14 DAY TRIAL // Service Pack 2 for Office for Mac 2011 is now available for download, Microsoft has announced. The update focuses on improving Outlook and includes several fixes and tweaks demanded by the user base, according to the makers of the Windows operating system.
Over at the Office for Mac blog, Microsoft’s Pat Fox writes: “We appreciated your feedback! As the newest member of the Office for Mac family, Outlook 2011 continues to get the most requests from consumers and businesses alike; therefore, our top priority for this release was Outlook, and this service pack resolves many of the most common requests.”
Pat suggests there are numerous Outlook enhancements to be had in Service Pack 2, but the blog entry highlights only the key changes, such as improved sync performance with Exchange server, performance improvements while deleting multiple items, and enhancements to the way Office for Mac 2011 displays email message content, and sending email.
“Outlook performance is also improved in IMAP account sync and the database rebuild utility,” says Pat, outlining such new capabilities as scheduling resources in the calendar, distribution list expansion, and day number display in the calendar.
Some rather “modest” improvements have been made to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, “for example, we updated PowerPoint to take advantage of full screen view in Lion, and we improved grammar checkers for Italian and German languages,” Fox notes.
“We also made it easier to work with Office documents on SkyDrive and addressed several smaller issues in response to your feedback,” the Microsoft staffer adds.
Customers looking to review the entire list of fixes and updates are directed to a knowledge base article at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2685940. There, Mac users will also learn that this update adds a drag-and-drop feature for files in Document Connection in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.
Pat Fox concludes thanking everyone for their comments and feedback: "...keep them coming. And please enjoy SP2!”, says Pat.