Office for Mac 2011 and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion
We’ve been getting a lot of questions about running Office for Mac 2011 on Lion, so we’re offering this post to help inform your decision about when to upgrade to Lion.
We’ve been working with Apple from the early days of Lion, and collectively have been able to address many issues leading up to the Lion release. Many of our Office for Mac engineers have been running Lion for months, and are generally having no problems running Office 2011 on it.
There are two large- and several smaller Office for Mac 2011 issues (on Lion) that we want to highlight. First, Communicator for Mac crashes when you send an instant message or start an audio/visual call. We will fix this issue in an upcoming update to Communicator for Mac. (Note that many users may never use Communicator, because it’s a corporate product, and not included with the mainline Office products.)
Second, on Lion, Outlook can’t import mail from Apple Mail. We’re reviewing this and don’t yet have a plan to fix it. However, if your mail is already in Outlook, then this issue won’t affect you.
The smaller Office issues are fairly minor or cosmetic, things like windows that might not align as they did in Snow Leopard, and we will continue to work together with Apple to fix these in our next regular updates.
Office 2008 will also benefit from a couple of updates. While our first priority is Office 2011, we will fully test and take care of any significant issues on 2008 as well.
If you’re thinking about upgrading to Lion soon, be prepared for the Communicator and Outlook issues, and a few other small issues, but rest assured we will have updates available through our Automatic Updates channel in the near future.
And if you’d like the latest info at any time, please check the Office for Mac Knowledge Base for complete details.
Thank you for your questions and keep ‘em coming!
Pat Fox — Office for Mac
I just upgraded to Lion and now Word & Excel hang at random (spinny ball). Did not see this that much with Snow Leopard, if at all. It’s like it can’t find what it’s looking for but what could it be looking for?
This is very helpful and useful information, and just what Users need to know.
Thanks!
does auto save and versions work?
What timeline can we expect on the Communicator update?
After upgrading to OS X Lion, when the Excel for Mac 2011 application starts and opens a file in the Startup directory, the error message stating the file is already open and that “reopening will cause any changes you made to be discarded” is displayed. It doesn’t matter if the file is saved or not after opening. Is this a known issue? I am opening the same file I have used for years. Thanks…
Thanks for the post, but you made no mention of whether or not you’ll take advantage of Lion’s new features like Autosave, Fullscreen etc. Can you please provide us with an update on that?
Cheers.
Hi, any news on versions and how it is or will be incorporated into word etc? I haven’t been able to find it as yet so I imagine it isn’t yet functional with microsoft office?
Hi there,
Does that mean it can be installed fresh on a new Mac running Lion?
Thanks
are you planning on adding support for full screen mode to Excel, Powerpoint and Word (2011), this will let the Lion users to comfortably use the office products
Good to know – but what about compatibility with some of Lion’s new features, such as full-screen apps and file versions? Will there be an update?
And how about new features like Autosave and versions ?
When are these implemented?
I am running Microsoft Word 2008 for Mac V 12.3.0 and am experiencing problems with Lion since I loaded it yesterday. It always worked fine with Snow Leopard. The main issue is that intermittently, but regularly, Word stops responding when I try to print a document. The only solution is to reboot the iMac and start from scratch. I work in an environment where Word is the universal document processor so I am currently cursing the fact I went ahead with the upgrade; it may have been 2 steps forward but it was also 5 steps backward. Now I am wondering what problems I will get with my Excel for Mac
So you’re saying you are working on updates for Office 2008. Does this mean you will make sure Office 2008 is compatible with OS X Lion?
Right now I hear mixed signals: some people can use Office 2008 on Lion, others have issues.
Right now I don’t feel sure to install Lion.
I believe MS should make Office 2008 compatible with Lion too, since I bought the program less than a year ago…
Please confirm this has your attention…
Yeah I also wonder about Autosave, versions and resume.
@Jan
Yes! Would like use Versions and Autosave in Office.
Same as above…what about autosave? That is an amazing feature and we would really like to see it.
I would like to know when Autosave and versions will be implemented as well.
I have sort of the reverse issue. I need to decide when to upgrade to Office for MAC 2011. It sounds like you intend to issue free updates to that product taking care of all issues, so that I can go ahead if I can verify that the communicator issue does not affect me. (I’m using Outlook, so the other issue is not important for me). Is that correct? Of course, if the communicator issue does affect me, I should wait.
I use Messenger for Mac – any comments on Lion compatibility with that app?
I also use Remote Desktop for Mac – any comments on Lion compatibility with that app?
Yeah, I would like to see implementation of the Versions feature.
I am having a MAJOR problem with Office 2011 and LION –
when 2011 is installed, i can not get past the log-on screen after a restart
i restored LION, re-installed 2011 with and without updates- same BUG
i then installed Office 2008, works fine
I have Office 2011 and have just upgraded to Lion. In a new e-mail when I try to copy and paste the paste always appears at the top of the e-mail, and not where the cursor is. I consider this to be more than a minor problem.
To my previous post, I think I found the source of my problem in Lion and it has nothing to do with Office for Mac 2011. Sorry for the false alarm.
Basically, the mtmd process (mobile time machine daemon), which makes snapshots for Time Machine on the local disk, was the culprit as it hijacked most all of the CPU.
Office for Mac 2011 works just fine on Lion!
Thank you very much for explaining the Microsoft issues with Lion. I just uninstalled MS 2008 since I have been running MS 2011 for several months now. Getting ready to download OSX Lion and am confident that the great MS Mac team will get out the fixes we need for MS 2011 soon. Thank you. Kathy Opphile.
I am having an issue where address book and outlook for mac 2011 are not syncing. All contacts in outlook are gone and I can find no way to sync up with address book. This may be because I transferred my settings from another mac after installing Lion? All my old e-mails are there, in “recovered folders”, but all my contacts are missing.
Thanks
Any chance of a new Office 2008 installer? Since the old installer required Rosetta it’s currently not possible to install Office 2008 on a new Mac with OS X Lion or with a fresh install.
I agree with Jan – when will a Lion-optimised version of word be coming out.. is it planned?
Most Office 2011 users I’ve talked with are most interested in Office compatibility with Lion’s new “versions” feature.
An information about the implementation of the new lion features would be also interesting for me.
Also if iCloud will be supported in a few month.
What about calendar sync with iCal? and sync with Apple iCloud?
I just read that as of August 2010, Hotmail/MSN supports Exchange ActiveSync so that devices such as iPhones and iPads can access Hotmail/MSN with folders etc.
I am trying to duplicate this feature in Outlook 2011 for Mac and it does not work, as the m.hotmail.com server does not seem to respond. I have followed the instructions posted on the Window Live Blog (http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2010/08/30/hotmail-now-supports-push-email-calendar-and-contacts-with-exchange-activesync.aspx) which explain the simple setup process.
As Outlook 2011 supports Exchange accounts, you would think that MS would also support Hotmail/MSN in this way (considering it owns Hotmail/MSN and it is its own server, etc). Apple got this to work, I would think MS would do the same.
Any thoughts on this very frustrating situation? I am simply trying to access my mail from a Mac and I can’t do so. (I do know that Outlook for Windows has the Outlook Connector that takes care of this issue . . . )
Thank you for any advice.
