Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 is a version of the

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at CO ...

productivity suite Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proce ...

for

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

. It is the successor to

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac is a version of the Microsoft Office productivity suite for Mac OS X. It supersedes Office 2004 for Mac (which did not have Intel native code) and is the Mac OS X equivalent of Office 2007. Office 2008 was develop ...

and is comparable to

Office 2010 Microsoft Office 2010 (codenamed Office 14) is a version of Microsoft Office for Microsoft Windows unveiled by Microsoft on May 15, 2009, and released to manufacturing on April 15, 2010, with general availability on June 15, 2010. The macOS equi ...

for Windows. Office 2011 was followed by Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac released on July 9, 2015, requiring a Mac with an

x64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set. It was announced in 1999 and first available in the AMD Opteron family in 2003. It introduces two new operating modes: 64-bit mode an ...

Intel processor and

OS X Yosemite OS X Yosemite ( ; version 10.10) is the eleventh major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. OS X Yosemite was announced and released to developers on June 2, 2014, at WWDC 2014 and re ...

or later. Office for Mac 2011 is no longer supported as of October 10, 2017. Support for Lync for Mac 2011 ended on October 9, 2018.

New features

Microsoft Office 2011 includes more robust enterprise support and greater feature parity with the

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

edition. Its interface is now more similar to

Office 2007 Microsoft Office 2007 (codenamed Office 12) is an office suite for Windows, developed and published by Microsoft. It was officially revealed on March 9, 2006 and was the 12th version of Microsoft Office. It was released to manufacturing on Novemb ...

and

2010 The year saw a multitude of natural and environmental disasters such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the 2010 Chile earthquake. The 2009 swine flu pandemic, swine flu pandemic which began the previous year ...

for Windows, with the addition of the

ribbon A ribbon or riband is a thin band of material, typically cloth but also plastic or sometimes metal, used primarily as decorative binding and tying. Cloth ribbons are made of natural materials such as silk, cotton, and jute and of synthetic mate ...

. Support for

Visual Basic for Applications Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is an implementation of Microsoft's event-driven programming language Visual Basic 6, Visual Basic 6.0 built into most desktop Microsoft Office applications. Although based on pre-.NET Visual Basic, which is no ...

macros has returned after having been dropped in Office 2008. Purchasing the Home Premium version of Office for Mac will not allow telephone support automatically to query any problems with the VBA interface. There are however, apparently, according to Microsoft Helpdesk, some third party applications that can address problems with the VBA interface with Office for Mac. In addition, Office 2011 supports online collaboration tools such as

OneDrive Microsoft OneDrive is a file-hosting service operated by Microsoft. First released as SkyDrive in August 2007, it allows registered users to store, share, back-up and synchronize their files. OneDrive also works as the storage Frontend and backe ...

and

Office Web Apps Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COM ...

, allowing Mac and Windows users to simultaneously edit documents over the web. It also includes limited support for Apple's high-density

Retina Display Retina display is a branded series of LCDs and OLED displays by Apple Inc. that have a higher pixel density than their traditional displays. Apple has registered the term "Retina" as a trademark with regard to computers and mobile devices with t ...

s, allowing the display of sharp text and images, although most icons within applications themselves are not optimized for this. A new version of

Microsoft Outlook Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft 365 software suites. Primarily popular as an email client for businesses, Outlook also includes functions such as Calendari ...

, written using Mac OS X's

Cocoa Cocoa may refer to: Chocolate * Chocolate * ''Theobroma cacao'', the cocoa tree * Cocoa bean, seed of ''Theobroma cacao'' * Chocolate liquor, or cocoa liquor, pure, liquid chocolate extracted from the cocoa bean, including both cocoa butter and ...

API, returns to the Mac for the first time since 2001 and has full support for

Microsoft Exchange Server Microsoft Exchange Server is a mail server and calendaring server developed by Microsoft. It runs exclusively on Windows Server operating systems. The first version was called Exchange Server 4.0, to position it as the successor to the relat ...

2007. It replaces

Entourage An entourage () is an informal group or band of people who are closely associated with a (usually) famous, notorious, or otherwise notable individual. The word can also refer to: Arts and entertainment * L'entourage, French hip hop / rap collecti ...

, which was included in Office 2001, X, 2004 and 2008 for Mac.

