is overkill. However, at a certain level so is iWork. If all you want to do is compose some email, or put together a list of items, or things at this level, Apple's text editor is more than sufficient.
OTOH, Office, with all due respect, is not poorly designed. You may not like the interface, but that is far different than dismissing the suite as poorly designed.
What a joke hahaha
Microsoft is shackled with their legacy compatibility philosophy since Windows people tend to expect Office documents to work across the spectrum of Office 95 onward. That is likely because they never upgrade software until they get a new computer. To Microsoft's credit, they do a pretty good job of not breaking things and new documents usually have reasonable backwards compatibility, however, it comes at the expense of being able to only make minuscule incremental improvements with each release.
The Mac versions of Office have always been something I have tried to avoid. If it doesn't open properly in iWork I don't waste any time, I just go to the dreaded Windows box. The one thing iWork really needs is an equivalent application to Access. A simple SQL compliant database.
The thing about Word that always bugged me was that you cannot make it do what you want. It has a mind of it's own. When I put an object on the page I want it to stay where I put it not jump to the next page because I started editing some text. I know it is not a page layout program but I still think it is inexcusably clunky.
Microsoft is shackled with their legacy compatibility philosophy since Windows people tend to expect Office documents to work across the spectrum of Office 95 onward. That is likely because they never upgrade software until they get a new computer. To Microsoft's credit, they do a pretty good job of not breaking things and new documents usually have reasonable backwards compatibility, however, it comes at the expense of being able to only make minuscule incremental improvements with each release.
The Mac versions of Office have always been something I have tried to avoid. If it doesn't open properly in iWork I don't waste any time, I just go to the dreaded Windows box. The one thing iWork really needs is an equivalent application to Access. A simple SQL compliant database.
Lest there be any confusion, Office:mac tends to be much more compatible with earlier versions of Office irrespective of platform. Office 2004, the Mac version of Office that preceded the abomination that is Office 2008, was the most compatible version of Office on any platform--ever. Lack of VBA support and other deficiencies notwithstanding, Office 2008 has some compatibility advantages over Office 2007.
Takeaway message: Microsoft actually does an awful job with legacy compatibility. However, its Mac products are superior to its Windows products in this regard.
At the same time I noticed that when Apple dropped "Computer" from their name, much of the company for the last 18 months have spent their time on iOS stuff.
Where is the update for Final Cut, iLife, iWork and yes OSX. 10.6 was a good but minor revision. Even when Aperture was updated, it came closer to iPhoto than anything else. (Faces and Places...really)
If you come out with a 12 core beast, at least have some software that can use 4 of them properly.
I love Apple and own most of their products, privately and for my business, but the last 18 months have been somewhat underwhelming.
Jack
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While the iPad is many great things, it?s no Mac!