14 DAY TRIAL // Pat Fox from Microsoft has a few updates for Mac Office users in a recent blog post titled “More news on Office for Mac 2011 and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.”
“Since we published the Office for Mac and Lion blog last week, we’ve received several great comments and questions, which I want to address,” Fox writes.
Earlier this week, Microsoft issued a post listing the known issues with Office for Mac on OS X Lion.
Chief among them was the incompatibility with Communicator.
“First, today we released an update to Communicator for Mac that fixes the ‘crash issue’ on Lion. It will come through Microsoft AutoUpdate in the next day or so. Thanks for your patience on this,” says Fox.
The second order of business concerns those still stuck on Office for Mac 2004.
Fox clarifies that this version of Office for Mac will never work on Lion. Mac OS X 10.7 drops support for Rosetta, the emulator that allows PowerPC applications to run on Intel hardware.
“… as we stated in our original blog […] The reason for this is because Office 2004 was a PowerPC-based product and Lion no longer includes Rosetta. Now would be a great time to upgrade to Office for Mac 2011 if you’re upgrading to Lion!”, reads Pat’s advice.
Office for Mac 2011 is Intel only, requires Mac OS X 10.5.8 (Leopard) or later, 1 GB of RAM, 2.5 GB of free hard disk space formatted HFS + (also known as Mac OS Extended format), and connectivity to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 with Update Rollup 4 (KB952580) or later for Microsoft Exchange Server.
“Finally, the most common question – yes, we are working hard with Apple to enable versioning, auto save, and full-screen for Office for Mac 2011. I know your next question will be ‘when?’, and unfortunately I can’t answer that – but it’s likely measured in months not days – just to set expectations,” Fox concludes.