P. Kalellis
How about getting Microsoft Query to be Universal or Intel so it will even run on Lion to see if it would work? Importing ODBC data into Excel is impossible without this, and it is a PPC binary. Now, there is no Rosetta, so it is useless.
I’m with Jen’s comment above.
Also, what about having the applications run full screen like Safari, Mail, iCal, and others do now?
As Jan mentioned above in reference to Autosave and Versions, these are hugely important document management features in Lion. Apple brought for _free_ with an update to Pages. It would be a shame if they weren’t included in Office until the next major release.
It’s all worth considering refashioning the full-screen mode to comply with Lion’s full screen API.
I am running Mac Office 2011, and immediately following my upgrade to Lion Outlook 2011 will not start. Splash screen comes up, spotlight under the icon, then it all disappears (this is first time after boot). Subsequent attempts and the Outlook splash screen flashes and disappears.
I have rebuilt my database using the database utility – didn’t work. Renamed the ‘identity’ folder and that didn’t work either. I am currently on travel and don’t have my Office disks with me to try a reload.
Any help appreciated.
Kevin
And what about Full screen mode? If Word eventually does run in full screen mode, where would the ugly, separate toolbar for Endnote go? Can Endnote’s toolbar be gracefully integrated into the Ribbon like it does on the Windows side?
I agree with the question above. Any plans to support the new features of Lion? Especially Versions.
Thank you.
… and how about installing and then running Office 2008?
Will the 2008 Installer work as required?
Key question: Does Lion for an upgrade to Office 2011?
Key question: Does Lion force an upgrade to Office 2011?
Agreed. When will you be supporting versions?
Any plans to take advantage of the full screen API’s?
I too am interested in Versions and if it will be supported.
Rosetta’s not included with Lion, which means PPC code won’t run on Lion at all, so I ran a find command from the /Applications/Microsoft Office 2011 directory to locate all PowerPC binaries. Here’s the output, if it helps at all:
http://pastebin.com/mr3gJM5f
Would it just be a matter of simply recompiling the aforementioned code for Intel instead of PowerPC or is there some serious porting work to be done?
Hope to see that list go all the way down to zero!
Many thanks for a very helpful and informative post. Well done and thanks for all your work getting Office up to speed for Lion. My users are already adopting it!
I’d be interested in that, too. Will Office 2011 support the new features like Autosave, versions and fullscreen-mode?
Best regards
Hauke
Entourage 2008 doesn’t work in Lion for me. Not sure if it’s an issue with my company’s exchange server or what (it only crashes when trying to update the mailbox). I’m not about to upgrade to Outlook, though, unless that too is working rock solid in Lion.
As Jan says what about Autosave and versions? You been working with Lion engineers for months, and can’t even included a comment on a major new feature in your release? And about the calendar sync that was supposed to be coming in a few months? I always liked Office for the PC, but the Mac Team does not seem to be honest.
I can’t use the ‘search’ option for any emails that are in my inbox – unless they were received after the os x upgrade. How can this be fixed. It is a huge problem for me.
If Microsoft are working closely with Apple with regards to Lion, are they doing the same for developing a solution for synchronising calendars with the iPhone using MobileMe/iCloud?
Ok, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that maybe a technical error occurred which caused my comment to be removed.
So I’ll ask it again.
Any plans for an installer to allow Office 2008 to be installed on a new Lion installation? For example, a new machine with it pre-installed or a fresh installation on an existing machine.
Without this, my version of Office is pretty much useless.
Yes, it shouldn’t be that hard to implement Autosave. Please won’t let us wait too years so we can benefit from the new lion features.
I have the same question as Jan, are there any plans to introduce support for the versions and autosave features? Also it would be nice to have office run in the same way as fullscreen apps like iTunes etc, so that it occupies its own space.
Also, when will Full Screen Mode (the Lion style, not the MS style) be enabled? Hopefully, in one those regular updates you mentioned?
I want to know why Microsoft didn’t preempt Office 2004 users that it’s not supported by Lion?
Versions and autosave?
The Outlook 2011 search function becomes disabled under Lion 10.7.
Is there any way to release an update so that the 2004 version of office will run because I don’t want to have to purchase new software.
I have upgraded to OS X Lion and Syn Services in my Outlook 2011 appear to have stopped working as my contacts are not syncing with Address Book and my Calendar entries are not syncing with iCal.
Any help or advice will be very much appreciated. Thanks. Roger
Will Word offer native Full Screen support? (Implemented as a space like Safari does it) or will we be stuck with the current way?
Will Microsoft Office 2010 work with Lion? Most of the websites I’ve looked at have only mentioned the 2008 and 2011 versions.
Microsoft PowerPoint is disabled by OSX 10.7 Lion. After upgrading to Lion, the PP icon in the dock, appears barred off . Trying to open it gives the message: You can’t open the application Microsoft PowerPoint because PowerPC applications are no longer supported.
What’s wrong.
Mac OS X 10.7 does not support Office for Mac 2004: that is a given, but I have 3 questions:
1. How does on disable the “You can not open…message so it does not pop up repeatedly?
2. Documents created with Word for Mac 2004 on this computer still open, thank you very much, but will they still if Office for Mac 2004 is deleted from the hard drive? If so, that would seem to be the solution for question 1., yes?
3. Is there a more general solution for deleting all Microsoft apps that are not supported by Lion?
Office will not open word files that are on external hard drive, files that before Lion were easily opened. If I drag the files to my desktop there will then open
Help?
I ditto Jan response, “how about Autosave and Versions?” I have Office: Mac 2008, I love it, but am disappointed that both features don’t work with OS X Lion. Please fix this and include with your updates Microsoft.
From what I gather in reading various articles, Microsoft has no plans on writing code so that my Office 2004 can be supported on Mac Lion. Is that correct?
What about full screen? Will all office applications be able to take advantage of the full screen method under Lion?
Pitch to zoom. Will this zoom method finally be coming to Office for mac applications? This would be v. nice to have.
Having trouble with large excel files running on Excel for Mac 2011 and Lion. Excel practically stops running on a brand new iMAC (spring 2011 model) and will not respond properly to mouse entries. Finally had to force excel to shut down just to be able to exit use the computer. Tried restarting the machine and running the files again. Same result. Files are about 60 mb. I had no issues with Snow Leopard.
I just installed last Office for Mac 2011 Home and Student on my Intel MacBook Pro running OS X 10.7 Lion last night but Office for Mac 2011 is not working.
After successfully installing Office I put in the Product Key and it came up with a screen saying “Your copy of Office for Mac is now activated”. I clicked continue and went on to select download of updates and register my copy of the software. At the end of that process it said my software was registered, but when i went to open up Word, it would not open and came up with the same screen in voting me to register, saying “Your copy of Office for Mac is now activated”. I went through the process again and the same thing happened. I tried it again opening up Excel and the same thing happened. Excel would not open and I got the same screen saying “Your copy of Office for Mac is now activated”.
Any hints on what I need to do to get i working?
Andy
I have Office for Mac 2008 on my 2010 iMac which came loaded with Snow Leopard.
I have downloaded Lion and all my OfM 2008 applications now do not open.
