Office for Mac 2011 Behind-the-Scenes: Co-Authoring, Office Web apps, Scheduling Assistant, & Broadcast Slideshow!
We’re getting closer to the release of Office 2011 and today get to share the third video in our four part Behind-the-Scenes series. This time we get to share with you new co-authoring features, added integration with Office Web apps, the improved Scheduling Assistant found in Outlook for Mac, and the new Broadcast Slideshow feature in PowerPoint for Mac! Here’s Kurt Schmucker, Amy Wang, Ryan Panchadsaram, and Eric Schuchman to fill you in:
Here’s a quick look at the features the team talks about in the video:
Co-authoring: Worry free co-authoring tools give you the capability to simultaneously edit the same Word document, or PowerPoint slideshow with other people in different locations. Documents can be stored in the cloud using SkyDrive for consumers, and SharePoint for business users.
Office Web apps: Online companions to Office 2010 and Office for Mac 2011, Office Web apps allow you to get things done when and where you want, from virtually any computer with an Internet connection. You can view your documents in high-fidelity, make light edits on the web, and then open them again in your Office 2011 applications to continue editing with access to all of the functionality you need.
Scheduling Assistant: Improved in the brand new Outlook for Mac, this feature allows you to see your calendar in-line with your mail to create a more efficient workflow. If you’re an Exchange user, you can view more of your co-workers shared calendar details in the scheduling assistant and easily track attendee responses right from your meeting request.
Broadcast Slideshow: You might have heard about this cool feature that was unveiled in PowerPoint Office 2010, and now we are very excited to confirm that it will also be included in PowerPoint for Mac 2011. This is a great cross-platform feature that lets you literally broadcast out your presentation giving you control over what is seen and when – all that is required is a browser connection.
Stay tuned for our fourth and final Behind –the-Scenes video unveiling more details on the suite as we near the official release of Office for Mac 2011 in October! You can also follow us at Facebook and @OfficeforMac.
The Scheduling assistant is a godsend. Thanks! Now all we need to do is update our Exchange server to 2010.
Are you guys still dead set on only supporting 2007 and up? Absolutely no chance of 2003, huh? Oh well, we need to update anyway.
@Tony Pires Thanks for your feedback! As of now, we can only support 2007 and up.
For Co-Authoring, it’s a really cool feature, but I don’t think Office 2011 for Mac supports the capability to co-auth an Excel worksheet at the same time.
Really looking forward to coauthoring. I think this is going to be the killer app. for many. Hopefully it works across platforms (Mac and Windows), and allows all formatting to be retained.
Would also like to see the “ribbon” gone. The vertical working space is the most precious one on the laptops.
Re. Tony Pires comments: I’d rather see more streamlined/less bulky new version of Office, than continued support for legacy versions. Just my two cents.
I’m hoping for more mundane stuff.
1. I hope reliability and speed are improved – office 2008 clunks along n big docs (200 pages), even on a Mac Pro with an Ati 4870. Scrolling, typing, next page etc. Could all be a lot smoother. Maybe some video hardware acceleration, or 64bit stuff?
2. The interface stays the same..that ribbon stuff is awful. Or at least an option to switch to “Classic”.
Please develope OneNote for Office Mac .
@Zhiqing Zhou @Rajeev Bhatia @Euan Ramsay Thanks for sharing your feedback. After much testing, Office for Mac 2011 will be an improved version and we think you will notice and enjoy the updates.
What about integration of calendar and contacts with the iPhone?
In Entourage, there was no way to sync individual calendars (personal, work, etc.) with the iPhone. There was simply one category with one color that would sync.
Will this be different with Outlook?
@R. Mansfield Unfortunately we have no information to share at this time
I have the same question as Jason: do you have OneNote in Office 2011???
It would be one of the most beautiful surprises in the Mac world for 2010…
Need OneNote for Mac.
Will I be able to sync my Blackberry with the new version of Outlook?
Additionally, someone posted a thought about the new version of Outlook using a local database. What does this mean?
Thanks-
Alan
Outlook calendar automatic preview – Will Mac Outlook have it? It’s the one and only reason I still have Windows on parallels on my mac.
It’s so useful to be able to see not only the time and place of the date entries, but your notes as well. I have been using it for more than 10 years, and I hope to get this in the mac outlook, as well.
The beta version 6 doesn’t seem to have this, so – please!
