Office 2004 for Macintosh: A first look (Part I)

Microsoft last week debuted Office 2004 for Mac, the newest version of the productivity suite on the Mac platform. Designed for Mac users, with several Mac-only features, the new version of the suite is expected to ship in the "first half of this year" (i.e., June 2004) with dozens of new features, including a new "Project Center" in Entourage X to organize information, a new Notebook Layout view in Microsoft Word, a new Scrapbook, an Excel Page Layout view, and Compatibility Reports for helping determine document compatibility with Windows and Mac Office versions.

Microsoft's new Project Center resides within the Entourage X application. It offers a single way to view and organize e-mail messages, files, contacts, meetings and tasks related to a particular project. The new Project Center works by associating items with a project--rather than moving the files themselves--and allows users to easy add/remove file links to projects without moving the content itself.



Entourage X offers several different views for organizing and tracking information and allows information to be shared with other users. With a few clicks, users can specify which data (e.g., emails, files, and/or contacts) within the project can be shared. The easy-to-use service will utilize a central server such as AppleShare file server, HTTP DAV file server, or an iDisk to house a centrally located Entourage Database with the project's associated files; it will automatically sync changes to tasks, notes, and the calendar with all shared users and will allow users to "check in and out" documents, providing a warning if modified files would overwrite more recent versions on the server.

Project Center will feature a new project wizard, which will help users create new projects from existing documents, email messages, and contacts. Entourage X will use custom rules to automatically add new and related e-mail to the project as it arrives in a user’s inbox. Users can manually add files to the Project Center or can add items to the project's Entourage Watch folder. Watch folders provide a convenient drag & drop method for users to associated files with particular projects. Files, emails, tasks, and calendar events can be associated with multiple projects. In an effort to help users distinguish and visually organize files, colored dots can be found in every view to quickly identify a file's associated projects.




The Project Center Toolbox, available from any Office 2004 application, provides a quick overview of any project, offering a list of meetings, tasks, notes, associated files, and relevant mail. It also offers convenient archive functions to backup all or portions of a project's data. Microsoft also revealed a new three-column layout for email messages in Entourage. Unfortunately, Microsoft has yet to announce any enhancements to its junk mail handling.





Microsoft Office 2004 also includes a new Scrapbook feature that allows users to centrally store and track images, text snippets, Web content, URLs, and other information. The new Scrapbook allows users to drag & drop items, such as logos, commonly-used text, URLs, and so on directly to and from the Scrapbook; offers integration with Project Center as well; it offers a thumbnail preview of the document, and important document info such as date, size, and document creator. The Scrapbook also provides an option to enter keywords for each item, allowing users to easy search for and retrieve items based on keywords.

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