There is a circle with a diagonal line over each icon and a dialogue box which says PowerPC is no longer supported.
Is there a fix?
Will OfM 2011 work. If I upgrade to OfM 2011 can I retrieve my data?
A full-screen mode that sticks when changing spaces would be much appreciated..
I’d say that the situation with Office 2008 is more serious than it needing “a couple of updates” since you can’t even install it on Lion since the installer needs Rosetta…
I have recently installed Lion and I have lost all my e-mail folders, contacts and calendar entries from Office for Mac. I’m trying to find information on how to get all this back but I am really struggling in finding any help at all. Can anyone point me in the right direction or provide some advice on this matter? Any help would be would be greatly appreciated.
Have you considered the possibility of giving away a 2011 upgrade to 2008 user for free (or super, super cheap), thus saving you from having to support a legacy product and waste development effort (I’m not an Office user)
Tnx. for the update. Any idea when the communicator update will be available?
Hi Pat,
Are there any plans to offer an Office 2008 universal installer so users of 2008 can reinstall under Lion if they need to?
Many thanks
Beatle
Any date for the update? Communicator has been broken for months while I’ve been using the dev builds, I’d be happy to have it work again!
And what about versions&autosave?
So it’s not going to work on office 2004?
Do you have an ETA on the Office Communicator fix? I use OC constantly during the day for work and am completely cut off from the world without it.
Ditto what Jan said. It’s great that you guys are trying to ensure that anything that’s broken gets fixed, but it would be nice if you strived to make MS Office take advantage of Lion and not just be “functional” in Lion.
To answer Jan:
None of Lion’s functions are embedded into Office 2011, mainly since they haven’t done so yet or want to try.
No update is released yet anyways.
You should wait for next Office suite for mac if you want any of these functions.
It’s just how Microsoft is.
Lame.
Please note the 13.0.0 version of communicator works for IM. The update is when I first to see the crashes. Hopefully that helps with the crash issue.
Is Messenger Version 6.0.3 compatible with Lion. I need it to communicate with my company.
Too late. I quit using Oulook.
I would just love it if cut and paste in MS Word 2008 would work properly. At the moment, when I have two documents open on two different screens in Lion, it is very difficult to select text in one of the two documents. I basically have to select a program other than word and then return to word when moving between two word documents.
Is this a problem in Word 2011?
Any chance we can get a plugin for iChat v.6.0 to support the Office Communicator now that iChat v.6.0 support plugins? It would greatly simplify the use of multiple clients, fix the usability issues on Communicator and just make a better overall experience for users.
I am kind of baffled by the “most users won’t notice” statement about Communicator.
While it is separated out, many of us do in fact use it all the time. I’m glad to see an update is coming, but communicator need some very serious updates beyond just fixing it for lion and would like to get some updates on when that will be happening.
How about adding more lync compatibility? Ability to use lync shared presentations (not just shared desktop), updates to the GUI to match info in meetings etc. Basically to match the usability of the pc lync clint on the Mac.
+1 to what Scot said. Communicator is a “good enough” solution for mac users in a MS environment (given that Lync is the future), and the recent incompatibility–and attempt of a Jedi mind trick that it’s not that important–cost me hours of productivity and answering “you’re not on IM” emails.
@Scot – If you trash and reinstall Communicator 13.0.0 (and ignore the 13.1.1 update), Communicator will work fine in Lion (except for that
@Scot – If you trash and reinstall Communicator 13.0.0 (and ignore the 13.1.1 update), Communicator will work fine in Lion (except that you cannot share your Desktop with other users).
I’m also concerned about the timeline for the Communicator 2011 issue with Lion, considering that the whole product is basically unusable for any of it’s primary purposes.
When I receive a IM, it crashes immediately. When I try to send and IM it crashes immediately. When I try to start a video call it crashes immediately.
If most of the developers have been running Lion for several months, I’m not sure how it can be totally go unnoticed–as these are some of the most basic functions of the app.
Is there any timeline or estimate for when the Communicator update will be available? If it’s “months” then I may need to find alternatives.
I have hit a major issue with Outlook 2011. Having installed Office 2011 and imported my emails from Outlook I decided to have a clear-out of old mail. This I did and when it came to emptying the deleted items folder, Outlook crashed. As there were quite a few files, I decided to select fewer and delete them. Outlook crashed again. Upon restarting Outlook the next time, all my Outlook folders and emails had disappeared. I fortunately, or so I thought, had backed up my iMac using 2 different programs (Time Machine and Memeo AutoBackup, I’m trying to decide which one to run permanently) but Outlook refused to read the “main identity” file from either program. Microsoft support spent over 2 hours with me trying various approaches, but have since escalated it to a higher technical resource. I want to go back to the “new” mail in Lion but as it’s not a simple task to recover Outlook 2011 email files, and I’m no geek, I’m stuck in limbo.
Hi I use communicator every day how about a simple fix that allows us to use it while your working out the bugs, letting us go back to the version before the upgrade?
@Anne – Microsoft Office 2010 is for Windows. So, no, it will definitely not work with Lion.
Word 2008 crashes whenever I try to open a document longer than a page. Also crashes when trying to save a .docx file to .pdf.
Please fix the issue.
Try rebuilding spotlight and check if it fixes the search issues in Outlook 2011 on Lion
Since installing Lion, have lost the connection to Outlook 2011 via Share, Email as attachment. Also, workflow that used to email files from Finder via Outlook no longer functions.
In the case of the former, Word suggests checking the email is et up correctly. It is.
Will you implement Versions, Autosave, and full screen features with Office:Mac 2008?
Remote Desktop seems to be working fine on my Lion install. I left Office 2008 and Entourage and am never looking back. Outlook is fantastic against our Exchange 2010 environment. Very nice job. As for Communicator, the version that came with Office 2011 works fine, it is the subsequent updates that seem to cause the problem as I deleted Communicator and went back to the original installation media and dug through to the Communicator install and installed it. Running we for me now, no more crashing when I hit send. I will upgrade when MS releases their final. I found the instructions for installing the original Communicator on the internet.
So far I am loving Lion and Office 2011 remains my favorite Office distribution. But, I may not use it as deeply as many of you. I’m looking forward to “true” Lion compatibility for things like full screen apps, but at least my daily workflow still functions properly.
We seem to have found a minor issue with Outlook 2011 under Lion. The previous method of inserting an image into a Signature (bloated as it may be) which involved pasting into Word, then copying out of Word and into Outlook no longer works. We spent a good 30 minutes attempting varying methods to get a graphic in, all of which failed. It previously worked under Snow Leopard.
Like CMF, I’m having the same problem with Mac for Word 2008 running on Lion on a MacBook pro. Cut and paste, highlighting text with a mouse click, not working. Sometimes the cursor won’t blink even though it’s there. Argh.
Also i just have to note and say thanks for the great post, its nice to have a software developer on top of things and letting users know important information regarding issues and that fix’s are on the way. Again great job mac dev team.
I am having trouble with Office 2011. It worked fine when I installed in 10.6.7 and after I upgraded to 10.6.8. After upgrading to Lion, it won’t open at all, most of the time. Despite nothing being open, on a MacBook Pro with 4GB and 150GB free on the hard drive, it will tell me insufficient memory and hard drive. It will also repeatedly close before opening, and then once in a while it will finally open the document gallery and freeze there without opening anything.
