Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac Review

Posted 10/13/2010 at 11:04am | by Adam Berenstain

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PowerPoint 2011

By taking a lesson or two from Keynote, the new PowerPoint gets your message across to more people in style.

Present Your Case

Presenter View is good...Keynote good.

An improved (and Keynote-inspired) Presenter View makes it easy to show off your creations. The full-screen view shows you the current and upcoming slide, a collapsible filmstrip view of your slide show, your progress in the entire presentation, and any notes you’ve prepared. You do have notes, right? If not, you can also jot down ideas or questions from the audience on the fly, and these notes are automatically assigned to the current slide for later review. If, despite all this, you want to stick with the tools you already know, basic Slide Show features are available inside the current slide panel.

Mobile Movies

New video tools make it a snap to include movies in your slide shows.

Animation can add personality to a presentation, but to really put on a show, you can now embed movies directly into your slides. No more juggling multiple movie files! You can also apply effects like reflections, color correction, and unique borders to your videos that are retained during playback. For a more refined appearance in your slide’s layout, you can now select an image or video still to fill in for your movie while it’s not playing.

No Business Like Show Business

With the new Broadcast Slide Show feature (and a Windows Live ID and the PowerPoint Web App), you can now broadcast your presentations to up to 50 people, even if they don’t have PowerPoint on their computers. All attendees needs is a URL you provide, and they can simply watch your presentation on a Mac, PC, iOS device, or almost anything with a web browser. Now nobody will have an excuse to miss your next pitch.

Awesome Animations

PowerPoint 2011 sports new and improved 3D transitions, motion paths, and a Transitions tab in the ribbon that makes it easy to select and fine-tune effects from one location. And dynamic reordering--the layered 3D view of your document’s contents, a feature PowerPoint shares with Word--makes it easier than ever to bring your work to life. Better still, these snazzy new animations are supported in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows, so you don’t have to worry about anything breaking when it’s time to share your slide shows.

PowerPoint 2011 Verdict

It’s pretty clear to us that many of the new features and tweaks in PowerPoint 2011 have been “inspired” by Keynote, and that’s good news for Mac users. If you prefer to (or must) work in PowerPoint, then you now have improved transitions, animations, a new Presenter View, and features that should have been included years ago, like embedded movie files. Wedded to Broadcast Slide Show, dynamic layer reordering, and compatibility with Office 2010, these tools make PowerPoint 2011 one-stop shopping for crafting and delivering your message to colleagues, whichever platform they use. And isn’t that the point?

Outlook 2011

Outlook returns to the Mac in force to stomp Mail and iCal’s monopoly on your personal information.

The Art of Conversations

Outlook's Conversations feature displays threaded exchanges more clearly than Mail.

Odds are the most important emails in your inbox hash out a specific subject back and forth among several colleagues. Outlook 2011 makes these threaded messages, called conversations, easier to follow by highlighting them in your message list with an arrow. You can click the arrow to see all messages in a thread, or view a preview of the entire conversation in Outlook’s reading pane. Previews show the name of each message’s author, when messages were sent, the first lines of each email, and who contributed to the conversation most recently. And even if you move an email to another folder, it still shows up in the preview with the new location noted--a handy feature. Conversations make it clear at a glance who’s saying what about a topic, but beefier previews (say, a pop-up window showing each complete email as you mouse through the conversation) would make the feature even better.

Pst...Wanna Import Some Info?

Outlook's Import wizard can help you get set up with just a few clicks.

An information manager wouldn’t be much use if it couldn’t work with files from different applications, would it? Outlook 2011 plays nicely with the apps you already have on your Mac, as well as its Windows counterpart. That’s right, Outlook can import .PST (or Personal Storage Table) files that contain email messages, contacts, and events from Outlook 2003 for Windows and later. That should make your system admin happy. What will make you happy is Outlook’s ability to import calendars and to-dos (called tasks in Outlook) from iCal and grab your contacts from exported Address Book vCards. And if you’re still using Entourage 2004 or 2008, don’t worry. Outlook will import the program’s data directly or from an Entourage archive. However, Entourage’s custom views, search settings, and event travel time details aren’t imported into Outlook. Bummer.

