Microsoft brings Office 365 support to Office for Mac 2011 in software update

AppleInsider · May 7, 2013 8:56PM

Microsoft on Tuesday updated Office for Mac 2011, the long-in-the-tooth productivity suite tailored to machines running Apple's OS X, with bug fixes, features and compatibility with the Office 365 subscription service.

The latest Office for Mac 2011 version 14.3.4 includes a variety of feature additions that brings the application suite somewhat up to spec with its Windows counterpart, and includes bug fixes for compatibility issues that hindered interoperability between PC and Mac versions of Word, Outlook and other titles.

Perhaps most important is the ability for existing Office for Mac 2011 users to integrate with Office 365, a subscription service that offers users access to the latest Office software updates, as well as SkyDrive cloud storage and SharePoint access for Word.

Fixes included in the new version:

Coauthoring session with Microsoft PowerPoint Web App and Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac
After token expires, does not prompt for credentials in Microsoft Outlook for Mac
Calibri Light font not included in Office for Mac
SetupUI is shown to user on start after Office for Mac is already activated
Saving files to SkyDrive and SharePoint in Microsoft Word for Mac
Folder contains excess white space: Error 1025 in Outlook for Mac
XLIST command that is used by Gmail is deprecated in Outlook for Mac
Local group mail cannot be sent in Outlook for Mac
Remote devices lose control while in Presentation Mode in Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac
File format extension support in PowerPoint for Mac
Searching continues after user cancels in Outlook for Mac
Items go into Junk Mail in Outlook for Mac
Blocked Senders List under Junk Email Protection in Outlook for Mac

In a recent change to its pricing policies, Microsoft placed Office 2011 for Mac in the same tier as its more current PC counterpart Office 2013 for Windows. At the time, it was thought that the Redmond, Wash., company was pushing Mac users toward an Office 365 subscription due to the deprecation of multi-license bundles.

With Tuesday's update, Office 2011 users can sign up for Microsoft Office 365 if they so choose. Subscription to the Home Premium edition costs $99.99 per year, or $9.99 per month, and grants the use of Office on up to five computers.

In order to take advantage of the newest Office for Mac 2011 version, existing owners must have version 14.1.0 or higher installed on a machine running OS X 10.5.8 or later, while Office 365 requires an Intel Mac and OS X 10.6 or higher. The download is available through Auto Update or Microsoft's website.

christopher126 · May 7, 2013 9:27PM

Thanks, but no thanks. I don't want anything MS on my iPhone, iPad, MBA, etc. I won't even consider Ford anymore because of the MS sync association. I just don't want MS anywhere in my life!

MS, HP, Motorola, Samsung, Dell, Sony, Google, Yahoo, ATT, Verizon, Cable companies had their chance and they either wanted to sell my personal info or tried to sell me subpar SW/HW. Just trying to rip me off!

gadgetcanada · May 7, 2013 9:36PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by christopher126

Thanks, but no thanks. I don't want anything MS on my iPhone, iPad, MBA, etc. I won't even consider Ford anymore because of the MS sync association. I just don't want MS anywhere in my life!

MS, HP, Motorola, Samsung, Dell, Sony, Google, Yahoo, ATT, Verizon, Cable companies had their chance and they either wanted to sell my personal info or tried to sell me subpar SW/HW. Just trying to rip me off!

Although I'm not as fanatical as you, I would love to get away from MS software. Unfortunately nobody has made a spreadsheet near as powerful as MS Excel. That's the only stinkin program that still ties me to MS.

scotty321 · May 7, 2013 9:51PM

If you call Office 2011 "long in the tooth", what do you call Pages '09 and Numbers '09 and Keynote '09 and iPhoto '09? It's been almost 5 years without a major update from Apple! I think Apple has completely forgotten that they even make software anymore.

curtis hannah · May 7, 2013 9:57PM

christopher126 wrote: »

Thanks, but no thanks. I don't want anything MS on my iPhone, iPad, MBA, etc. I won't even consider Ford anymore because of the MS sync association. I just don't want MS anywhere in my life!

MS, HP, Motorola, Samsung, Dell, Sony, Google, Yahoo, ATT, Verizon, Cable companies had their chance and they either wanted to sell my personal info or tried to sell me subpar SW/HW. Just trying to rip me off!

AT&T counts as cable

scotty321 wrote: »

If you call Office 2011 "long in the tooth", what do you call Pages '09 and Numbers '09 and Keynote '09 and iPhoto '09? It's been almost 5 years without a major update from Apple! I think Apple has completely forgotten that they even make software anymore.