I have re-installed it, and then re-installed Lion and then re-installed it, followed the long list of instructions for uninstalling it and then re-installed it, and it still doesn’t work.
However, Office 2008 still works.
Hey Guys,
I have been doing some Testing for Lion (I’m an IT Geek)
What I’ve noticed is that Communicator is not working when Lion is installed as an upgrade (installing from the Mac App Store)
but if you pull out a DMG installer of out Lion (looking in the “Show package contents”) an wipe the hard drive and install a fresh version of Lion from scratch, that seems to work.
Might do some more testing with other issues to see if Databases don’t like the physical upgrade but are fine when created in Lion.
What about features like VERSIONS, AUTO SAVE/RESUME, and FULL SCREEN???
I have just upgraded to Lion and have Office 2011 installed. So far no issues to report. However, I think it would be very prudent for Microsoft to get an update out that supports full screen and versions as quickly as possible. I also have a copy of iwork and, whilst I find the software limiting, I may start using this because it fits more seamlessly into the operating system.
Microsoft- can you inform us if there will be an update, or will these features be left for another version as previous comments have suggested?
the patch is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26835
Versions and autosave – do you have any news when these will be available?
After the Lion update Outlook doubled a lot of my appointments, may be a problem with the iCal sync
I’ll chime in with all the others; how about Versions and AutoSave? I do understand you don’t want the Mac version of Office to have an edge over the Windows version, but this does seem like a rather important point, too important, as a matter of fact, just to ignore it, both in this blogpost and in reply to all these questions in the comments.
@macfixer: Thanks for the tip to downgrade! 13.0.0 works like a charm.
@maxfixer – Yes this solution works I have been using Communicator in Lion with this fix since the beta version. I just reinstalled Office 2011 and never updated Communicator.
IF you implement autosave and versions, please, please, don’t get rid of “Save As !” This is, as far as I am concerned, a huge loss in pages, and I bought and installed MS Office 2011 just to have this feature available. Pages no longer has this feature, and people hoping for “Versions” should examine the implications. In Pages, you now have to “export” a file to rename and/or put it in a specific location, so whatever you do, Mircosoft, don’t get rid of that wonderful “Save As” option that allows for renaming and copying one’s files to a new location.
since upgrading to Lion I’ve noticed that all my Excel for Mac files that I share with Windows Office via Parallels are now all locked on the Mac side and read only. I can only update MS files via Windows… ??? Any thoughts?
Outlook crashes for me within a few minutes of startup every single time with the following logs:
11-07-27 2:05:07.742 PM Microsoft Outlook: CFURLCreateWithString was passed this invalid URL string: ‘/EWS/Exchange.asmx’ (a file system path instead of an URL string). The URL created will not work with most file URL functions. CFURLCreateWithFileSystemPath or CFURLCreateWithFileSystemPathRelativeToBase should be used instead.
11-07-27 2:05:30.975 PM [0x0-0xf00f0].com.microsoft.Outlook: Microsoft Outlook(3285,0xb071b000) malloc: *** mmap(size=526876672) failed (error code=12)
11-07-27 2:05:30.975 PM [0x0-0xf00f0].com.microsoft.Outlook: *** error: can’t allocate region
11-07-27 2:05:30.975 PM [0x0-0xf00f0].com.microsoft.Outlook: *** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug
11-07-27 2:05:37.861 PM [0x0-0xf00f0].com.microsoft.Outlook: monitor: bootstrap_look_up failed (os/kern) unknown error code (44e)
+1 vote for rolling out a Communicator fix post-haste. It’s hard to believe that Lion Developer Preview did not highlight this issue for months, but I’ll choose to err on the side of caution; stranger things have happened. However, rolling out a hot fix for this must be a “round the clock, get it done”. The old world of enterprise software that developed in a waterfall and released rarely no longer fits the new world of user expectations, folks. Thanks in advance for an update this week, please!
I notice that you are dealing with the date formatting issues in WORD.
Another issue — when I attempt to sync Outlook 2011 NOTES from my MacBook Pro to my iPhone4 and iPad2 only ‘new/recent’ notes sync.
I found a temporary way around … by going into each Outlook note and edited it … and then saving it.
I’m glad Office seems to work in OSX7, but…
Is there any plan to add the “Full Screen” icon
at the top right. That’d be the greatest addition
that you guys could update.
This thread is filled with posts asking for new Lion-specific features. That’s all fine and well, but I think the bug fixes should come first. Specifically…
1) After upgrading Snow Leopard 10.6.7 to Lion 10.7, I found that Outlook’s Schedules do not work. The schedule rule I had before was intact, but for good measure I redid it. It still didn’t work. The schedule rule was setup to grab my email once every 8 minutes. It’s very frustrating that this is now broken under Lion.
2) After installing Lion on my iMac’s internal 1TB drive, atop Snow Leopard, I rebooted. I then immediately launched Outlook. Shortly thereafter I launched Safari. Then immediately after that I started getting crash dialogs that said mdworker32 was crashing. The crash dialog appeared once every 20 seconds. I confirmed within that dialog that Outlook and Spotlight were not getting along and crashing.
I Googled about the problem and then decided to follow someone’s advice about removing the “Microsoft Office.mdimporter” file from:
iMac/Macintosh HD/Library/Spotlight
The errors continued. I Googled again. This time, I found that someone suggested removing the “Microsoft Outlook.mdimporter” from:
/Applications/Microsoft Office 2011/Microsoft Outlook/Contents/Library/Spotlight
After pulling that file out and onto my Desktop, the error dialogs ceased. That remained true even after I put the “Microsoft Office.mdimporter” back. It seems that the plugin inside the Outlook app is at fault here. I have yet to put that file back inside the Outlook app, but I must say I am very disconcerted about having been forced to “hack the Outlook app” to get the errors to stop. And I am also aware that by having removed that file from the Outlook app, Spotlight will not index my emails. I’m not pleased about that. Furthermore, I am worried that my Outlook app may not update when MS finally gets around to giving us an updater, if that plugin is removed from the app.
3) After sending mail, the message will get sent (I can confirm it) but Outlook will randomly show 1 or more messages in the “Outbox” in the lower left corner of the left sidebar. But when I double-click on the Outbox, it’s empty. Of course it’s empty because the mail got sent! So the bug is that Outlook is not clearing some flag in the code and so it still shows something is in the Outbox, but that is in fact not true.
These are serious issues that were not present under OS 10.6 Snow Leopard. Please address these as soon as possible.
Thank you.
I would like to add one more thing about Outlook 2011 problems.
After using Outlook (on Lion) for 5 or 10 minutes, it will begin acting funny. If I drag an email from my Inbox to a folder within Outlook, nothing happens. I try to delete an email, but nothing happens. It’s only when I restart Outlook that I discover the changes I made were in fact made — Outlook simply did not show them to me. This is a repeatable bug.
Thank you.
since I upgraded to Lion, search function in Outlook 2011 doesn’t work
I have the same problem as a few more have mentioned. Outlook 2011 fail to start at all.
