Office 2011 and MacBook Pro

If you look at the Apple Store reviews of Office 2011 and Mac Book Pro you will read very negative reviews. Office 2011 looks terrible, especially as it integrates with Mac Book Pro and this will impact my work tremendously.

Is this for real or just apocryphal nonsense from a few disgruntled users?

Anyone else had issues with Office 2011 specifically as it relates to Mac Book Pros?

I'm not sure why Office would have issues with a particular model given that it doesn't make use of any hardware specific to any machine.

I use Office 2011 here on my aging MB and it works like a charm. I have a few complaints but that goes for any piece of software. Is there anything in particular that you're bothered by in the reviews?

Office 2011 is hardly perfect. In my eyes, I typically see the Mac versions of Office being two versions behind the Windows version. That is to say, Office 2011 for Mac is comparable to Office 2007. To me anyways.

I wish Outlook 2011 could sync with Gmail beyond just IMAP. I have a client trying to switch to Macs and they run into problems with this, as well as limited (none) support for various Outlook extensions. Outlook 2011 doesn't even have any sync for Hotmail, which should be a no-brainer.

Read reviews @ Apple Store

If you are in the Apple Store online and look at Office 2011 reviews--also note that it got 2.5 stars--most of the most recent ones go to issues that would affect me and the work I do: copywriting, editing and proofing long documents. I am an attorney too and require Word to function with any new laptop I purchase. I plan to get a Mac Book Pro and you will note that there are particular incompatabilities there.

I know Apple cannot answer for Microsoft's glitches but I would like to know if others have this problem or have heard of them. Particularly, I need to hear from folks who have new Mac Books with the "Lion" OS and have installed Office 2011.

S.SubZero said:

Office 2011 is hardly perfect. In my eyes, I typically see the Mac versions of Office being two versions behind the Windows version. That is to say, Office 2011 for Mac is comparable to Office 2007. To me anyways.

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How so? I agree that the Mac version isn't as nice as the Windows version but I'm not sure it's that far behind.

S.SubZero said:

I wish Outlook 2011 could sync with Gmail beyond just IMAP. I have a client trying to switch to Macs and they run into problems with this, as well as limited (none) support for various Outlook extensions. Outlook 2011 doesn't even have any sync for Hotmail, which should be a no-brainer.

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If you're talking about Google Calendar or other Google services, then yes, it's a bit of a shame. If you're only talking about email, I'm not sure what more you want beyond what IMAP offers. If you're referring to Exchange support, Google offers it (here) but every set of instructions is for mobile devices so I have no idea if it will work for computers.

mollyfeather said:

If you are in the Apple Store online and look at Office 2011 reviews--also note that it got 2.5 stars--most of the most recent ones go to issues that would affect me and the work I do: copywriting, editing and proofing long documents. I am an attorney too and require Word to function with any new laptop I purchase. I plan to get a Mac Book Pro and you will note that there are particular incompatabilities there.

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One of the complaints was the "asterisk issue" which was fixed in a recent update (see here). One of the other complaints was a supposed inability to select text with double clicks (an odd complaint to base a poor review on if you ask me) which is just wrong. One complaint had to do with eSATA drives and 32bit compilation which won't affect 99.9% of users. However, some are legitimate problems (mostly to do with speed) and although I don't doubt that some people have those problems, I can't say that this has been a huge issue for me.

mollyfeather said:

I know Apple cannot answer for Microsoft's glitches but I would like to know if others have this problem or have heard of them. Particularly, I need to hear from folks who have new Mac Books with the "Lion" OS and have installed Office 2011.

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I use it with Lion and don't feel that it's slow in the slightest. In fact, it performs reasonably well given that my Mac is now four years old. I can't speak for everyone though and to be fair, neither can any of the other reviewers.

Luckily, MS offers a 30 day trial (here). Thus, I'd suggest you simply try it for yourself and see if you have any major issues.

I use Office 2011 on my MBA and am not having any issues with it, it might lack features offered by the windows version but that in no way negatively impacts my work.

mollyfeather said:

If you are in the Apple Store online and look at Office 2011 reviews--also note that it got 2.5 stars--most of the most recent ones go to issues that would affect me and the work I do: copywriting, editing and proofing long documents. I am an attorney too and require Word to function with any new laptop I purchase. I plan to get a Mac Book Pro and you will note that there are particular incompatabilities there.

I know Apple cannot answer for Microsoft's glitches but I would like to know if others have this problem or have heard of them. Particularly, I need to hear from folks who have new Mac Books with the "Lion" OS and have installed Office 2011.

Click to expand...

I have Office 2011 installed on my new MBP with OSx Lion, I havent had any issue as of yet with the program, but I dont use it as much as you would from what Im reading from you post. Hope this helps.

Thanks

I appreciate the feedback. I have also heard from another editor and she acknowledges some "glitches" but nothing that she cannot work around, the normal Microsoft user tactic.