Entered CNET Catalog: 08/18/2001
SKU: 731-00463
Manufacturer: Microsoft Corp.
Manufacturer description
Microsoft Office v. X for Mac Standard Edition, designed for seamless operation with Mac OS X, gives you the tools to easily create rich, compelling documents, spreadsheets, and presentations - plus an integrated system for managing your e-mail and personal information. Get Microsoft Word X, Excel X, PowerPoint X, and Entourage X in one great program. Office v. X is designed to run exclusively on Mac OS X and takes full advantage of the promises of reliability and stability in Apple's OS X operating system. The powerful tools in Office v. X make it faster and easier to get started on and complete your projects. Office v. X makes computing in cross-platform environment simple, allowing you to share files with users of many other Macintosh, Windows-based, and third-party programs. Because Office X for Mac and Office for Windows share the same file formats, files you create in Office X can be opened, edited, and re-saved in other programs.CNET editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 11/15/2001
 Editors' note:
On June 3, Microsoft released an Office X update called Office X Service Release 1. We have updated this review to reflect changes made in the service release. |
No application is more important to the fate of Mac OS X than Microsoft Office. It doesn't matter how great an operating system is, it isn't useful to most people unless it can run mainstream business software. And whether you like it or not, Microsoft Office is about as mainstream as it gets. Fortunately for Apple, Office X ships with a well-conceived and well-implemented collection of Mac OS X applications that make the most of OS X's new Aqua interface and features. The Office X apps are fully Carbonized (that is, they've been ported to OS X from an older version of the Mac OS), but unlike most Carbon apps, they don't run in Mac OS 9. But if you've been waiting for top-notch, Mac-specific business programs before switching to OS X, Office X is for you. Be sure to download the free Service Release 1, however, for snappier performance and bug fixes. Microsoft will not ship this update on Office X CDs. (Updated 6/11/02)
| Editors' note:
On June 3, Microsoft released an Office X update called Office X Service Release 1. We have updated this review to reflect changes made in the service release. |
No application is more important to the fate of Mac OS X than Microsoft Office. It doesn't matter how great an operating system is, it isn't useful to most people unless it can run mainstream business software. And whether you like it or not, Microsoft Office is about as mainstream as it gets. Fortunately for Apple, Office X ships with a well-conceived and well-implemented collection of Mac OS X applications that make the most of OS X's new Aqua interface and features. The Office X apps are fully Carbonized (that is, they've been ported to OS X from an older version of the Mac OS), but unlike most Carbon apps, they don't run in Mac OS 9. But if you've been waiting for top-notch, Mac-specific business programs before switching to OS X, Office X is for you. Be sure to download the free Service Release 1, however, for snappier performance and bug fixes. Microsoft will not ship this update on Office X CDs.
Aquafied Office does it better
In building Office X, Microsoft took care to stick to Apple's OS X user interface guidelines, which often help to make text, buttons, and menus easier to see and navigate. For instance, Open and Save dialogs look and act like those in OS X. When you click them, they roll down from title bars as sheets (dialog boxes attached to a window). Word's View buttons, which let you switch between Normal, Page Layout, and other views, are colorful and easy to distinguish from the background. In Excel, as soon as you start typing in a cell, it develops a drop shadow to make it stand out from inactive cells. And using OS X's transparency (a feature that lets you adjust the opacity of text and graphics), you can overlap 3D charts and graphics in Excel, PowerPoint, and Word.
True to form, Microsoft has gone a bit overboard with some new Office X gewgaws. For example, when you close and open the Formatting palette, the palette slides in a goofy, animated, morphing way, called "genie," to and from the toolbar. There's no way to turn the genie effect off, and the animation is slow, though Service Release 1 speeds this up to a tolerable level. SR 1 also adds the somewhat extraneous ability to edit toolbar buttons. Control-click a button, choose Properties, then click the button graphic image.
We'd gladly trade these graphical features for antialiasing, an important OS X feature. Office X applies antialiasing to icons, buttons, Excel chart text, and all the text in Word. But some other text still appears jagged. Entourage, for example, doesn't antialias text in new e-mail messages, and while Excel smoothes out text in the row, column, and formula field headers, it leaves text within the cells rough around the edges. The effect is a bit jarring. Service Release 1 improves the quality of the antialiasing, for Mac OS X 10.1.5 or later, but doesn't add antialiasing to these jaggy areas.