When can this be expected to be corrected? Really a disaster.
After upgrading to lion 10.7 my outlook 2011 will not start. The icon bounces twice, the logo appears for 2 seconds and that it. The second thing is that every time i start up my MacBook Pro a ‘MerpAD Outlook’ file is in my trash bin within folder ‘Recovered files’. All other office programs are working o.k. How can i fix my outlook ?
I’m seeting many Outlook database crash problems after the most recent OSX software update which included: OSX Update 10.6.8 v1.1, Safari 5.1, plus others.
On one computer, after 4 crashes & rebuilds in 6 hours, I decided to create new Identity & Account from scratch and am crossing fingers.
I realize this is a LION thread and my issue is PRE-Lion, but I see no other more appropriate thread in your blog to raise this issue.
I’d love to know if there is a known stability issue between Outlook for Mac 2011 and the new Apple updates: OSX 10.6.8 & Safari 5.1?
Note: Along the way I also upgraded Office to 14.1.0 (110310).
Thanks.
Outlook 2011 crashes for me every time I start it. I have erased the Identity, the various pref files, etc., reinstalled Outlook 2011, and nothing helps. Shortly after starting it hangs until I force it to quit. The console reports a stream of errors the type
CFURLCreateWithString was passed this invalid URL string: ‘/EWS/Exchange.asmx’
etc. etc. I see someone above had the same problem. Seems like a bug!
Autosave, versions, and fullscreen would all be great additions to Office.
But, please Microsoft, keep “Save As”. You can pick and choose only the good ideas from Apple. Leave the bad ideas behind.
After Lion upgrade my excel (2011) has gone crazy, it takes ever so long to copy/paste , save a file and to open a file ( a 60.5 mb file ) and in the end I get a message saying no enough memory which never happened before.
Could you please address the issue asap too as it is getting very frustrating to use excel.
thank you
Thank you very much for all of you brave soldiers of tech frontier, if it wasnt for you you eager early adopters i dont know what we would do…
Wow, I came here for answers like the rest of the 127 people that posted questions and comments before me but instead I just got a statement. Office for Mac Team: do you plan to address any of these common issues or should we all just begin to get more familiar with our iWorks programs and forget about Microsoft all together? Sheesh!
Entourage 2008 works with Lion, however none of the spotlight searching works nor do the “mail views” (which rely on spotlight).
what about the people who have office 2004. You are offering them no help at all !!!!
I installed the communicator patch and at least it doesn’t blow up but i am unable to use video / audio / desktop sharing features. The call appears to get established, my iSight camera indicator goes green then it disconnects. Also the preference do not appear to be sticking. I changed the preferences for sounds and bouncing notification to continious but the notification did not bounce and the incoming call sound did not play.
I am a new iMac user and have a clean upgrade to Lion. I tried to install office 2011 by DVD and when the progress upto 70%, a window pops up saying that office cannot be installed when safari is loading on the background. However, I didn’t run safari when I was installing the office. What am I going to do to install the office?
Installed Os X Lion and all seems to work fine… only thing is that in Outlook 2011 all my flagged mails (in the smart maps) are gone… only flagged mails in my IN map show up, all those that are in submaps don’t show up any longer. Not so amusing, since this is how I like to keep track of unanswered emails. How can I make flagged mails in submaps show up now? Any ideas?
I purchased IMac on 7/23, had Office for Mac 2011 loaded. I could not open Word. I updated the Snow Leopard OS and still could not open
Word. I reinstalled Office. I upgraded to Lion and still no luck with Word.
Suggestions welcomed.
“Note: Microsoft has been working with Apple from the early days of MacOS 10.7 (Lion). Through this partnership, many issues were addressed leading up to the Lion release. Microsoft will continue to work closely with Apple to address problems that may occur with Office for Mac 2008 and 2011 and Lion OS.”
Has the Lion got your tongues? Sounds Like “Lawyer Talk” to Me! Why is Microsoft always late to the party? Is there a good reason for posting the most recent comments last? If you are looking for the latest comments, you have to scroll all the way to the end. Looks like you are trying to hide the most current information.
@Paul – Office 2004 is a PowerPC app and Apple has dropped PowerPC support at the OS level with Lion. There is nothing for Microsoft to fix in this case. Office 2008 and Office 2011 are written with Intel hardware support.
After upgrading to Lion, my redlined comments in Word 2011 won’t print to any of my 3 printers. The markups (tracked changes) simply do not print, although they show in the preview pane. Any ideas?
All apps in Office 2011 crash when I try to print from one of them in OS Lion. I have deleted the Microsoft.com preferences from the library and restarted each application but they crash when I try to print or save as PDF’s. Any ideas?
Microsoft Query???
Please update MS Query to intel based hardware and make it compatible with MAC OS X Lion 10.7.
Since it is an individual program separate from MS Office 2008, changing the source code to operate on intel based hardware should be relatively easy.
Thanks for your help in advance!
Marc
I have office 2011 running on mac Lion
Every time I boot up the computer office opens automatically . I went into users and groups, login items and it is not checked. I don’t know how to keep it from opening up on start up.
I would like to supplement my previous two posts here with additional details on the Outlook 2011 problem under OS X Lion.
When I select a message and then press Option-CMD-T (or use the equivalent Message menu command), the message remains in bold and appears that it was not Marked as Read. However, if I Quite and then relaunch Outlook, it will no longer appear in bold (i.e., Marked as Read worked, but Outlook didn’t show it to me).
Furthermore, when I delete a message by pressing DEL on my keyboard or by selecting a message and then clicking on the Delete icon in the Ribbon, the message stays in place. But if I Quite and then relaunch Outlook, the message will be gone — moved to the Deleted Items folder.
Also, these problems affect both POP and IMAP.
Because I have tested Outlook 2011 on another Lion-upgraded Mac and did not have the same problems on that other Mac, I thought a workaround might be to reinstall Office 2011 and then apply all the updates (bringing Outlook to version 14.1.2). After installing everything, I then launched Outlook, and it appeared to work okay for a little while. But about an hour later it was acting funny again. And now a day later it is just as bad as it was before.
Schedules work and then stop working, actions work but Outlook refuses to update so I can see it worked — all these headaches are driving me mad very quickly.
You say that you have been working with Apple since Lion development began. That’s a long time. Yet we have all these serious problems (on some machines at least). It’s clear that you are waiting to release a more monolithic update to Office, rather than just give us quick bug fixes now. But I don’t like that. Please consider fixing the serious bugs immediately, then offer us a bigger update “some months from now.” Outlook 2011 is quite nearly unusable in some cases, even though I don’t get any errors on launch like others have reported.
This is serious. Please take it seriously by expediting a solution.
