Mac Office 2011 due later this year

Jake Widman
Friday, 12 February 2010 08:27

Business IT - Technology

Microsoft confirmed that the next version of its productivity suite for the Macintosh, Office for Mac, will be out in the fourth quarter of 2010. It will get some interface changes a la Office for Windows, some new features, and even a new component.


An online press conference this morning offered confirmation of some previously announced features of the upcoming Office for Mac 2011, as well as a look at the changed interface.

Microsoft is touting the collaboration features of the new Office, with its new co-authoring tools. In Word, for example, more than one person can work on the same document at the same time and see what paragraphs each of them is editing.

Also, as previously reported, the new version will be compatible with Office Web Apps. Web Apps, already available for Windows Office users, allows online viewing and editing of Office documents.

Office for Mac 2011 will share other features with Office Windows, too. One of the most noticeable is that it is getting the Office 2007-style Ribbon.

Mac Office 2008 took a step in that direction with the Elements Gallery, and Office 2011 goes the rest of the way -- or at least Word does, with sections on the Ribbon for common font, paragraph, and style formatting commands.

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