How Office for Mac 2011 delivers business value

Office for Mac 2011 will reach end of support on October 10, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see these resources.

 

Applies to: Office for Mac 2011

Topic Last Modified: 2015-03-09

Office for Mac 2011 is redesigned and reinvented to be more compatible, powerful, and easy to use. Office 2011 introduces new and improved features across all its applications so that users can seamlessly manage information, use high-impact design elements to communicate ideas, and work efficiently across platforms. The redesigned user interface helps users to quickly find the tools they want so that they can easily achieve their goals. This intuitive user experience also minimizes training and support demands by providing end users with significantly improved Help capabilities and self-service tools.

Challenges and solutions

Typical challenges in a business environment Sample features in Office for Mac 2011

Increased competition demands faster response times, but time is wasted on versioning and coordination.

Office 2011 helps coworkers stay connected. Users can easily work with people in multiple locations and on multiple platforms, regardless of what version of Office is installed on their computers. The following is a list of some sample features that can help users work together:

  • Coauthoring allows multiple people to simultaneously work on the same document, such as an RFP, so that they can respond more quickly and meet deadlines. Security is not compromised because the information can be hosted on premises.

  • Office Web Apps are online companions to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that let users post, access, and share their files from virtually anywhere. Office Web Apps can be hosted on premises, with SharePoint 2010, to provide IT with more confidence about security. Content and formatting will be maintained at all times as users move from their computers to the browser.

  • Broadcast Slide Show allows you to broadcast your presentation to anyone who can access a Web browser.

Reduced staff means that everyone needs to be more productive. For example, users should be able to draw insights from complex or disparate data sets.

Office 2011 helps maximize productivity by providing tools that users can use to prioritize and manage daily activities, e-mail, calendars, and tasks. With its intuitive, results-oriented interface, Office 2011 helps users quickly assemble and create high quality documents, presentations, and workbooks. The following is a list of some sample features that can help users increase their productivity:

  • The ribbon is now available in all applications. The tabs on the ribbon are organized to display commands relevant to a given task so your team can find the commands they need most to deliver better results faster. Contextual tabs appear in the ribbon when the user selects or inserts an object, such as a table or shape, or when they enter into a special document region, such as a header or footer. For example, when you select a picture in Word or PowerPoint, the Format Picture tab appears. The familiar Office for Mac tools, such as the menu bar and Standard toolbar, are still available so that users can perform a task using the method they're most comfortable with.

  • Template Galleries provide easy, organized access to a wide range of professionally designed templates. Users can also customize built-in Word templates, PowerPoint templates, and PowerPoint themes. They can change fonts, colors, and even the aspect ratio of a PowerPoint presentation and then preview the changes right in the gallery. They can also access tens of thousands of templates that are hosted online by Microsoft — both professionally designed and community-submitted content — and get precisely what they need for the task at hand.

  • Excel PivotTables allow you to spend less time sifting through data, and more time analyzing. Also, save time and get right to the information you need with new instant search filtering and multi-select filter conditions for both tables and PivotTables.

  • Excel sparklines save on-screen real estate by charting trends in a single cell right next to the corresponding data. Turn complexity into clarity by getting an at-a-glance, professional analysis for any series of values, such as seasonal fluctuations, statistical data, and monthly expenses.

  • Conversation view in Outlook helps users to stay on top of lengthy e-mail threads by condensing related e-mail messages into a single line item, for instant inbox organization.

IT resource efficiency needs to be optimized so that companies can reduce costs.

By deploying Office 2011, organizations can reduce the total cost of ownership for Office in areas such as employee training, information technology support (IT), meeting expenses, and hardware costs. Office for Mac 2011 can help in the following ways:

  • The new and improved Help, tutorials, and instructional videos provide extensive guidance about how to use Office for Mac 2011. They are designed to help minimize training and technical assistance costs.

  • The Office for Mac 2011 Administrator’s Guide provides technical guidance to IT professionals who are responsible for planning, deploying, and maintaining Office for Mac 2011 in a business environment.

The online versions of these resources, available in Office for Mac 2011 Help and on the Microsoft Web site, are updated on an ongoing basis to provide the most up-to-date and relevant content to users. Click Get Started on the Help menu to go online and see the resources that can help users get up-to-speed or take their work to new levels.