Office 2011 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

6 Reasons to Move to Office 2011 for Mac

Gather a bunch of Mac fans around a water cooler and ask what they want most from Microsoft Office. Two requests soon bubble to the surface: make Office more Mac-like, and give it the same features as the Windows version. Office 2011 for Mac doesn’t completely fulfill both of these (albeit conflicting) desires, but it comes closer than ever. Office 2011 for Mac: The Missing Manual reveals features new and old to make you more productive than ever. Here’s a short list of reasons you may want to move up to the latest, greatest version of Office.

1. A More Mac-like Office

While it still looks like Microsoft, Office 2011 makes great use of the Mac OS X tools you know and love -- Spotlight search, Color Pickers, Mac OS X Help tools, and Finder file windows. You won’t have to relearn standard routines just to be compatible with Windows coworkers.

2. The Ribbon

The most visible change in Office 2011 for the Mac is the ribbon. Yes, the ribbon is similar to the toolbars that Office has had forever, but it’s easier to use because the layout is more consistent. Common commands are grouped logically under tabs. Need more room for your document? Just click the current tab, and the ribbon collapses until you need it again. If you prefer the old ways, Office 2011 for Mac: The Missing Manual explains how to hide the ribbon entirely and create custom toolbars.

3. Out with Entourage, In with Outlook

Entourage, which has been part of Office since 2001, was a fabulous email, calendar, and information management program, but it was never designed to work with the corporate powerhouse Outlook. In Office 2011, Mac fans finally get to join the Outlook nation and coordinate meetings, mailing lists, and tasks with their Windows counterparts. In Office 2011 for Mac: The Missing Manual, you’ll learn how to customize Outlook to match your work style.

4. The Return of Visual Basic

Many Mac fans were disappointed when Visual Basic disappeared in Office 2008. Microsoft got the message, and brought back Visual Basic in all its glory. You can once again use Microsoft’s scripting language to automate and customize Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

5. Broadcast Your PowerPoint Presentation

Want to show your presentation to an audience that’s scattered around the globe? Rather than having everyone burn jet fuel to meet at a Holiday Inn, you can broadcast your presentation over the Internet. Upload your slides to a Microsoft’s free server, and then invite your audience via instant messages or email. You control the presentation, so your audience only sees slides as you click to show them. For sound, you can synchronize the presentation with a conference call.

6. Excel Sparklines

Excel 2011 now includes sparklines -- “small, intense, simple datawords,” as described by statistician Edward Tufte. While full-blown charts are great for comparing the values of different elements, sparklines are better for tracking the changes in a single element. Sparklines fit in a single cell yet express data relationships. For example, a sparkline might tell a doctor how a patient’s glucose level or respiration changes each day. For a meteorologist, a sparkline might express daily changes in temperature or barometric pressure.