Fortunately, Office X's extensive online help is antialiased. As with Office 2001 for Mac, Office X doesn't ship with a printed instruction manual. But, unlike Office 2001, Office X now contains a helpful, 164-page manual in the form of a PDF file, called the Getting Started Book. Responsive online tech support is available at Mactopia. To access telephone tech support, you'll have to pay for one of several standard Microsoft packages, available Monday through Friday from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. (PT).
Word and Excel are still the stars
Microsoft has also greatly improved Excel. Office X lets you customize keyboard commands by using the Customize command in the Tools menu, a powerful feature Word has offered for a long time. Excel now imports FileMaker Pro database files and, with Service Release 1, files from a FileMaker server on a network. Oddly enough, Excel doesn't import Microsoft Access database files--too bad, since there's still no Macintosh version of Access. Want to read Access files from a Windows user? Forget it.
In addition, some of Office X's apps occasionally fail to communicate with each other. Fortunately, Service Release 1 appears to have fixed these issues. At times, as we edited an Excel chart in Word, the Word and Excel interfaces would pop to the foreground two or three times, so that first Word would show, then Excel, then Word, then Excel. Service Release 1 fixed this, as well as another problem: if we had Word and Excel open simultaneously, CD-ROMs would not eject when moved to the Trash until we selected the Finder. Office X is all better now.
PowerPoint stands still; Entourage marches on
Entourage, Office's combination e-mail/calendar program, wins our most-changed app award. Unfortunately, it is still the weakest application in the suite. It sports an all-new interface with large buttons that make it easy to navigate among mail, address book, calendar, and notes displays. The redesigned Calendar window now consists of three panes, one of which sports a Task List that shows the day's events. And the Custom Views window (also accessible from a button) lets you combine address book, calendar, and mail information in many different ways, so you get all the information you need on a single screen. With Service Release 1, Entourage can now access MSN Hotmail accounts.
Unfortunately, Entourage still lacks some basic PIM features. You can't print paper calendar pages that'll fit in your appointment booklet or binder, for instance. Nor can you sync directly to handheld Palm devices--both features that the free Palm Desktop supports. Microsoft says direct Palm syncing will be available on July 15, 2002, as a free update.
Get going on OS X
Whereas Word 2001 made fantastic and necessary improvements from Word 98, Word X makes even greater improvements from 2001. Now, if you need to, say, format and spell-check unconnected blocks of text, simply hold down the Command key and use your pointer to select all the appropriate sections in one fell swoop. This saves you the trouble of having to choose one text block, apply the format, and then repeat the process for every area you want to change. We're pretty impressed by Word's slick Contact toolbar as well. It lets you export contacts and addresses to Entourage (the e-mail/scheduling app) directly from Word and lets you add addresses to Word documents. To put a name and an address in your Word file, just choose the name from the pop-up menu on the Contact toolbar, then click the Include Address button. Entourage doesn't even need to be open. Service Release 1 is a further improvement, clearing up some sluggish behavior in Word X, particularly when dragging objects and scrolling.
Of all the Office X apps, PowerPoint has evolved the least since Office 2001. Its most notable new feature, the PowerPoint Package option, lets you wrap a presentation and all of its attendant files into one neat little package, then move it into a single folder. To do this, click File > Save As and select PowerPoint Package in the Format pop-up menu. Then name the folder you want the files to reside in. Service Release 1 adds performance, particularly for slides with a lot of graphics. Despite the dearth of new features, PowerPoint is still the best presentation package for the Mac.
Although Office X isn't perfect, we think it's one of Microsoft's better Mac offerings. If you've been champing at the bit to upgrade to Mac OS X, you'll be pleased to have this powerful package to use with your new operating system--just be sure to download and install Service Release 1. Office X gives you something to do with Mac OS X and shows off Apple's new OS with style. 
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
User Rating: 
9/10
What Office SHOULD look like
Pros: Superb user interface, beautiful to look at and fantastically easy to use. Everything we want PC Office to be. If MS can write such good MAC software, then why the hell can't it do it on a PC? So much faster than PC Office. Awesome.
