“The clock is ticking on support for Office for the Mac 2011, and there’s no sign from Microsoft of a replacement,” Gregg Keizer reports for Computerworld.
“According to the Redmond, Wash. company’s lifecycle policy, Office for the Mac 2011 will fall off support on Jan. 12, 2016, or slightly more than 18 months from now,” Keizer reports. “Although Microsoft supports the Windows suite for 10 years, it provides fixes and security patches for the Mac edition for only five.”
“Microsoft has continued to remain mum on the next iteration of the suite on OS X,” Keizer reports. “One reason Microsoft may not be talking about the next OS X-based Office, as well as a factor in its release schedule, is the expected appearance of OS X 10.10, aka Yosemite, this fall. Yosemite will include a host of new features, some that Microsoft would certainly like to include in the next version of Office.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Study: Microsoft Office barely used by many employees anymore; companies wasting money licensing Office – May 6, 2014
Computerworld’s Evans: ‘For many, iWork is the only productivity solution you’ll ever need’ – April 2, 2014
Apple shows Keynote users more love with significant point update – April 2, 2014
Apple updates iWork for Mac, iOS, and iCloud – April 2, 2014
Associated Press: Don’t overlook Apple’s iWork – March 5, 2014
LAPTOP Magazine reviews Apple’s iWork for OS X: A compelling content creation platform – November 20, 2013
Hands on: Using Apple’s new iWork for iCloud collaboration tools – November 15, 2013
Apple releases next-gen 64-bit iWork and iLife apps for OS X and iOS; free with new Macs and iOS devices – October 22, 2013
2011 is so full of bugs it’s pathetic. Still not fixed even elementary things like being able to paste text into the “Find” window (the text goes into the document text itself!). Comment bubbles end up all over the place, etc etc.
Text pastes OK into the “Find” window in Word and PowerPoint 2011 on my iMac.
Yes it will but after some time of use w/o restarting the app it degrades and the bug will show.
Still rocking Office 2004, and even though Open XML Converter doesn’t always work for .docx documents, it does most of the time. (Though it’s rare that I have to open any Office documents these days, and getting rarer, which is the best news of all.)
Office has gone downhill ever the 2010 version for win blows, not to mention any mac version. The 2013 version is absolutely horrible. Good riddance.
I had to use google docs for a while. Compared to that complete piece of shite, Office for Mac is wonderful. So at least it has that going for it.
I have to have Office 2011 for the Excel macro support, but that bloody ribbon interface drives me mad. Much preferred the palette approach in the previous versions.
MS is just waiting to announce Office 365 will be the only choice to upgrade to.
The issue may be Microsoft’s “Touch First” initiative, and where the new CEO wants to go with that to spread the “kluge-iness” of Windows 8 into Office. Since Apple is NOT going put touchscreens on Macs, Office for Mac will need to have a fundamentally different type of user interface (the one it has now), if the Windows version is going to force touchscreens on existing Office users. And what happens when they decide to “go Mac” in even greater numbers, because they like they Mac version of Office better?
We use Office 2011 and it works fine. No bloatware, no lags, no problems.
It’s just a question of whether you want to use them or not. We don’t care about the extra stuff. We just delete it from the master install.
This article is factious. Support runs out in 2016? It’s only 2014. We’ll have a new version buy then. Their cloud products are their future and we already have a hint as to what the next Mac version will new like.
And no, while Apple’s office suite has come a long way, it still don’t have the penetration that Office has.
Quit pretending like Microsoft is your enemy. They do enough on their own to cripple themselves.
Dear Microsoft,
People like Macs more than they like your POS, bloated word processor. If I could get away with Pages at school 100% of the time, I would (I get away with Pages 95% of the time; the 5% involves some assignments I need to turn in). Don’t shoot yourself in the foot AGAIN. Release Office for Mac 2015.
LibreOffice works well and it’s free.
Meh. I couldn’t care less about a new version of Office. iWork is perfect for everything I do. I create documents, and save them down into a Word or Excel document if needed. We don’t need Microsoft’s crapware. Hopefully, businesses will start to wake up to that fact soon.
Bottom line: Microsloth need Apple and it’s customer more then Apple needs Microsloth. Apple users will do just fine without MS Office and if you work at a location that requires you to use Office then something will need to give because people won’t go back to their PC’s. If not, MS will fall further into the abyss if they don’t appease at the Mac community and the Window’s centric IT clowns.
Ok, so just march into the management suite and tell the CEO that if they don’t change company policy that requires using Office, something has to give. He may tell the CFO to throw out millions of dollars worth of Excel templates so they can redo the work in Numbers without pivot tables. Alternatively, he could fire you for insubordination and you and your family can try to live on food stamps and self-righteousness.
Export to PDF – done.
Who needs Office.
Perhaps people who need to revise documents in collaboration with Windows users (still around 90% of the business world) without affecting the appearance of those document, or people who need to exchange spreadsheets and not static pictures of spreadsheets.
PDF has to be the absolute worst choice for any document that is not complete and “published”.
Horrible editing abilities and even worse collaboration and edit tracking in every PDF tool I’ve ever tried.
Export to PDF is what you do after finalizing the document with a real word processor.
Hey, while I prefer to use Pages and Keynote over Word and PowerPoint, Office is critical for mixed environments. I’m thankful that Microsoft has somewhat kept up with Office and is changing other corporate software to become Mac friendly.
This has tremendously helped Apple and the bring-your-own-device movement.
If you want to see what the next version of Office for Mac looks like, I would suggest looking at Microsoft OneNote.
I used to hate Microsoft but in this new environment, they aren’t the enemy. They are more like a friendly competitor.
microflacid makes software?
I dumped M$ Word in 1990 and haven’t looked back. Unfortunately, the higher-ups *always* have their assistants send text memos as Word attachments. Fortunately, Quick Look usually shows me without using Word what I should just as well have ignored. Sometimes I think the rise to upper management level causes an inverse in intelligence level.
Microsoft cancelled the next version of Mac office after losing almost all of its early beta testers through rampant alcoholism and suicide. One UX tester went postal after being asked to explain why he wasn’t using the ribbon interface much.