The new Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 which include the new Outlook for Mac—set to replace the Entourage e-mail client—.PST file support, and a number of collaboration tools.

There will also be some major compatibility improvements for users of both Mac and PCs. To the Mac Business Unit, compatibility means more than making sure that documents, spreadsheets, and presentations created on one platform open and render correctly on the other. Noting that roughly three quarters of their Mac users use Windows at least occasionally, Microsoft’s Mac team says it’s also working to make the new Office for the Mac more functionally compatible with the Windows edition.

The great news to me is, that finally, power users will be glad to see the return of the Visual Basic macro language. Visual Basic was dropped from Office 2008 in part because it was too technically difficult to port it to the Mac’s then-new Intel CPUs. Microsoft says it began work on that port as far back as 2008—before the last Mac Office shipped. That work is now complete. And the Mac suite will be using the most up-to-date version of Visual Basic, so it’ll be much more compatible with Office for Windows than the Visual Basic in previous versions of Office for Mac.

Office 2011 for Mac will arrive in time for the 2010 holiday season.

Microsoft is “silent” on the content of these updates..
Office 2008 12.1.2. According to notes provided by the company, “this update contains several improvements to enhance stability and performance.”
Office 2004 11.5.1 does offer a bit more information for users: “several improvements to enhance stability and performance,” the update also includes fixes for vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer’s memory with malicious code.

Both updates are available from Microsoft’s Mac Web site.

Microsoft scheduled the next version of its operating system for January 2010.
According to Steve Ballmer, Windows 7 will be closer from Vista than from XP. There will be many changes of course to reach their clients’ expectations.

Apple will probably be updating Snow Leopard for the 4th or 5th time and be working on the next version of Mac OS X (or 11).

[lang_en]
He did a lot… Stole Apple’s ideas of course, but let’s be honest, he did a lot of other things!
[/lang_en]
[lang_fr]
Il en a fait des choses… Volé quelques idées de Apple il est vrai, mais tellement plus!
Voici la chronologie complète des oeuvres de Bill Gates depuis sa naissance!
[/lang_fr]

[lang_en]

Today, june 27th, Bill Gates officially leaves his functions in the Microsoft company he created 33 years ago.
Don’t have any comment, we all know what he did: good and bad things like any human being to make of Microsoft the biggest IT company in the World.
This information makes me think that Steve Jobs too will leave Apple soon or late…. Such a sad thought.[/lang_en]
[lang_fr]

Aujourd’hui, 27 juin, Bill Gates quitte officiellement ses fonctions dans la société qu’il a créé celà fait 33 ans.
Je n’ai pas vraiment grand chose à dire quant à ce qu’il a fait: des bonnes et des mauvaises comme tout être humain pour faire de sa société la plus grande au monde dans les technologies des logiciels.
Cette information me fait penser un peu à Steve Jobs qui, un jour ou l’autre, aura à prendre sa retraite…[/lang_fr]

You’d answer: “download and install the update”? Too easy!!!
Here are the steps I followed to make it.

• Step One: delete Office 2008!
  
  I used AppZapper to download the suite and its preferences, then, I cleaned up the Application Support folder (in the Library folders) from the Microsoft folders.
  I also deleted the Microsoft User Data folder in the Documents folder.

Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft… I was happy to see the updates to the Office Suite, expecting to see some improvements, but the result is a bit different: Microsoft shows me its nice Setup Assistant everytime I try to open a document (thank God I have Pages and Numbers).
According to MaCNN here are some possible fixes:

1. Word Settings: If you’re experiencing a crash on launching Word 2008, try throwing out its settings file. Look in your home directory – that’s /Users/ and your account’s short name – in Library > Preferences > Microsoft. Toss Word Settings (10) and relaunch Word 2008.
2. Remove the Microsoft AU Daemon from Startup Items: Open System Preferences, then navigate to “Accounts” and click “Startup Items,” then remove Microsoft AU Daemon.
3. Corrupt normal template: The normal template file — located at ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/Normal.dotm appears to be corrupt in many cases of crashing. The fix for the problem is as follows: create a new user account, launch Word 2008 under the new account (it should launch properly if this is the cause), then copy the aforementioned file from the clean (working) account to the same location in the old (crashing) account, replacing the corrupt file.
4. Corrupt Microsoft.plist, etc. files Go to ~/Library/Preferences and delete everything that starts with com.microsoft…. Re-attempt application launch and usage.
5. Corrupt fonts: Remove any recently added fonts temporarily, or use a tool like Font Doctor to search for corrupt fonts.

I’m going to have a lot of fun!

Another problem has been reported by some other users: the installation issues!
The fix after the jump…
Read the rest of this entry »

2 important updates by their sizes and number of bug fixes improving stability, performances and general compatibility for the Microsoft Office suite.

Office 2004 goes 11.5.0 (45 Mb), Office 2008 updated to version 12.1.1 (153 Mb) and the new Open XML documents converter 1.0 (45 Mb).

1. Office 2004 11.5.0:
   Adds read/write compatibility for Open XML Format (.docx, .xlsx, etc.) files if installed with the Open XML Format Converter
   Better stability and printing/page setup fixes for Word
   Better paste compatibility with Office 2008 for all apps
   Powerpoint fixes for stability with large documents
   Download here.
2. Office 2008 12.1.1:
   Several issues are fixed with the updates, including charting problems, Entourage crashing when the computer wakes from sleep, and issues regarding converting documents to and from the Open XML Format.
   Download here.

 NB: before installing the Office 2008 update, you gotta make sure you have version 12.1.0 installed. Yes… No combos for Microsoft Updates.