The basic structure for pages and Microsoft for after 2000 are all similar, however with it almost a decade later a major redesign would be nice. Yet apple has moved it's focus to pages for IOS with it not 5 but 3 years sinse major update.

cintos · May 8, 2013 12:15AM

... I bought a subscription for 365 on Mac in March. 5 machines for $99 a year. And while I have never owned a computer that ran windows, I have been using Word, PowerPoint and Excel since they were Mac-only products. Poor MS users in the '80s had to use WordPerfect, Lotus123 and Harvard Graphics.

ash471 · May 8, 2013 12:39AM

The only feature that I want from Microsoft Word to implement is a halfway reasonable backup system. MS is the most incompetent worthless company on the face of the planet. Why won't they use Apple's built in autosave feature? It is totally ridiculous that after almost two years they won't just implement it. Do they want me to loathe and hate them for the documents that I have lost because of their utter and complete incompetence? MS makes the Word back ups volatile and inaccessible, which was a brain dead idea in the 90s, but at least it was understandable given constraints and speeds on hard drives in the 90s. In 2013, it is just complete and absolute incompetence to make the backup file volatile and inaccessible.

umrk_lab · May 8, 2013 2:22AM

For me, this is "MS Nowhere !"

saarek · May 8, 2013 2:46AM

curtis hannah wrote: »

Yet apple has moved it's focus to pages for IOS with it not 5 but 3 years sinse major update.

No, iWork 09 was released in January 2009 & has received no major updates. Little updates that they had to apply & the iOS version do not count. iWork is essentially 4.5 years old & has been severely neglected.

As much as people may dislike MS, Office 2011 is far newer that iWork.

I'd not be surprised to see an MS Office 2014 version being announced soon, not a fan of the subscription model myself.

enzos · May 8, 2013 3:10AM

Just updated. No problems. Apart from having to use MS Office.

Actually Office is fast and reliable on the MBAir and has a lot of nice features (for academic work). The problem is the nifty features are so hard to find and implement among all the levels of menus and dialogue boxes that you need to spend weeks or months to learn to use the suite with anything approaching 'ease'. The learning curve for iWork is far easier (and KeyNote is far smarter than the car salesman's tool of choice, PowerPoint), it just needs a fuller feature set and complete compatibility with Office files to be a winner.

MacPro · May 8, 2013 7:28AM

I have often wondered over the years why Apple hasn't bought one of the better open office for Mac companies as a starting point along with the authors and created a really professional version. iWorks is nice but hardly up to full blown professional work at the level of Microsoft Office. MS have turned Office into a bloated nightmare, Apple I would think could create a really nice pro office suite. Also suck Claris, aka Filemaker, back into the fold to produce both a consumer grade and professional grade database suite to go along with the office suite at reasonable prices instead of FMPro's outdated and outrageous pricing structure. Databases (I realize this is off topic a bit) have not progressed in decades really. It's time for some modern thinking to step in, in database design. I loved PFS in its day, those that were using Macs in the 1980's will surely remember it and it's free form entry. Compare that with Bento ... ! Having used almost every database ever made in the last 30+ years I cannot believe how cumbersome they still are.

A true Apple Office would be a nice tribute to SJ given he started the ball rolling by hiring Gates' team to create Microsoft Multiplan (later known as Excel) etc. for the Mac before it existed on a PC. That and a nod to VisiCalc ... my long lost love.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc

dbtinc · May 8, 2013 7:40AM

I'm still having problems with the benefits of "leasing" software for $100 per year when there are no major updates for several? I think I'll continue to buy and hold onto what I have (Office 2011). I'm not envisioning any major additions to what is already available.

dgnr8 · May 8, 2013 8:18AM

The majority of software vendors (At least the big ones) I think will no longer produce software to be purchased for downloading.

With 365, Creative Cloud and AutoCAD they have set a new paradigm for software vendors.

With in the next 18 to 24 months i see the software landscape completely changing.

I personally think that this is what Apple is waiting for before releasing updated software.

I can see Apple waiting for other software houses take the initial negative response and when it is finally accepted as the new normal then they will release some kind of new ecosystem where you pay for a subscription for mail software ect.

I have no crystal ball so don't flame me, it just my humble opinion.

fake_william_shatner · May 8, 2013 8:26AM

Why do they describe Microsoft Office as "long in the tooth?" I actually prefer the 2008 version over the 2011 -- because it doesn't have that really, really awful Ribbon. And they didn't rename things AGAIN, just to make it look like more had changed.