Thanks
Kurt
With so many people relying on iPhone devices, calendar integration with Outlook:mac 2011 is now even more vital than ever. Working in healthcare, I have noticed a quickly increasing trend of healthcare providers who have migrated from other handheld devices to Apple iPad and iPhone devices. Where Entourage has seamless contacts and calendar synchronization with iPhone and Macintosh desktop applications via iTunes, Outlook:mac 2011 seems to miss the mark by not offering calendar synchronization. I hope that Microsoft is not shooting itself in the foot by disenfranchising the Apple iPhone community.
@Michel G. We appreciate your interest. Office for Mac 2011 is focused on the core applications – Word, PPT, Excel and the new Outlook for Mac.
I wonder if you have a release date for canada.
Thanks,
Thomas
I downloaded Office Mac 2011 from our Volume Licensing site two days ago. Installed it on one of our office Mac Book Pros. It works great with our Exchange Server. However, taking the Mac Book home and using it on my ISP Outlook will no recognize the Exchange Server. Bring back to the office and it works fine. What’s up? All the settings in Outlook look normal. Why will it work on our office LAN, but not on my home ISP?
@Thomas Thanks for your interest! We will reveal product availability in countries outside the US during launch in October. Please check back for updates.
Hello
I just purchased my first MACbook pro and, although this was my main concern when purchasing it and the sales person insisted it did, IWORKS is useless for exchanging information with EXCEL.
Does Office 2011 for MAC really run well on this MAC? Are PIVOT Tables robust and can I exchange spreadsheets between a Windows 7 laptop and this MAC? I Would really appreciate your feedback
Thank you
Is Office for Mac 2011 available to MSDN Subscribers? Thank you.
Is it really true that the Project features are no longer part of the suite?!
The single most important aspect of Office has been the Project Gallery management features. Being able to link files, contacts, email, calendar items to color-coded categories and projects made Office THE most useful and powerful suite on the market. Without such integrated functionality, I am required to get separate project mangement software and there will be NO further reason to use MC Office. The distinct lack of info about this on ANY MS communications is so conspicuous in its absence as to be insulting.
Please develop Onenote for mac. I’m dying!
I need one note for mac! I NEED IT! I Need It! I need it!
Ontenote for mac please!
Congratulations, it’s great what I have seen so far. However, my decision to buy in advance Mac Office 2011 Outlook depends on whether or not it is much better than Mail, Address Book and iCal from Apple, in other words Outlook will be capable to synchronize with Google Apps or Address Book and iCal as Entourage does today? This is a simple question. Thanks
I won’t be buying this without sync services for the calendar. The MacWorld review states that you can only sync your contacts and that an update to Outlook will address this later. How much later?
@Karl Sorry you’re having issues, we’ll follow up with you soon
@cynthia wager Yes, Excel for Mac 2011 is compatible with the Windows version of Excel. Specifically PivotTables in Excel 2011 is exactly like the Windows Excel 2010 function.
@Armando Flores Office for Mac 2011 will be available on MSDN when we launch October 26
We appreciate everyone’s contribution on MacMojo. There are a lot of good questions and comments about the new features and we’re working on getting them answered. If we haven’t gotten back to you yet, we will as soon as we can. Thanks for your patience
Dear Friends,
In relation to the new Mac Outlook 2011- I just had one question – does the new Outlook for Mac have a message ‘delayed send’ feature (this existed on Outlook for windows) – whereby you can specify the send time for an email. The email goes at the specified time (outlook must be switched on) and the time stamp is of the time sent? Would love it if this existed…. Especially for us midnight oil burners who do not wished to be found out by sending completed work at 02.10am!!
Would appreciate your further wisdom!
Thank you
Asim
is it true that outlook will NOT sync with ical?
@asim Thanks for your comment! We will look into it and get back to you when we have more information.
Will my Outlook Calendar sync with my iPhone?
@bdonsite Yes. We designed Outlook primarily for Exchange, and we don’t have services to allow calendar syncing with iCal.
Regarding synch services with iCal, it was my understanding that there would be a forthcoming update to Office that would address this. Two questions: (i) is that correct; and (ii) when?
Can you recieve, send, cut n paste tables in outlook? I can;t find anything on a mac that can do this. They always dissapear!
@Tad Yes, we will be adding in a future update, but don’t have timing to share just yet.
oh come on tad, you can’t tease me like that! How long are we talking about? 1 month, 1 year, 2 years?
@mike Yes. Outlook provides rich email editing tools that include support for tables.
Loving Outlook for Mac 2011, great improvement over Entourage except for one area, the Public Folder implementation is terrible! We heavily use Public Folders (highly nested even) in our organization and the current tools are not cutting it.
