As reported last week, Microsoft today released the first Service Pack update for Office for Mac 2011, which brings improved security and a number of fixes to patch “vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer’s memory with malicious code”. The update is available now on Microsoft’s website.
The SP1 also brings integration with Apple’s Sync Services for calendars, contacts, tasks and mail notes through Outlook. These sync features will work with any iPhone or iPad plugged in a computer and synced with iTunes, but unfortunately Microsoft couldn’t implement MobileMe support for Outlook Calendars as MobileMe will stop using Sync Services in May. However, it should be possible to sync a Google Calendar back to iCal, and then from iCal to Outlook to achieve some sort of online synchronization.
You can find the Office for Mac 2011 Service Pack 1 here.
For students and busy bees sporting Microsoft Office 2011, a 110.5 MB update just hit the pipes. Microsoft’s AutoUpdater should catch the latest update, which improves stability when opening Microsoft documents from third party applications, and fixes issues that caused Outlook to previously crash. You can find a direct link to the update at Microsoft’s Download Center, and you can find more information pertaining to the December 13th update at Microsoft Support.
In 2010, Outlook poorly supported Gmail accounts, but today it’s a lot better. Most of the setup that was previously required is now automated. In this revised guide, you’ll now find two major sections. The first shows you where to plug in your account information, and I’ll also walk you through some extra steps to remove a couple unnecessary folders. The second details how you can make Outlook feel more like Mail, and includes some of what was previously covered in the 2010 tutorial. I’ve also removed the previous introduction — I’ll get straight to the point. I hope you find this guide more more relevant and useful than it was before.
I recently started using Microsoft Outlook 2011 Mac as my email client (on a trial basis), and wanted to have Growl notifications whenever I received a new message; it’s pretty simple via AppleScript. Here’s how.
Our beloved Walt Mossberg is loving the new version of Office for Mac, dubbed “2011″ and dropping on October 26th. Particularly, he seems to be liking the new Outlook a lot:
I was able to import a nearly 3-gigabyte Windows Outlook data file with no problems. And I was able to easily and perfectly import all my messages and settings from Apple’s own built-in Mail program and to sync with Apple’s (AAPL) built-in Mac address book. But Microsoft is still working on syncing with Apple’s iCal calendar program, and the Outlook calendar can’t sync with Google Calendar. Also, while the new Mac Outlook can import Windows Outlook data, it can’t export its data to Windows yet. Microsoft says it is also working on that.
In general, Outlook on the Mac proved fast and capable in my tests. It doesn’t work exactly like its Windows counterpart, but Windows users will find it very similar. And it has some Mac-specific features. For instance, its contents can be easily searched by the Mac’s built-in universal search feature, Spotlight, and can be backed up by the Mac’s Time Machine backup system.
Microsoft’s new Mac Office is by far the best Mac version of the suite I’ve used, and I can recommend it.
For as much as I understand the needs of companies willing to use Macs, but stuck on Office, there’s no way I’m giving up on Mail for when it comes to desktop email. I’ll give it a try, though.
For as much as I understand the needs of companies willing to use Macs, but stuck on Office, there’s no way I’m giving up on Mail for when it comes to desktop email. I’ll give it a try, though.