Retina display support is here for Office for Mac 2011!
We’re happy to announce that Office for Mac 2011 (version 14.2.4) now supports Retina display for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Text everywhere is incredibly crisp and all key areas of the interface are now sharper than ever. We hope you enjoy this fantastic software experience!
As long as you have Microsoft AutoUpdate set to check for software updates automatically, you’ll be notified when this update is available.
Microsoft AutoUpdate can keep your copy of Office for Mac updated by prompting you when the next update is available. To check your AutoUpdate settings, open any Office for Mac program, click Help from the menu bar, then select Check for Updates. You can choose to update Manually or Automatically on the schedule of your choice.
Alright, we’re going back to work on even more great features! Please continue to let us know how we are doing via the blog. As always, we’re listening.
Sincerely,
The Office for Mac Product Team
**UPDATED 20-Sep-12**
Thank you for downloading our most recent update. We hope you have been enjoying the latest improvements.
It has come to our attention that a small number of users have had difficulty updating to 14.2.4. We are working with Apple to resolve the problem and will follow up with an update in the near future.
In the meantime, if you’d like to get Retina support for Office for Mac 2011 running sooner, we’ve prepared a video below. It provides a few simple steps getting the update working today; otherwise, please wait for our upcoming update.
Thanks for your help and patience!
Awesome! So now please give us a little heads up about Office 2014
We are aware that there is a lot of interest in Office 2014, but we don’t have any news to share on that front at this time. If that changes, you’ll read about it right here on the Office for Mac Blog. Thanks for your interest!
Thank you!
You are very welcome!
Thank you! That will make the work more pleasant!
You are welcome! I like the way it looks, too.
Happy to hear the team of Microsoft works hard to keep users of their mac office suite happy.
This update is very much appreciated.
We do our best to keep improving the product. Thanks for your feedback!
Thank you very much!
I really prefer using Office as my productivity suite, and now my eyes will too!
You’re welcome! Thanks for letting us know you like it!
This is great news – I am impressed with how quickly this became available, because lack of Retina support for Office is a big deal for a lot of people.
Now — please, please, please — can you work on making Track Changes in Word more reliable? It causes Word to crash (on complex documents with many changes, many authors), all the time…for many years! It could sure benefit from the same level of attention!
I’m glad you like it! I will pass along your request for improved Track Changes to the Office for Mac product team. I think this is a good suggestion – thanks for the feedback!
Thank’s for this update: now I can use MS Office on my macbook retina at it’s best !
Now you have to update all the icons at retina definition!
thank’s
Thanks for the feedback! We don’t have any news on that yet, but all our news is posted here, so stay tuned.
Thank you for this feature! To be honest, I didn’t believe that we would get an update this year.
I had 14.2.3, just downloaded 14.2.4 from your website and not seeing a difference in resolution….
We’re sorry to hear that you are having update issues. A small number of users have reported this as well, and although we are working with Apple to resolve the problem, an automated fix may take days or weeks to complete.
If you’d like to get Retina support for Office for Mac 2011 running sooner, we’ve updated the release post with a video that explains the simple steps to follow to get the update working today.
Great update, thank you!!
Thanks folks! Looks great.
(PS, had to duplicate, delete orig, and rename copy — i.e. delete the “copy” tag — due to caching issue; but it was very straightforward and now all works brilliantly)
You’re welcome! We added a video to help everyone with this workaround as well. We appreciate your feedback!
Excellent, Thanks for bringing the Retina update out so quickly, really appreciate it. Office was fairly painful on the eyes, before this update on the Retina Macbook Pro.
Thank you!!!
Just installed the update and confirmed the version from “About Word”. Nothing has changed for me. Still jagged text. One thing I noticed is “Open in low resolution” is checked Word, Excel and Powerpoint and greyed out. Cannot uncheck it. Please help!
We’re sorry to hear that you are having update issues. A small number of users have reported this as well – we’re working with Apple to resolve the problem, an automated fix may take days or weeks to complete. If you’d like to get Retina support for Office for Mac 2011 running sooner, we’ve updated the release post with a video that explains the simple steps to follow to get the update working today.
