A commercial office suite, consisting of interrelated applications and services.
Download link is unavailable since the product is discontinued.
Microsoft Office is a commercial office suite, consisting of a number of interrelated applications and services.
Oddly enough, the first Mac version of the suite was first introduced by the Redmond company even before Microsoft Office for Windows was released. It is accounted for the fact that the then suite components, Microsoft Word (text-editing software), Microsoft Excel (spreadsheet application), and Microsoft Power Point (presentation software) had been initially designed for the Mac platform.
The current version of Microsoft Office for Mac is Microsoft Office for Mac 2011, which was released in 2010.
Its functionality is somewhat limited as compared to Microsoft Office 2010 on the Windows platform. So, there is no support for right-to-left languages, like Hebrew and Arabic, or no support for .ODF file format.
Still, a great number of features and applications that were dropped in the previous suite versions have made a comeback in Office 2011. So, Entourage has been finally replaced with the good old Outlook (re-written in Cocoa, a Mac programming language), and Visual Basic for Applications is there again, allowing the users to automate many routine tasks.
A major interface change, marking this Microsoft release, is ribbons, successfully implemented in Microsoft Office 2007 for Windows. This GUI is designed in a more intuitive and logical way than the old one, because all the features and options a user can need while working on an object in, say, Word or Excel, are now gathered in one place and not scattered across oodles of obscure tabs and menu options, which required a fair amount of experience from us.
The cons of this release include old formating issues that users face when editing .docx and .xlsx files in free office suites. If you change a single character in files of those formats in suites like LibreOffice, then prepare to see a completely scrambled formating back in Microsoft Office. Oddly enough, files created in LibreOffice do not face such issues when opened in Office.
Another noteworthy drawback of Microsoft productivity suite is its price. A Home&Student edition copy, including three core programs (Word, Excel, and Power Point), costs whooping US$124.99, and the Home&Business edition one (with addition of Outlook) costs US$279.99.
However, despite all these drawbacks, Microsoft Office is still the best productivity suite for the Mac platform, available on the market. Its range of features and usability are unsurpassed and guarantee the user a smooth and pleasant usage experience.
Pros
- Great range of features
- Introduction of the ribbon interface
- Outlook instead of Emtourage as the e-mail client
Cons
- Formating issues when editing Office files in LibreOffice
- High price
This program received 1 award
Download link is unavailable since the product is discontinued.
I enjoy working in Microsoft Office, especially compared to LibreOffice. It rarely lags and has tools for various things. But it is not perfect. Its interface has been changed several times, and the changes can only be argued to be the right thing. I enjoyed the changes, as they made the work in the Office programs easier. For me the biggest disadvantage is the price. Of course, the suite has 20 programs in it, that's cool, but if I don't need more than a half of them, why should I buy the whole package? I would choose something simpler.
Even though it's the most thought-out set of text editors and, thus, the most functional one, it costs pretty much. On the other hand, this is a set of 20 applications, which provide you access to the full functionality of the suite. Besides, you can test its trial version and decide whether you want to pay. So that's what I'm going to do first.
I was very unhappy that with the install of 2011, I no longer had access to my Office 2008 nor could I find it anywhere on the Mac. I finished the trial period for 2011 and was not terribly impressed. Could not open anything that was created in Office until I found the 2008 disk and reinstalled it. I don't think that I will be upgrading anytime soon. What a dreadful experience. I panicked for about 20 minutes trying to figure out how to access previously prepared Office docs. Thanks, but no thanks.