MICROSOFT OUTLOOK 2011 for Mac OS X
A new, faster, better version of Microsoft Office is coming out. It is for the Macintosh computers. . The popular email, calendar and contacts program is finally arriving on the Mac in a version that looks and works very much like the Windows version. The advent of a robust, full-featured Outlook for the Mac isn’t all that’s new in Office for Mac 2011, but it’s a big deal, especially for Mac users, or those wishing to switch to the Mac, who work in companies where Outlook is the standard.
The new Office 2011 uses the same file formats as the Windows version. It can read and write Office files without any conversion or translation, so a document produced in Word for the Mac, can be read by a user of Windows Word without the latter even knowing it was created on a Mac—and vice versa.
The first thing Mac Office users will notice about the new 2011 version is its speed. While the 2008 version was faster than its predecessors, this latest version is dramatically snappier. Big plus is fidelity with Windows documents. Because the Windows and Mac operating systems are different, fidelity isn’t perfect, but it was much better in this new version. This is especially noticeable in Excel, where charts and layouts on complex spreadsheets sometimes didn’t carry over.
The new Mac version has restored the same macro system present in the Windows version, so automated actions created by power users and companies in Windows documents can now be used in the Mac version.
Outlook replaces a Microsoft (MSFT) email, contacts and calendar program in Mac Office called Entourage, which itself succeeded an old, very limited version of Outlook for the Mac produced years ago. Many users found Entourage clunky and complicated, and it couldn’t directly import data from Outlook on Windows. Microsoft strove hard to make the new Outlook look and work like the one on Windows.
But Microsoft is still working on syncing with Apple’s iCal calendar program, and the Outlook calendar can’t sync with Google Calendar. Also, while the new Mac Outlook can import Windows Outlook data, it can’t export its data to Windows yet. Microsoft says it is also working on that. Outlook on the Mac proved fast and capable. It doesn’t work exactly like its Windows counterpart, but Windows users will find it very similar. And it has some Mac-specific features.