Cons: Entourage is a bit strange, can't put my finger on it but just feels a bit 'clunky' to use. Don't like the way it handles IMAP.
User Rating: 
1/10
This is why we used to say that Microsoft Works is an oxymoron.
Pros: Excel works reasonably well
Cons: Word is the most unstable program I use. It crashes at least 5X per day. It's bizarrely inconsistent Style functionality makes Styles almost useless. It's constant desire to autoformat in exactly the opposite way that I want is infuriating. Numbering in o
User Rating: 
4/10
Like an old girlfirend of mine, beautiful but it breaksdown often
Pros: Looks wonderful making crunching numbers or writing copy a relatively pleasing experience.
Cons: Unstable like a Rob low at a hollywood premier party. Seriously, if you don't save your work every two minutes your liable to be lulled into a false sense of security...then KablamO! Your hard work is gone.
User Rating: 4/10
Powerpoint was very disappointing!
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Cons: Bought the software mainly for Powerpoint, however, upon importing an XP file, all entrance & exit effects and most slide transitions were lost. The suite has bogged down my machine to a point, I just uninstalled the entire thing
User Rating: 
5/10
Only Microsoft products crash in OSX...hmmmm
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User Rating: 
6/10
I'd love it if I could keep it open
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User Rating: 
2/10
the slowest word processor I have used in 20 year of computing
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User Rating: 
3/10
typical Microsoft product
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User Rating: 2/10
Office X updates causes it to crash
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User Rating: 3/10
à mettre à jours
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User Rating: 4/10
PowerPoint X Sucks
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User Rating: 6/10
not as good as the XP
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User Rating: 6/10
Crash! Crash!
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User Rating: 2/10
Buggy, Crashy
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User Rating: 3/10
Crashes a lot
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User Rating: 5/10
Pretty, but nauseating
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User Rating: 2/10
An uncooked hamburger...
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User Rating: 3/10
Overpriced, Sluggish, Quirky
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User Rating: 
8/10
It's better than the Windows Version
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User Rating: 3/10
Nice try, but it's George Orwell's 1984
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10/10
Color me impressed
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User Rating: 
7/10
Great, but you can't share w/ friends
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User Rating: 9/10
Great Product but may not launch if you have Toast 5.1P2 for OSX
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User Rating: 7/10
Better than Window version!
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User Rating: 1/10
glad I didn't buy it
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User Rating: 1/10
Great tools - but missing 2 vital features
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User Rating: 8/10
Finally, Office as it should be.
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User Rating: 9/10
I now understand the need for a mac
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User Rating: 7/10
Quality upgrade
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User Rating: 10/10
Best version of office to date
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.
User Rating: 7/10
Great OS X software
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User Rating: 7/10
Speed, depth and good looks.
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User Rating: 8/10
Entourage Rocks!
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User Rating: 3/10
Welcome to 1984
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User Rating: 7/10
It might be expensive, it might be Microsoft, but I'm getting it!
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User Rating: 8/10
Frigin Awsome!
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) and I must say it kicks butt! While it is pretty much the same thing as Office 2001, it is a God send not to have to use OS 9 any more! If you want to upgrade to OS X but have been waiting for Office, now is the time, even if it doesn't pack a ton of new features. Good job Microsoft Mac division.
User Rating: 3/10
Bound to be buggy, bloated and overdone
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Keywords
6910962 |About CNET Archive BETA
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Office V.X/10.0 For MAC OSX CROM10.1 OR Higher (H) specifications
- General
- Subcategory Office applications - office suite
- Language(s) English
- License pricing Standard
- Localization English
- Software
- License Type Complete package
- License Qty 1 user
- License Pricing Standard
- Platform MacOS
- Min Supported Color Depth 16-bit (64K colors)
- Distribution Media CD-ROM
- Package Type Retail
- System Requirements
- OS Required Apple MacOS X 10.1 or later
- Peripheral / Interface Devices Mouse or compatible device , CD-ROM
- System Requirements Details Apple MacOS X 10.1 or later - PowerPC G3 - RAM 128.0 MB - HD 75.0 MB
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