Check Your Calendar

Outlook's calendar preview lets you manage your schedule from your inbox.

Why trek back and forth between your email and calendar applications all day long when Outlook can do the job in one window? If you receive an email containing a meeting invitation, Outlook 2011’s calendar preview automatically shows you the meeting’s day and time inside the email, letting you see what events you already have scheduled. Double-click the meeting to open it in a new window, where you can choose a Scheduling Assistant tab that lets you zoom in on the day in question (as well as days nearby) and shows the names of other invitees and their replies. Of course, Scheduling Assistant also allows you to fine-tune your own meetings and share them with others.

Know Your Rights

Your emails to clients and coworkers are serious business. Good thing Office 2011 supports Microsoft’s Information Rights Management, allowing you or your system admin to apply permissions to outgoing emails so sensitive content can’t be printed, copied, or generally fall into the wrong hands--plus, most Office files attached to protected emails receive the same security. Even more importantly, Mac users can now read IRM-protected mail along with the rest of the office. You’ll never be left out of the loop about the real after-work party again.

Built for Big Cats

Outlook may have arrived late to the OS X party, but it’s ready to fit in by making the most of technologies built into your Mac. You can preview attachments right from your inbox with Quick Look and search messages and events with Spotlight. Better still, Outlook 2011’s database can be backed up incrementally by Time Machine as you add reminders and receive new messages. This means you don’t have to back up your entire database every time you get a few new emails. That rocks, but our favorite Outlook integration with OS X has to be the subtle pop-up notifications that fade into view when scheduled reminders occur or when new mail arrives. It’s just enough to get us away from Twitter without being obnoxious.

Get Rich (Email) Quick!

Today’s business communication isn’t just about swapping text memos back and forth--even your emails have to be attractive documents that sell the company message. Outlook 2011’s rich email creation tools let you add links, style text, and change colors in your email, invitations, contacts, and other files. You can create multilevel lists or paste tables into messages, and the data will retain its proper formatting even after recipients forward your email to others.

Outlook 2011 Verdict

Despite the missing Visual Basic for Applications scripting and the few Entourage-import gotchas, businesspeople looking for a personal information manager will be well served by Outlook 2011. Information Rights Management support and compatibility with Outlook 2010 will benefit those in a Windows world. The intelligent mix of email and scheduling functions--we’re looking at you, calendar preview--and the Mac-like interface will be welcome to users looking for something more powerful than Mail and iCal. If you’re already familiar with those apps, Outlook 2011 feels more like an intelligent upgrade to familiar tools than a brand-new Microsoft product.

By building on the best of Office 2008 and adding badly needed compatibility with Windows technologies, Microsoft has delivered a suite that doesn’t treat Mac users like second-class citizens. Office 2011 as a package goes the extra mile to put Mac users on equal footing with the rest of the professional world, which is why it gets an extra half-star compared to the individual application verdicts (and since you can’t buy, say, Word on its own, the suite score is the most important).

While not every application packs a must-have feature, there’s more than enough in the entire suite to warrant an upgrade, especially if you collaborate with users of Office 2010 for Windows. However, if you’ve managed to get your work done this long without Word, Excel, and the rest of the gang, their new features may simply be more than you need. But if you’ve turned your back on Office due to its complexity or lack of key features, Office 2011 may have what it takes to win you back.

Office 2011 for Mac
COMPANY: Microsoft
CONTACT: www.microsoft.com/mac
PRICE: $119 Home and Student Edition (single license), or $149 Family Pack (three licenses). $199 Home and Business Edition (single license) or $279 Multi-Pack (two installs). $99 Academic Edition for higher education students, staff, and faculty.
REQUIREMENTS: (Home and Student Edition) Intel processor, Mac OS 10.5.8 or later, 1GB RAM, 2.5GB hard disk space
New online collaboration tools. Ribbon changes up the toolbar based on what you’re doing. Snappier performance.
Outlook not included in $119 Home and Student Edition or the corresponding $149 Family Pack.