Yesterday I posted a question concerning Microsoft Query. Today it appears to have been deleted? Since Office 2008 uses external program, Microsoft Query, to perform communication with external databases via ODBC, will this program be updated to run on OS X Lion? If I am posting to the wrong Microsoft development team, please inform me as to who I should be addressing this problem. In addition to my question, how can Office 2011 (English version) communicate with external databases using ODBC? I assumed it was using the same Microsoft Query program that Office 2008 used. I tried your latest Office 2011 trial version several months ago while on Snow Leopard and noted that when I wanted to connect to an external database (MS SQL Server) Office 2011 used the same Microsoft Query program that Office 2008 used. Is this true? If so, I would expect that Office 2011 (English version) would not word as well. Why didn’t you design Office 2011 in the same manner as Office 2010? If your not careful, Mac users are increasing at a higher rate than PC (Microsoft users) My prediction is that Microsoft office will continue to piss off the Mac users to the point where Office will lose market share and another software program will replace Microsoft’s Office. I say if you like job security, don’t upset the apple cart. Give the people what they want and provide the same features as the MS Office 2010 Suite. Thanks for you support. Please don’t delete this post!
Office 2011 for Mac does resolve the problem. MS Excel application does not open. The only work-around I’ve found is to open Excel files using the Numbers application and then saving as an Excel file. Hopefully Microsoft will update their applications soon!
Agree with above. Also every calendar request makes office 2011 crash in lion. If that was not tested, it should have been unless you want the world in iCal. When will this be fixed?
Signed,
Tired of Pinwheels
I solved my problem in Word 2011 not printing redline Markups (Tracked Changes, or Compare Documents) or balloons. In Lion 10.7 there is a new print dialog for Word, and in the pop-up menu Copies and Pages, choose Microsoft Word, and Print What: Choose “Document showing markup”. Perhaps that was always there, but defaulted to document with markups. Now it defaults to simply document.
I’m running OS X 10.7 (Lion) and when I went to upgrade my 13.1.1 version of Communicator for Mac to the 13.1.2 patch it won’t install. Won’t allow selection of the target drive (seems to be common problem as part of the upgrade path) Can’t find any reason why. Crazy….
Outlook does not show pictures when opening mail
Hi I would like to how should i upgrade my Office for mac from 2008 to 2011. when i bought it said in the office mac box with upgrade 2011 but i dont know how.
If I turn on “Track Changes While Editing” and then try to edit the document it immediately crashes.
I’m also getting the random hanging error someone else mentioned, and saving my excel documents takes an unusually long time!
Have been a hosted MS Exchange user for years on a PC.
Just switched to a Mac yesterday. After spending hours on the phone w MS, GoDaddy and Apple [who all pass the ball to each other] i have just been told that Outlook doesn’t support syncing Tasks with Lion.
a) Can that be correct? Did I miss something?
b) Outlook now erased over 800 tasks I had stored in MS Exchange server, and made them disappear from both the PC and the Mac. GoDaddy says they keep no back up copies of anything. The only trace i have from years of history is a copy of those notes on TaskTask HD on the iPad . Any suggestions on how to recover all these records?
c) Does iTunes keep any backups of the content of TaskTask HD?
Any suggestion is very much appreciated.
How close are we to getting a fix for the problems in Office for Mac 2011.
Is there a place to find this out that doesn’t require reading all the messages? Thx
Lion crashes completely more than 1-2 times a day by using MS PowerPoint:MAC@Lion. I will use Keynote until MS solves the problem.
I am confused now……I updated to the new Lion, but now I can not use Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Will updating to the 2011 verison of Microsoft Office than allow me to use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint?
Thanks
Nana65
@Ed Cohen
hey, if you leave word open when you turn your computer off, Mac will open the document again automatically, until you close the word document first, then shutdown your computer.
If that doesn’t help you, and you need more help, go to http://www.apple.com/support/
as this is an operating system issue and not office. The Support Team at Apple will help you with your issue
Does anyone have issue connecting to Exchange server ? Under 10.6.7 i create my outlook 2011 account to connect to my exchange server no problem. Under Lion i’m unable to create the account and connect to the my exchange mail server.
My brother downloaded Lion on his iMac last week and had no issues with Office 2008. He then downloaded Lion on his MacBook and Office 2008 messed up completely!
I have just downloaded Office 2011 and it seems to be ok on my iMac but as my MacBook requires Office for business reasons i’m still reluctant to download Lion…..even though I just got Office 2011 on the Macbook, any thoughts?
Looking for info on Versions & Resume. What would someone stand to loose in an update vs a clean install of Lion if running Office 2011 for Mac?
I am getting continuous crashing opening legacy Word files under Lion. Recent files are no problem, but pre-Lion files and especially files created before 2009 or so, seem to crash and crash and crash. Any ideas?
Office 2008 seems to work OK my new Mac Mini running the Lion OS. The only difficulty so far is the operating system text-speech feature can only handle a few sentences in Entourage and then dies.
In Lion Word 2011 hangs up (CPU at 100% + spinng ball) when used together with Endnote X4. Hanging up occurs when bibliography is formatted.
Purchased my iMac OSx10.7 15/7. Installed Office:Mac 2011 and upgraded to Lion soon after. Apart from a few issues with Outlook, my main concern is:- how to permanently change the default font. I tried clicking on Xcel/Preferences/General. Made the preferred changes but the changes wouldn’t save. Any suggestions?
@Marc
Here is what is supported for MSQuery:
Excel 2011: MSQuery for English will work on Lion. However, it will not work on other language versions of Excel 2011 on Lion.
Excel 2008: MSQuery will not work on any version of Excel 2008 on Lion.
For more information about known issues with Lion, see this knowldege base article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2586538
You can also access MacForums: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac
Hi. Just purchased a new Macbook Air with Lion OS. I installed Office 2011 since I use Outlook at lot. I have a simple question. If I am in FInder, I copy (Command C) a file, then go to my new email message and paste the file in the content, Outlook does not paste the file. It pastes the location of the file on my hard drive. I just want to paste the file as an attachment, but this only works if I am pasting the second attachment into the same email message. Is this really the expected functionality?
Thx
Mario
After installing Lion I had all sorts of problems with Office. I have re-installed Office and that has solved some of them (e.g. I can now open .doc files).
However I cannot download any of the updates to Office, such as the Service Pack 1. I understand that these update sequentially and have gone back as far as there are updates, but to no avail. Suggestions welcome.
I have also re-installed Microsoft AutoUpdate and run the Software Update programme, but to no avail.
Suggestions welcome!
Can someone please tell me what the notification is when I see the ENVELOPE covering the Outlook icon on the dock. I see no difference in my mailboxes. When I see the number in the red box, I know how many messages I have unread in the Inbox, but no clue what the ENVELOPE icon is telling me.
********
???? Unique Problem ???
*******
Having plowed through the list of comments, it seems I have a unique issue with Office 2011 / Lion
Two days after I installed Lion on my power book, my institution
switched from a Domino system to MS Exchange Server (!?!)
Thus I never had a chance to test Outlook in OSX10.6. Outlook
has two problems for me
1) Send / Reply / Forward do not work; when selected, nothing happens – no popup window etc.
2) Junk filtering does not have any effect. Added addresses are not removed from the mailbox main view
The web-based access to the exchange server works but is lacking needed features.
Any thoughts? Any solutions?
I get the spinning beach ball and Word 2011 hangs up in many cases where I send someone a .docx file that works fine for me. Somehow, when it gets edited on a PC and comes back, the file is done for and I can never open it again without crashing Word.
