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Microsoft Office 2004 for Macs Does More than Just Match the
Windows Version
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Though we may grumble about Microsoft, most Mac users have a copy
of Microsoft Office on hand, using Word, Excel, and PowerPoint -
just like most their Windows counterparts.
A decade ago, Microsoft tried to make Office look and feel the
same on both platforms. The result, Office 4.2, was a pretty good
Windows version, but the Mac version was slow and bloated. Since
then, while letting Mac and Windows users share their work, Microsoft
has set its Macintosh Business Unit free.
Recent versions of Office for Windows have included new features
primarily of interest to corporate IT departments. While the previous
Mac version did little besides make the previous Mac Office 2001 work
under Apple's OS X operating system, the newly released Mac-only
Office 2004 (US$399, US$239 upgrade) adds features aimed squarely at
individual users. Many of those features are not available in any
Windows version.
Entourage, like Outlook in the Windows version, started life as an
email and calendar module. The new Entourage gains better spam
filtering, archiving of email and schedules, and support for
Microsoft Exchange servers. A new Entourage feature, Project Center,
can be accessed from the other Office modules, allowing users to
build projects, complete with deadlines and assigned tasks, linking
relevant notes, documents, email, and contacts. Projects can be
shared with other Mac users of Office 2004, aiding collaboration.
While word processor users haven't seen many big new features
since real-time spell checking, Word 2004 in the new Office suite
gets a new notebook view, mimicking a lined page. Aiming at making it
easy to type in notes and organize an outline, it features a
simplified toolbar and an easy way to record audio clips and link
them to a Word document.
The new Excel gains a useful Page Layout view, making it possible
to work with a spreadsheet while seeing how it will look on the
printed page.
PowerPoint, under pressure to compete with Apple's Keynote
presentation application, gains a set of new templates and
animations. Perhaps more useful will be the new presenter tools,
allowing presenters to view speakers' notes and to reorganize slides
on the fly while the audience only sees the presentation.
Also handy are compatibility reports, noting whether saved
documents will appear properly to users running a range of both Mac
and Windows office versions.
Office 2004 isn't too proud to borrow good ideas that originated
in the Windows version. For example, like its Windows cousin, Word
for Macs now checks how to format pasted-in text, offering to
preserve the original formatting or to make it match the destination.
And it finally breaks with the previous version's refusal to save
long file names. Entourage gains a three-column view similar to
Outlook 2003.
Both the Windows and Mac versions of Office come in several
different editions. On the Windows side, users of the higher-priced
Professional package get Microsoft's Access database; small business
version users get a copy of the Publisher page design program. There
are no Macintosh versions of either program; instead Mac Office 2004
Pro (US$499) will be bundled with Virtual PC 7.0, allowing Mac users
to load a Windows operating system and applications and run them in a
window on their Mac.
Office Professional 2004 has not yet been released, as Microsoft
works on making Virtual PC compatible with Apple's new G5 Power Macs
and awaits the release of Windows XP Service Pack 2. Office 2004 also
lacks the SharePoint collaboration tools built into recent Windows
versions, which is used in some large organizations.
As with the Windows version, the most affordable Mac Office 2004
version is the Student/Teacher edition (about US$149). This version
can be legally purchased by anyone with a student or teacher in the
family and can be installed onto up to three home computers. If
you're comfortable with a 185 MB download, there's a 30-day free
Test Drive version available.
While lacking some corporate must-have features, Office 2004 sets
a new standard for elegance and ease of use for productivity software
for individual users.
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