The new version of Microsoft Office for the Mac—Office for Mac 2011—was officially released today. It is a major upgrade from the previous version that many Mac users have been eagerly awaiting. Of particular interest to debaters is the restored Macro support: Office for Mac 2011 includes Visual Basic and the Ribbon and so should support at least most of the paperless tools that have been developed for the PC. Microsoft is offering Office for Mac 2011 to students at a discounted price ($99.95 for eligible students).
Has anyone upgraded to the new version? What can you report regarding paperless support?
Macros on word for Mac? WANT.
Has anyone had the chance to try it out?
I think its a definite improvement over Word 08 – I've had it crash maybe once or twice when using it; Word 08 would probably have crashed twenty times during that time.
Macro support is also nice – I've been using a version of the Whitman paperless macros with good results.
However, Microsoft has again given Mac users the short end of the stick:
1. There is no ribbon customizability. No Synergy.
2. The cool movable document map thing from Word 10? Yup, didn't get that either.
I'm sure they had very good reasons for leaving out those features during that extra year of development, though. As always.
I've just tried it out with Synergy. Some of the function keys do work, but the rest of it (menus, some of the more complex functions) doesn't. The ribbon and normal menus weren't showing anything for the menus, but it should work for some of the simpler templates out there. I'll try to cobble something to get Synergy menus displaying, then test each function.
It looks as if Microsoft has not given us ribbon access. There may be a way to use the Synergy 2003 menu, though.
Also, I'm pretty sure parts of Synergy rely on the way Windows' file structures are, so those will probably need to be rewritten.
I've been using one of the betas and the whitman template and it's been working great for paperless, so I'm sure the actual version is also good. All the macros work that previously would have a lot of problems on word 08 such as simple send to speech functions. It also has full page reading view so you no longer have to scroll down if you don't want to unlike in the old versions of word for mac
Mac Office 2011 is like Windows Office 2003 with a Ribbon. Simple macros (such as text formatting) will work, but ribbon customization and file integration won't.
Does that mean Synergy won't work with new word for mac?
Yes.
Will Hardy adapt the new Whitman paperless template to the mac word 2011? Our school (Heritage Hall) is moving to laptops (1:1 program) and we will be using mac for our paperless and I will not be allowed to use boot camp to do paperless.
http://whitmanpaperlessdebate.wikispaces.com/Mac+…