I just got a mac book pro – have office 2011 installed with Lion – how do I print a PDF? If I just go to the print button, it just goes straight to my printer to print on paper – there is no selection for printing as a pdf…
Thank you!
Suzy
I am finding that printing the document with markups is still problematic on my system. The print dialog Microsoft Word sub dialog will display the menu choice as “Document showing markup” yet it won’t print the markups unless I re-select “Document showing markup” then it prints.
I cannot get Word or any other Office programs to open on my new Macbook Air.
Excel constantly does not respond and has to be forced quit. It’s very frustration I can’t use Excel al all in Lion. I didn’t have any issues before the update. Something is wrong.
Outlook 2011 with Exchange and Lion is generating hundreds of lines in the Console such as:
8/17/11 1:44:07.241 PM Microsoft Outlook: CFURLCreateWithBytes was passed these invalid URLBytes: ‘/EWS/Exchange.asmx’ (a file system path instead of an URL string). The URL created will not work with most file URL functions. CFURLCreateFromFileSystemRepresentation should be used instead.
8/17/11 1:44:07.948 PM Microsoft Outlook: CFURLCreateWithString was passed this invalid URL string: ‘/EWS/Exchange.asmx’ (a file system path instead of an URL string). The URL created will not work with most file URL functions. CFURLCreateWithFileSystemPath or CFURLCreateWithFileSystemPathRelativeToBase should be used instead.
Outlook appears to be calling routines that have been deprecated in Lion.
I am finding that both Word and Excel are unable to open Office 2008 for Mac documents which were saved pre-Lion, e.g. which were last saved in June. Preview can open these .docx and .xls files without difficulty, but the Office products simply bring up a blank screen (with a few scattered random symbols) when I try to open the files. The files open under Windows correctly.
Any help would be appreciated. My primary computer is a Mac.
ps. I just tried installing the Office for Mac 2008 Patch 12.3.0. Problem persists.
Mail merge on Office 2008 is impossible. There is no converter.
I purchased a new MacBook Pro yesterday with Lion pre-installed and used migration assistant to move my data and apps from my old MacBook that is running Snow Leopard. Now Office 2008 Mac is not running under Lion. When trying to run Word or Excel it instead it launches the Microsoft Setup Assistant and then the Microsoft Autoupdate app, but no Word or Excel.
Is there a fix for this?
@Terry
Look for the file Microsoft Office 2008 Settings.plist in ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft. If that file is not there, then try to create a folder in that folder (the ~/Library/Preferences). If you cannot create one there, then you do not have write permission to the folder and therefore Office does not have write permission to the folder in order to write your license file. Thus you keep getting the setup assistant and it wants to create a new license file.
Please check your permissions and make sure you have read/write to that folder.
OS Lion 10.70 & Mac Office 2011 Business.
As posted by Anthony at the very top, I also get the same application lag, this applies to these apps that i use Outlook, Excel or Word. After a eesume from Sleep Mode if i use one of those apps they go through the not repsonding and the spinning wheel of colors. After about 30+ seconds the application responds and it works perfectly.
I am the lone Apple user in an office of PC’s so when a glitch pops up related to anything generated from my MacBook Pro I hear about it for a long time.
Most recent our IT guy (Apple and PC pro!) told me the .docx file I had sent him (done on Word 2011, using default font) had formatting messed up! Fonts were all sizes an sentences ran on off the page. He opened in on a PC running Word 2010. If anyone has seen this and has an answer it would sure be appreciated.
Has anyone had trouble with spell check in Word after the Lion upgrade? Any suggested fix? I can’t find my Office 2011 install disk!
Thanks! R
Since upgrading to Lion I’m getting the rainbow wheel on Word 2011 as well.
Will there be a compatibility release coming to support Office for Mac 2004 with OS X Lion?
I migrated to MAC OS X LION from Leopard.
Moved My old data using migration assistant.
Now when I open Outlook 2011, No accounts, no contacts.
Microsoft User Data was restored from Time Machine just in case.
Microsoft database Utility was rerun.
Still no contacts and no account in Outlook 2011
What gives
I Upgraded to Lion from Leopard
Used Migration Assistant to move my data.
When I open Outlook 2011, no Contacts, or accounts are there.
Recovered Microsoft User Data fromTime machine Backups
Rerun Microsoft Database Utility.
Still no contacts, no accounts, no emails
What gives
Under Lion, Word for Mac 2011 periodically stalls (spinning ball). Seems to happen when printing and saving. We’ve lost a lot of work in the past few days. Judging from the experiences of others in this thread, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to remove and reinstall. So we’re switching to Pages until a version of Word fully compatible with Lion appears.
Stunning disconnect and delusion from Microsoft.
You’ve identified in the original post that Communicator and import from Mail are the two primary problems. Other than those, it’s just peanuts…
“The smaller Office issues are fairly minor or cosmetic…”
I am baffled how disengaged Microsoft seems to be. The countless bugs that have been identified here and elsewhere are hardly “fairly minor and cosmetic”. They hinder work flow and make the product difficult to use sometimes, or to depend upon.
And you still don’t have a clue about when you’ll deliver on updates to kill the bugs that have been in place FOR A YEAR NOW, nor about when Outlook will sync with iCal… Something every other calendar programme does.
Microsoft should get a serious project manager for Office 2011 and a serious customer-service person who knows how to respond on blogs.
I WOULD NEVER refer to constant crashing of Word, Excel and PowerPoint as SMALL ISSUES. They are neither cosmetic or small. When will you fix these? I think I need to look more closed at iWork if MS if not able to admit the problem or attempt to fix it.
I just downloaded Lion on my Mac ( I had Snow Leopard) and when I opened an excel document, I have found that I lost information. I have always had tabs within my excel document and they no longer seem to exist. Are they gone or is there a way to relocate these tabs? Any information would be helpful.
I am unable to use Track Changes in Word 2011 since upgrading to Lion. I can turn Track Changes on, but as soon as I attempt to make a change to my document, the application hangs (spinning rainbow ball) and I have to force quit.
Thanks,
Holly
I can’t understand why Word Office for MAC will not complete its very own installation.
For some reason, I had to repair permissions on my drive before Office would start running properly…
After upgrading from Snow Leopard 10.6.7 to Lion 10.7, I found that when I try and save a 2008 Microsoft Word document it crashes. I haven’t experienced the same problem with 2008 Microsoft Excel yet (fingers crossed I don’t).
I am using the Save As method to save documents at it seems to be working. Has anybody else had these problems?
I just upgraded to Lion and when I installed Office v.X, it gave me this error :”You can’t open the application Microsoft Word because PowerPC applications are no longer supported.”
That there is no plan to fix the import from Mail 5 issue is disturbing. Any update on this? This is a deal breaker for me if I can’t import years worth of email into Outlook 2011 – having just upgraded to Lion.
There appears to be a problem with the printing with Word Mac 2011 on Lion (10.7.1) on a new MBA. I have a marked-up document that I would like to print. If I print just the first page, it comes out fine (mark-up visible). If I try to print more than one page or a range of pages, the pages are printed without markup. If I print to a PDF, the markup shows correctly and can be printed from Preview.
I updated to OSX Lion and at the same time changed to SSD encrypted disk drive. Now the MS Office 2011 asks for license and says that I have already used the maximum number of them (2 totally). This is the same machine, but new disk and OS version. What to do to get things working again?