I used to use advanced features of Office -- like automating brochures with custom data, or building windows help files (that was back in the day-- you COMPILED the Help file). But for anything robust, their scripting breaks -- it's only a matter of load and time.

They done some obscure improvements to office over the years -- the MOST exciting was adding an eyedropper for color, because I used to have to screen capture a part of a graphic, load it in PhotoShop and sample the color values, and then convert that to base 100 (8 bit per field color, means 0 to 255 in PhotoShop, but Microsoft used 100% for a full color value).

Page layout in Word is still a frustrating mess. PowerPoint without 3rd party enhancements just looks ugly next to Keynote. Excel is still the best spreadsheet ever, as long as you never tried anything else (I didn't, so I can't make an informed opinion there, LOL).

I feel sorry for MS now. They really are hampered by their own success. The people who depend on their software and OS to be the same. It was a major feat to put Windows 8 on a cell phone -- that had to be a pretty scary project. It's like winning the Guinness Book of World Records for eating the most hot dogs in 5 minutes -- but other than being incredible, what real use is there to cramming that much stuff that you cannot possibly digest? Can you put it on a resume? "We managed to stuff a desktop OS onto a phone -- a freak'n phone for crying out loud! Now we are going to see how many marshmallows we can melt with this laser we pulled from an XBox sitting in the break room at that office building across the street!"

mr. me · May 8, 2013 8:35AM

Multiplan was developed originally for CP/M. It was easily portable to MS-DOS, the Macintosh, and other platforms because it was written in Microsoft's proprietary p-code. It was a competitor for VisiCalc. The only thing that Excel had in common with Multiplan was that they were both Microsoft applications.

Now, to my point... There have been other full-featured spreadsheets for the Macintosh. Unfortunately, Microsoft drove them out of business. If a developer were to satisfy all of the bleating and begging in this thread, then Excel would still be the last spreadsheet standing. So long as you demand a plug replacement for Excel, you will keep Microsoft in charge of your spreadsheet needs. Microsoft will be overturned only if its formats are overturned. That begins with the user. When the user-base turns to other document formats, Microsoft will crumble.

fake_william_shatner · May 8, 2013 8:47AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DGNR8

The majority of software vendors (At least the big ones) I think will no longer produce software to be purchased for downloading.

With 365, Creative Cloud and AutoCAD they have set a new paradigm for software vendors.

With in the next 18 to 24 months i see the software landscape completely changing.

I personally think that this is what Apple is waiting for before releasing updated software.

I can see Apple waiting for other software houses take the initial negative response and when it is finally accepted as the new normal then they will release some kind of new ecosystem where you pay for a subscription for mail software ect.

I have no crystal ball so don't flame me, it just my humble opinion.

I agree -- this is the TREND. But this is where the class warfare is really going to start showing it's strain. Software used to be a very Democratizing -- or a Meritocratic influence on the job market. You could start from humble beginnings and teach yourself web design, desktop publishing, programming -- as long as you had a computer. I've had 6 years of college, but the IMPORTANT stuff I make a living with was all self taught.

Microsoft and Adobe LET THEIR STUFF be stolen. Then they also came out with huge educational discounts. The basic premise is; let everyone learn it, and they pay for it when they make a living. As a poor honest shmuck, I bought ALL MY SOFTWARE for about the first two decades of computer use. Hoping to really make it big one day, I'd read the manual from front to back over a weekend and then dive in. Two weeks and I was a master.

But now just knowing an app is no guarantee of employment. Now you've got to be good, and a specialist while knowing at least 3 different disciplines. I've seen more jobs for the "Programmer/Interface Designer/3D art/Web Designer/Know JScript JSOM Actionscript 3/ Some kung foo and black magic a plus." And I thought I was the only one who dabbled that far and wide....

... anyway, being as Unicorns are fictitious, the employers seem to want one in pink when they look for an new worker.

You see, the smaller "self made" businesses and the self-employed companies of one or two people probably don't have the margins anymore to pay $1,600 for a suite of programs -- and the big companies with money to spare and who are diligent on all licensing and being a model "citizen" while they offshore their profits and lobby to make more bad things legal -- well, they are constantly "streamlining." Companies like Adobe that have expensive tastes are looking at a shrinking market. Microsoft, a bit more reasonably priced, probably peaked and they aren't going to count on China or India to honor software licensing until THEY sell a version of Office that is better.

