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Friday photo gallery: Office 2008 for Mac preview

The "My Day" program works in conjunction with Entourage for entering and viewing tasks, priorities and appointments. It's a standalone program, not a Mac OS X widget. See more Mac Office screen shots below.

One piece of news that got lost amid some bigger developments at Macworld was Microsoft's announcement of plans for a new version of its Mac Office suite, to be called Office 2008 for Mac. The new programs are slated for release in the second half of this year. Microsoft didn't disclose pricing.

The most noticeable change is a new interface called the "Elements Gallery" that uses tabs across the top, rather than drop-down menus, to let people switch among different sets of tools and features. If the basic concept sounds similar to the "ribbon" in the 2007 Office System for Windows PCs, so will the reasoning: "Our users didn't always ask for new features, and they didn't always want more features, but they really wanted to be able to find what was already there more easily," said Sheridan Jones, group marketing manager in Microsoft's Mac Business Unit.

The new Mac Office programs will use Microsoft's OpenXML format natively, for file compatibility with the 2007 Office System for Windows. For the existing Mac Office 2004, the company says it will issue OpenXML converters in test form in the spring and in final form about two months after the release of the new Mac Office programs.

At the same time, Mac Office has its own full development team that also works on "Mac first, Mac only" features, not available in the Windows version. (See this story from the archives for more background on the Mac Business Unit.) Here are screen shots of some of the features in the updated Mac Office programs. Click for larger images, and see the corresponding explanations below.

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1) The Document Parts feature automates tasks such as creating a table of contents in Word or making headers and footers. This screenshot also shows the tabbed "Elements Gallery" interface in the new Mac Office programs.

2) Ledger Sheets are pre-formulated financial spreadsheets for people who aren't advanced Excel users. Examples include a check register and a bill tracker.

3) Publishing Layout View is an area for accessing desktop-publishing features and creating documents with rich content. This seems in part like Microsoft's effort to make sure Word doesn't fall too far behind Apple's "Pages" program.

4) The 2008 Mac Office programs will share a common graphics engine with the 2007 Microsoft Office System for Windows machines, according to the company. But the Mac Office graphics engine, Office Art 2.0, will also use Mac OS X's graphics capabilities, including Quartz. Microsoft says people will be able to create better graphics with the new Mac Office programs.

(Image credits: Microsoft, Macintosh Business Unit)

Posted by at January 12, 2007 9:45 a.m.
Categories: Apple, Office

Comments

#21178

Posted by unregistered user at 1/12/07 1:00 p.m.

Mac + Office = Perfect :)

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