I don’t have a Retina display Mac, but I’m glad to see updates happening in-between paid upgrades.
How about adding support for full-screen mode?
We’re aware that there is interest in full-screen mode, but we don’t have any news to share on that front. If that changes, you’ll read about it right here on the Office for Mac Blog. Thanks for your feedback!
When will you have support for notification centre and full screen mode?
We’re aware that there is interest in full-screen mode and notification center, but we don’t have any news to share on that front. If that changes, you’ll read about it right here on the Office for Mac Blog. Thanks for your feedback!
Still not working – except in Outlook. I restarted and went to Get Info in Word and Excel to try to open in High Resolution but “Open in Low Resolution” is grayed out. A little help?
We’re sorry to hear that you are having update issues. A small number of users have reported this as well, and although we are working with Apple to resolve the problem, an automated fix may take days or weeks to complete. If you’d like to get Retina support for Office for Mac 2011 running sooner, we’ve updated the release post with a video that explains the simple steps to follow to get the update working today.
Yes! Thanks. Wasn’t expecting this. Much nicer on MBPr now.
I just ran the update, installed, and restarted and there hasn’t been a change as far as Retina support goes that I can see. It is still very pixelated. I just checked and I am on version 14.2.4. Any ideas?
We’re sorry to hear that you are having update issues. A small number of users have reported this as well, and although we are working with Apple to resolve the problem, an automated fix may take days or weeks to complete. If you’d Retina support for Office for Mac 2011 sooner, we’ve updated the release post with a video that explains the simple steps to follow to get the update working today.
This is awesome news! Thank you!
Wow, nice turn around Microsoft!
Great work.
So I installed the update but it’s not retina? I’m using a retina Macbook Pro.
Some users have reported this as well, and although we are working with Apple to resolve the problem, an automated fix may take days or weeks to complete.
If you’d like to get Retina support for Office for Mac 2011 running sooner, we’ve updated the release post with a video that explains the simple steps to follow to get the update working today.
Nice! But where are the screenshots?
Surprise and delight, woo!
Thank you for getting this done finally!
Awesome! Things will be much less painful now:)
Expectations exceeded, great job guys and girls! I imagine a lot of work went into making this happen.
I upgrade to 14.2.4 on my Macbook Pro with Retina display but the graphics didn’t change. Text is still blurry like it was before. Do I need to enable the retina graphics somehow? Should I just reinstall? Please help!
We’re sorry to hear that you are having update issues. A small number of users have reported this, too, and although we are working with Apple to resolve the problem, an automated fix may take days or weeks to complete. If you’d like to get Retina support for Office for Mac 2011 running sooner, we’ve updated the release post with a video that explains the simple steps to follow to get the update working today.
I just applied the 14.2.4 update, and there doesn’t appear to be any difference in the sharpness of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. (Outlook looks great, but has done since day one!)
Is there anything else that I need to do to get the ‘Retina supported’ versions?
Regards,
Martin.
We’re sorry to hear that you are having update issues. A small number of users have reported this as well, and although we’re working with Apple to resolve the problem. If you’d like to get Retina support for Office for Mac 2011 running sooner, we’ve updated the release post with a video that explains the simple steps to follow to get the update working today.
Did I do something wrong? I installed the update but without noticing any difference…still blurry icons and text everywhere in excel and word…
You did nothing wrong – a small number of users have reported this as well, and although we are working with Apple to resolve the problem, an automated fix may take days or weeks to complete.
If you’d like to get Retina support for Office for Mac 2011 running sooner, we’ve updated the release post with a video that explains the simple steps to follow to get the update working today.
I just updated to this new release, to get the benefits of Mac Office on my MacBook Pro’s Retina Display. Unfortunately, all the MSFT apps are still displaying the check-box with “Low Resolution” enabled (via Get Info), and I am unable to uncheck that box. So the update is not having the desired results.
Any suggestions on how to fix this? (I’ve already repaired permissions via the Disk Utility, to no avail.)