Ever since upgrading to Lion, about every one to two days my Office:mac2011 re-prompts me for my Product Key and has to re-activate. After I activate everything works as expected. I can find no rhyme or reason as to why this is happening. Is this a known issue? Is there a work-around?
Thank you.
Wow… well, it’s official: the vast majority want to know… when will Office include the Autosave, Versions, Resume, and Full-screen functionality introduced with Lion.
Yes, you’ll say, but we’ve had “autosave” in Office for years. That you have. And, apologies for frankness, it stinks. The “recovered” versions are often much older than the files onscreen during a crash. What’s more, ironically, your autosave itself creates more frequent crashes.
Even now, I’m here looking for an answer to this very question because the beach ball is spinning in a document with a recent change I don’t want to lose if I don’t have to. I’m hoping to wait it out, but I’m close to giving up.
Please, please, Microsoft Mac Unit… I know your intentions are good… but let’s simplify the whole Office suite so that it stops trying to improve on the services the OS X is more than willing to provide. I’m speaking of all the new functions mentioned above, but also about things like the system-wide dictionary (leagues better than yours), the OS’s way of opening URLs in documents (vs. your molasses-like method of “preparing to open” the link), and various other lesser-executed functions.
I have already switched away from Word and Excel, except for when I have to make changes to a colleagues file that’s already in one of those formats (and even then, not always). For sentimental reasons, I’d hate to give up on it entirely.
i can’t seem to connect with my exchange account in outlook (version 14.1). I’m running lion. Any comments, help?
Okay, I just upgraded to Lion from an old Power PC and now my Word does not work. I am in an online masters program and this could kill me quick. How do I fix this????
Folks asking about Microsoft Office 2004 compatibility with Lion: STOP.
Office 2004 is based on the PowerPC chip, a completely different architecture from the new, Intel-based chips inside newer Macs.
There is no simple “update” to Microsoft Office 2004 or ANY other PowerPC app that will make it run on Lion. IT WILL NOT WORK. EVER.
What allowed apps such as those to work on newer Macs is something called “Rosetta” that Apple provided in Leopard and Snow Leopard. They removed it from Lion, so now these PowerPC apps CANNOT talk to Lion at all.
Update or use a different product. Those are your only choices.
You guys are absolutely ridiculous. Lion Developer has been out for a long enough period of time that all of the bugs mentioned in this post could be resolved. Every other large corporate product I use worked with Lion out of the box. These include Mathematica, Matlab, OmniGraffle, and Sparrow.
As a word of advice, you will never get a Mac user to switch to MS Windows because Office doesn’t work as well on a Mac. Instead, you will get Mac users to switch to a different productivity suite. This includes enterprise users such as myself.
I just uninstalled Office and never plan to use it again.
Thanks for nothing MS!
I’m running Lion for 2 month now, and Outlook takes up tp 20 minutes to open. In best case, it takes 3 minutes. Sometimes it doesn’t open and when I try to restart the computer, Lion crashes. I tryed all Mac team suggestions, but it appears to have a conflict with Outlook 2011. Other Office SW works fine. What should I do?
Tks,
Fabio
I agree – it is so very frustrating when Office consistantly gives the Beach-ball of Death.
Running MS Office 2011 on a MacBook Pro with Lion OS. Since upgrading to Lion, Word now tries to open multiple documents whenever I try to open a single document in a folder. Sometimes it will open the entire contents of that folder, other times, only the most recent documents I had opened. Very unnerving, as I might be working with sensitive information that I don’t need popping up on the screen at will.
I’ve just installed the latest update for Ofc’11 for Mac. It’s been working fine. Exc, Word & Ppt are okay, but Outlook gives me this -
Outlook cannot be opened because of a problem. Check with the developer to make sure Microsoft Outlook works with this version of Mac OS X. You may need to reinstall the application. Be sure to install any available updates for the application and Mac OS X.
LionOS is up to date. So – what’s the issue????
it is not only frustrating but also a disgrace. I have to borrow a friend’s laptop just to do some work in the weekend.
the update of this week didn’t help at all, or made things worse.
I’m so not buying office, nor a macbook anymore. Something asian on Google, the next time
I too have been waiting for an age to get Word and Excel to load, with the programs taking up to 15 minutes to load. The wait appears to be longest when I load a load a document – i.e. I do not load either program up and then open the document , but click the document to load direct.
I have taken to going into Activity Monitor the app shows the usual red Not Responding, so I take a sample, and hey presto, Word & Excel load.
Don’t know why it works, but seems to work for me it’s a pain – but better than waiting for the MS crap to load “naturally”.
Hope this helps.
JJG
I have a 2011 Mac Book pro and the office for mac 2011.
after having installed the OS lion my powerpoint does not play the .avi or .wmv files at all.
are there any glitches i need to correct.
I just upgraded to Lion and now Excel and Word open an additional document from the recent list along with the one I intended to open.
Hey Im taking online classes and they rely on windows media player but every time I download the WMV player it doesn’t run the videos nor audio. I have Lion OS. What do I do>? to make Windows Media player to work on a mac?
Office 2011 has worked flawlessly on my April 2011 MBP since the day I installed it. Firstly under Snow Leopard and subsequently under Lion.
I’ve had significant issues with other software under Lion, even Apple’s own stuff, but nothing that wasn’t solved by a rather painful, long and tedious reinstall of the OS.
It’s too easy to bash Microsoft sometimes because of their arrogance, but I’m happy with the way Office works on my Mac. Outlook is so much easier / more powerful than a series of separate apps, and iWork doesn’t come close to the power of the Word, Excel and Powerpoint – Even though they are slightly more intuitive to use.
Has anyone heard when the problem importing direct from Apple Mail (my OS is Lion) will be fixed…..either by Apple or Microsoft…..or does anyone have an easy work around…..thanks
OFFICE FOR MAC – POWERPOINT KEEPS CRASHING EVERY NOW AND THEN IN MAC OS LION. IT NEVER DID WHEN I USED OS SNOW LEOPARD. MS NEEDS TO PATCH POWERPOINT URGENTLY
Enabling iCloud wiped the Outlook calendar and prevents syncing to iCal and Address Book. This is a HUGE HUGE HUGE problem… and yet another example of Microsoft not keeping up with Apple. I am SHOCKED that, according to MS Tech Support, there is not active development to fix this problem. While I much prefer Outlook to iCal and Address Book, the inability to use these products with iCloud renders them useless!
Please fix this problem now!!!
I think this is a prime reason I use iWorks along with Office, but would be great to get the Lion features to work with Office. Seems like Microsoft are dragging their feet with this one, hoping it just goes away.
still not solved
MBP 2009
1. office 2011 randomly shows blank documents, or partly blanks in Powerpoint, Word and Excel. Usually from documents send to me from a pc with office 2010 or earlier.
2. also randomly: when replying to e-mail on he exchange account it fails to send because of ‘too little memory’
please fix this, or don’t. I don’t care anymore. MS blaming Apple and the other way round, It’s like the early ’90s all over again. Only worse, now I get spammed by zealots when I post a serious problem