Microsoft Lists Known Issues with Office for Mac on OS X Lion

Microsoft is joining a growing list of software vendors to acknowledge issues with its Mac products under the latest version of Apple’s desktop operating system - OS X Lion.

What is arguably the most important piece of software distributed by the Redmond giant that comes second only to their Windows OS, the Microsoft Office suite is quite buggy on systems running OS X 10.7, says the company.

In a knowledge based article similar to one that Adobe issued last week following the launch of OS X Lion, Microsoft is outlining the potential issues users of Microsoft Office for Mac might encounter after upgrading to the latest Mac OS.

Perhaps the most important of all is Communicator for Mac crashing every time users attempt to send an instant message (IM) or start an audio/visual call.

Microsoft pledges to resolve this issue in an upcoming update to Communicator for Mac.

Excel may crash when users move a sheet from one workbook to another workbook. Other Excel issues apply to both Office 2008 and Office 2011 Mac editions.

PowerPoint exhibits some strange behavior as well (both 2008 and 2011 editions), as does Entourage in Office 2008, and Outlook in the 2011 Mac-exclusive edition.

Specifically, some users may be unable to import messages from Lion Mail, Microsoft outlines.

Web applications may not correctly open the file in the rich client application. There is, however, a workaround with Safari or Firefox.

Other issues with Office 2008 or 2011 are specified in the document as well.

Also noteworthy, for Mac users still relying on the 2004 edition of the productivity suite, Office for Mac 2004 will not run on Lion at all.

The news will not come as a shock for those who keep track of Apple and the technologies adopted and subsequently dropped in all versions of Mac OS to date.

Lion, as savvy users should well know, drops Rosetta, the emulator that allows PowerPC applications to run on Intel hardware.

Office for Mac 2004 had been specifically developed with PPC in mind, whereas Lion calls for Intel hardware, or else it will not install.