>> So everyone is jumping to the cloud to defend against software piracy -- because FEW can AFFORD TO BUY IT.

What happens? The number of people who get access to these incredible programs shrinks -- because there is no more starving artist and hungry college student "training" -- there are unemployed people with 15 years experience "training". So only those who already have money, and are already "in the umbrella" of success are going to have access.

The CLOUD will protect their IP but the value of PhotoShop and Word was that everyone knew how to use it. It's just not ground breaking enough for the casual and aspiring people to shell out the money -- but it's absolutely vital for the resume to know how to use it and have real work experience.

And the CLOUD I think, by and large, makes this software LESS valuable unless you are collaborating with a large team -- and again, that's for people in the umbrella of a successful company and excludes the entrepreneurs.

I think the "rent" model and walled garden are going to become the future of software as a service, and there's going to be a huge backlash -- just not among the people with money, and it would appear at first that they don't count. But it also means that you are going to eventually charge fewer people a lot more, because your not going to get the large numbers -- and software distributed to 10 million costs the same to develop as when it goes to 10 thousand customers.

>> TL;DR -- things are going to get ugly. And we will have Alpha's living inside domes filled with beautiful gardens and the Betas will be toiling away at jobs that are just good enough to feed them. We don't talk about the Gammas.

djames4242 · May 8, 2013 9:38AM

Could they update Office so that it doesn't ask for my license key every.single.time.I.make.the.slightest.change.to.my.hardware.configuration please? I upgrade memory - Office makes me re-register. I replace the HDD with SSD. I have to re-register. I upgrade my SSD to a larger model. I have to re-register. I've had to call Microsoft twice now because I've run out of activations. My HUP license is valid for two computers and I'm preparing to upgrade the second one and, way hey, I'm gonna have to call Microsoft again.

Nothing like punishing legitimate users while pirates have no issues working around their activation crap.

ingenious · May 8, 2013 10:30AM

AppleInsider wrote: »

<li>XLIST command that is used by Gmail is deprecated in Outlook for Mac

AppleInsider wrote: »

At the time, it was thought that the Redmond, Wash., company was pushing Mac users toward an Office 365 subscription due to the deprecation of multi-license bundles.

Not trying to nit-pick, but I believe the author meant "depreciated". If I'm wrong, ignore me -- just trying to help, not be a grammar nazi.

runbuh · May 8, 2013 10:39AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by djames4242

Could they update Office so that it doesn't ask for my license key every.single.time.I.make.the.slightest.change.to.my.hardware.configuration please? I upgrade memory - Office makes me re-register. I replace the HDD with SSD. I have to re-register. I upgrade my SSD to a larger model. I have to re-register. I've had to call Microsoft twice now because I've run out of activations. My HUP license is valid for two computers and I'm preparing to upgrade the second one and, way hey, I'm gonna have to call Microsoft again.

Nothing like punishing legitimate users while pirates have no issues working around their activation crap.

They did - in Office 365 subscriptions, you control what machine has what license and it quits nagging you.

If something does happen and your machine can't tell if it's licensed or not, you just go to to the Office 365 web site, remove the computer registration, then go re-register it yourself. No call to Microsoft. I have an Office365 sub, and have tested multiple Office installs/activations on multiple computers. Those were all removed, and my subscription currently shows that I am using 0 out my 5 installs. I have not had to call Microsoft once during this testing.

Edit: Technically, Office365 currently shows my subscription as "Available Installs: 5 out of 5".

bwik · May 9, 2013 11:53AM

Office 2011 is fully current - not "long in the tooth."

Know what's long in the tooth? iLife and iWork. Microsoft is way, way ahead in the arena. Re: the Ribbon interface -- I used to agree - but deal with it, we're 5+ years into it. There is no going back. It is what it is.

tallest skil · May 9, 2013 11:56AM

Originally Posted by bwik

Office 2011 is fully current - not "long in the tooth."

Office 2013 sure doesn't exist or anything…

Know what's long in the tooth? iLife and iWork. Microsoft is way, way ahead in the arena.

*snort*

Re: the Ribbon interface -- I used to agree - but deal with it, we're 5+ years into it. There is no going back. It is what it is.

BA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

"Yeah, it's absolutely worthless. No, I'm not going to change it. Why? Because it has been around for a while, that's why."

Sounds straight out of an internal Microsoft call.

Microsoft brings Office 365 support to Office for Mac 2011 in software update

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