Limitations

Office for Mac 2011 has a number of limitations compared to Office 2010 for Windows. It does not support

ActiveX ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide W ...

controls, or

OpenDocument Format The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, standardized as ISO 26300, is an open file format for word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and graphics and using ZIP-compressed XML ...

. It also cannot handle attachments in

Rich Text Format ) As an example, the following RTF code would be rendered as follows: This is some bold text. Character encoding A standard RTF file can only consist of 7-bit ASCII characters, but can use escape sequences to encode other characters. ...

e-mail messages sent from Outlook for Windows, which are delivered as winmail.dat attachments. It also has several human language limitations, such as lack of support for

right-to-left A writing system comprises a set of symbols, called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which the script represents a particular language. The earliest writing appeared during the late 4th millennium BC. Throughout history, each independen ...

languages such as Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew and automatic language detection. Microsoft does not support CalDAV and CardDAV in Outlook, so there is no way to sync directly Outlook through iCloud. Outlook also does not allow the user to disable Cached Exchange Mode, unlike the Windows version, and it is therefore not possible to connect to an Exchange Server without downloading a local cache of mail and calendar data. Office for Mac 2011 also has a shorter lifecycle than Office 2010. Support for Office for Mac 2011 was originally scheduled to end on January 12, 2016, but because Office for Mac 2016 did not come out until July 2015, Microsoft extended support until October 10, 2017. As 32-bit software, it will not run on

macOS Catalina macOS Catalina (version 10.15) is the sixteenth software versioning, major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. It is the successor to macOS Mojave and was announced at WWDC 2019 on June 3, 2019 and ...

or later versions of macOS. It is also not officially supported on

macOS High Sierra macOS High Sierra (version 10.13) is the fourteenth major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. macOS High Sierra was announced at the WWDC 2017 on June 5, 2017 and was released on September 25, 201 ...

and

macOS Mojave macOS Mojave ( ; version 10.14) is the fifteenth major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. Mojave was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 4, 2018, and was released to the ...

Editions

Two editions are available to the general public. ''Home & Student'' provides

Word A word is a basic element of language that carries semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguist ...

, Excel and PowerPoint, while ''Home & Business'' adds Outlook and increased support.

Microsoft Messenger MSN Messenger (also known colloquially simply as MSN), later rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, was a Cross-platform software, cross-platform instant messaging client, instant-messaging client developed by Microsoft. It connected to the now-di ...

8 is included with both editions, and

Microsoft Communicator Skype for Business (formerly Microsoft Lync and Office Communicator) is a discontinued enterprise software application for instant messaging and videotelephony developed by Microsoft as part of the Microsoft Office, Microsoft 365 (formerly Off ...

for Mac 2011, which communicates with

Microsoft Lync Server Skype for Business Server (formerly Microsoft Office Communications Server and Microsoft Lync Server) is a real-time communications server software that provides the infrastructure for enterprise instant messaging, presence, VoIP, ad hoc and ...

, is available only to volume licensing customers. Office 2011 requires an Intel Mac running Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later. The Home & Student edition is available in a single license for one computer and a family pack for three computers. The Home & Business edition is available in a single license for one computer and a multi-pack for two computers. The Standard edition is only available through Volume Licensing. The Academic edition was created for higher education students, staff and faculty, and includes one installation. Office for Mac is also available as part of Microsoft's

Office 365 Microsoft 365 (previously called Office 365) is a product family of productivity software, collaboration and cloud-based services owned by Microsoft. It encompasses online services such as Outlook.com, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, programs form ...

subscription programme.

Development

Microsoft announced Office 2011 in 2009. There were 6 beta versions released: * Beta 1 * Beta 2 (Version 14.0.0, Build 100326) * Beta 3 (Build 100519)—announced on May 25, 2010 * Beta 4 (Build 100526) * Beta 5 (Build 100709) * Beta 6 (Build 100802) Access to beta versions was by invitation only, although leaked copies were circulated among Mac

file sharing File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include ...

websites. The final version was released to manufacturing on September 10, 2010, was available to volume license customers a day later, and made available to the general public on October 26, 2010. Service Pack 1 was released on April 12, 2011.

References

{{Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac MacOS-only proprietary software 2011 software

New features

Limitations

Editions

Development

See also

References