A small number of users have reported this as well, and although we are working with Apple to resolve the problem, an automated fix may take days or weeks to complete.
If you’d like to get Retina support for Office for Mac 2011 running sooner, we’ve updated the release post with a video that explains the simple steps to follow to get the update working today. I hope that helps!
Great Job! I love the Office for Mac Suite and i hope you will release soon the 2013 version. It looks great on my Retina display.
Great job guys.
This is great, it looks so much better. The update did not get the retina text working on my computer, but following this guide got it working:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macoffice2011-macstart/mac-office-1424-update-wordexcelppt-still-doesnt/0d920f97-0947-4d80-ac48-fa02b53260ad
I’ve done as shown on the video. It did not work exactly as indicated in the video, but somehow I ended up with a file labeled “Microsoft Office 2012″, as opposed to “Microsoft Office 2011″ before. The display is much better with 2012 than with 2011, in the document as well as in the toolbar, except for the section of the toolbar labeled “styles”.
To be safe, I’ve kept both versions, 2011 in Applications and 2012 in Desktop.
Could you please confirm that in doing so, the 2011 version in Applications will be automatically upgraded as soon as the upgrade is on line? And once it is upgraded, should I delete the 2012 version in Desktop?
Thank you.
I’m sorry that you’re having difficulty – for your situation, I recommend contacting Microsoft Answers for individual assistance. If you’d rather do it yourself, I’d recommend you make sure to have the install CD or file nearby, just in case. Then I’d remove the 2012 folder on the desktop and try using the video again. It should not rename the folder when you drag/drop to your desktop. I hope that helps!
Thanks! I had to use the copy/delete workaround to get retina enabled, but now everything looks awesome!!
I’m impressed that Microsoft listened to its users and released this interim update. As some have mentioned, it’s not “perfect” (there are a few icons that appear low-res), but it’s a vast improvement over the previous situation and I am happy to be able to use this interim solution now rather then wait weeks or months for the update to be “perfect.”
My only suggestion to Microsoft would be that next time a little transparency in terms of your plans would be much appreciated. The “no comment” routine on Retina support caused a lot of frustration and had many early adopters (along with much of the online tech world) assuming that Microsoft was NOT going to update Office for quite some time.
If Microsoft had set expectations that this was a priority and that an interim fix would be out by the end of Q3 most people would have felt that was reasonable and Microsoft would have avoided some negative PR.
I am happy to have read that Office 2013 will FINALLY support through ActiveSync Hotmail/MSN/Outlook type email accounts and thus provide IMAP support. This is an enormous omission in Outlook 2011. Do you know if and when Outlook 2011 will have this capability? I read in numerous comments of MS that this was not being done as it would put a dent on MS’s revenue from its Enterprise options. However, now that Outlook 2013 is allowing this, will Outlook 2011 follow suite?
It’s been almost a year and a half. When is Office 2011 going to get autosave and versions?
Microsoft, please fix a bug with IMAP messages in the latest Outlook for mac update: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macoffice2011-macoutlook/outlook-2011-mac-showing-read-messages-as-unread/5e6158cb-4536-41b8-9858-d34df554a6cc?page=5&tm=1354738668272#LastReply
Its been about 4 months since any new updates from Microsoft, hope that means you all are hard at work on the next version. I know you all said there is no word on when the next version will come out, but I do have a question about that as well as another question.
MS is running a promo that if you purchase Office between now and March 31st, on either a PC or a Mac you get Office 2013 for free. Does that mean that there will be a new version of Office for Mac in 2013?
Also I work for a large company who is integrating Mac’s into our enterprise environment. We are running into some serious challenges with PSTS. If you import PST’s and your Identity Folder gets to be above 20GB in size Outlook becomes seriously unstable and constantly rebuilds. Is Microsoft Aware of this issue and is this something that a fix is currently being worked on and can possibly see as an update to 2011 or will we have to wait for Office for Mac 2013/2014/2015, whichever date the next version comes available.
Beyond this serious issue Office for Mac has integrated into our enterprise environment decently.