Hope to see this part catch up to the rest of the improvements in Outlook for Mac.
Keep up the great work!
Thank you for your feedback and support! We appreciate it.
Been using Office 2011 for 3-4 weeks (academic vol license). First week, all worked well. Second week on, however, Outlook 2011 doesn’t start. After clicking on icon in dock, icon bounces, banner appears briefly, then shuts down. Tried uninstalling outlook 2011, repairing disk permissions, and reinstalling to no avail. Then tried the same for the entire Office 2011 suite; same result. Also tried reinstalling Snow Leopard (Archive/Install), no dice-Outlook 2011 still does not work. (Note: No issues with Word, PPT, XCL.) Please advise.
Will I be able to convert an Outlook 2007 .pst file into the 2011 Outlook environment?
@MM Sorry you’re having issues. As a VL customer you can contact your Technical Account Manager (TAM) for more help. However, check out our Help & How-To Forums where others who may have similar problems share solutions they found: http://bit.ly/8X4njj
@Sam E Yes! You will be able to import .pst files which will be converted to .OLM to run on the Mac.
Outlook for Mac 2011 is a great improvement over Entourage. Great work on making it a really good product.
Just one issue which affects our organization tremendously – public folder support. This functionality really doesn’t exist. We use a highly nested Public Folder hierarchy for storing all client e-mails by project. If subscription would include nested folders we would be fine, but unfortunately it doesn’t. Any idea if full public folder support will be coming in the next update?
Thanks!
@Ash Glad to hear you’re an Office for Mac fan! If you’re a VL customer, please contact your technology account manager. They should be able to help you.
Thanks for the response on the Windows Office 2007 .pst files.
I’m SUPER excited and will definitely download/buy on Tuesday. Using Parallels with Office 2007 hasn’t been much fun…ready to ditch Parallels and use Office 2011′s Outlook instead. Again, thanks…didn’t think I’d get a favorable response.
I assume as there is no mention, that Business Contact Manager is NOT supported.
Are there any plans to include this going forward, this is the one thing that still holds many small businesses back.
The Mac community is desperate for Calendar sync functionality. Pleas make this a top priority
Bought and installed Office 2011 yesterday. I’m impressed with the performance improvement of especially Word and Excel. Just one small problem. The Exchange Server support. I work for a big corporation and it is still going to be a loooong time before they upgrade to Exchange Server 2007. We’re still running on 2003. So, yes, for home use Office 2011 is great. For office use, well, I could just as well have stayed with 2008.
Hey, i enquired about being able to create tables within an email in Outlook. You guys said it is part of 2011, but i can’t find it anywhere? Please help.
Hi,
just 2 requests :
- Will you implement Business Contact Manager ?
- Will you provide better performance with SkyDrive ?
Thanks !
I am also interested to know how tables in emails work. Do you have to create a table in Word and copy-paste it into a message, or can you create and format it directly in Outlook?
Thanks.
Hello from Germany.
I`m having problems with the font size of Outlook 2011.
When i use Verdana 10 in Outlook 2011 is will be shown as Verdana 7.5 in other Clients (like Outlook 2010 WIN).
It seems that all font sizes of Outlook 2011 are not correct.
Is this problem known and will it be resolved or can I do something to change it?
got all excited about the broadcast feature. clicked on slide show, signed up for live account. I verified the account through my email, then put in my email and password when it asked. saved to my keychain. AND THE @#% THING DOEN’T WORK. says Error Starting broadcast. Cannot connect to this service. Check your internet connection and try again. WTH!! Obviously I have an internet connection because I’m typing this!
onenote is only reason to purchase office, why still lack oneNote ?
seems like since the release all of the support team have gone quiet
I do enjoy the new Outlook for Mac, well done. In my school the use of Polyvision interactive boards will be linked to OneNote. I would therefor like to know, if and when a OneNote version for mac will become integrated into Office 2011?
Please bring back the ‘send later’ option as used in Entourage, this was invaluable to me.
Where is OneNote?
@FINN ROHOLT PEDERSEN We don’t have anything to share yet about OneNote for Office for Mac, but we promise to keep you updated when more information is available.
@paul Sorry to disappoint, but Office for Mac 2011 does not include OneNote. Unfortunately, we don’t have any news to share right now but we’ll let you know when we do.
Any chance One Note for mac will be developed? Students can really use this
@Joanne OneNote is currently only available in the US on iOS. You can let our developers know you’d like it on the Mac OS, though, by providing feedback here: http://tinyurl.com/4bcz9yp.