Office for Mac 2011 Behind the Scenes: Sparklines, PivotTables & Photo Editing!

Today we're excited to show you the second video in the behind-the-scenes series -- including new compatibility features and new tools like Excel Sparklines and Photo Editing tools.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Office for Mac 2011
• Excel 2011
• PivotTables
• Sparklines
• Features
• MacBU
• Compability
• Video

[henriok]

On my 2 GHz MacBook Pro it's faster to open VMWare Fusion, boot Windows, find the document on my Mac's desktop and open it in Office 2007 for Windows, than just open it from the desktop into Office 2008.

My old 800 MHz Pentium 3 laptop with XP showing 40 thumbnails in PowerPoint 2003 is almost instantaneous but it takes about 20 seconds on my 2 GHz MacBook Pro in Office 2008.

You can actually see that in the video, at 0:20!

Hey Microsoft! Do you consider THAT a bug?

[typtyphus2]

0:43 If they'd only took the same effort with Internet Explorer.......

The interwebs would be a better place.

[repenning1]

Word 2011 is a HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT! Having pixel identical printouts from Macs and PCs sound like a great idea but I cannot even paste an image into an outline and have that reliably show up. In most cases, even with small images, it will either just not show up or show a lame you ran out of memory problem. Shame on you..

[TalesOfWar]

@THeFLoA They remind me of 90's or early 2000's icons, at the very latest, web 2.0esque lol. I don't get why they can't use the same ones they use in Office 2010 but maybe add a little more shine. They'd fit much nicer with the other icons typically on your dock (actually I know for a fact they do, from running Office 2010 apps in Parallels lol).

[TalesOfWar]

Load times are still atrocious for me. I thought 2008 was bad, I see no improvement in 2011 so far as how long it takes to actually load the application. Loading documents and so on when they're open is more snappy, but actual app loading is... yeah. It's faster for me to reboot into Windows and load up Word or whatever there or run Parallels than it is to open Word 2011. I don't get this either because they seemed to have sorted this problem with 2010 on PC from 2007's slow ass loading.

[jumpymouse]

After Downloading Office 2011 I can answer this question - NO IT DOES NOT!!!

Word 2011 behaves just like Word 2008. Microsoft has fixed the problem in Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook.

[jumpymouse]

Just downloaded Office 2011. Word 2011 has the exact same problem as Word 2008. It does not remember your window position nor does it maximize correctly. This is very irritating especially because one of Microsoft's employees told everyone on Ars Technica that this issue was FIXED! NO IT IS DEFINITELY NOT FIXED!

Interestingly, Excel 2011, Powerpoint 2011, Outlook 2011 do not have this issue. Unfortunately, I use Word far more often than all of the other programs.

[Timothy656]

@jumpymouse I know that always bugged me! Since I have a 13inch screen I always wanted to get it fully maximized on start up! So I had to click the green button to get rid of the space!

[henriok]

@auxent I must admit that it looks good at first glance. It opens documents faster and shows thumbnails faster. Still trailing Windows Office by an order of magnitude though. I nice addition was that you can now chose from more than 30 colors as a background color in a cell in Excel! Wow.. Welcome to the 1990s Microsoft!

[auxent]

@henriok Forget Office 2008 experience. Just test Office 2011 and take your words back.

[inspir8me]

A template "is a template", so easy a caveman can do it...