Microsoft Office for Macintosh 2001

The new addition to the team is Entourage - which is certainly a high-quality email program. In stereotypical Microsoft fashion, it doesn't like to access its own Hotmail accounts...hmmmmmm...what's that all about?

It also comes with Internet Explorer 5, which is what you might call yoogly - which is ugly with a capital, boldfaced "U" at the front. It too, has slight improved functionality over it's peecee counterpart. It is a free program so there's no real need to pay for this.

If you've already got a version of Office, you may want to stick with it and save your cash.


The problem of Entourage   November 4, 2000
15 out of 18 found this review helpful

Microsoft once again has not solved the problem of moving from PC to MAC-- if you have your life stored in PC outlook, don't even think about buying this. Switching to MAC is great... porting over applications is not bad. Porting over email and contacts is a disaster. Microsoft support is not much better-- spent 2 hours on the telephone trying to find anyone who could even address the issue. Never did. Bottom line: for MAC users with Office 98, not much functionality is gained. For PC users moving back to MAC, plan on fat-fingering in all of you data.


Great For Students!   November 22, 2000
Carrie Margulies (Santa Cruz, CA United States)
13 out of 14 found this review helpful

Most reviews of Microsoft Office discuss how well it works in an actual office setting. Which isn't wrong, because that's where it's primarily being used... in offices. :)

But, as a student, I have found that this is great for us too! I'm a Psychology major, and I find all these programs invaluable. With "Word", I can do all my papers and assignments.

With "Excel" I can do statistical analyses for my Psych research reports. You can also make some pretty cool graphs and charts, if you're a Chem or Bio or Psych major. It's much easier to enter info into the spreadsheet, and make a chart, than in Appleworks. If you've ever tried to do that on Apple or ClarisWorks, and had a hard time, you'll breathe a huge sigh of relief.

With "Entourage" I can keep in touch with my friends back home, and my professors and TA's (teaching assistants). It's also a great program to keep track of assignment due dates, and test dates... with the "reminder" feature. I actually haven't used "Power Point" yet, but it looks nifty, and will probably serve a student well, too.

So, if you're a student, and are wondering whether or not to get this, do it!! :) My only complaint is that too many plug-ins have to be installed. But you don't have to go searching all over the web for them, they're right on the CD-ROM. I would recommend buying it through your school bookstore though, because the academic price is a lot less harsh on the wallet. Take care and happy computing!


Too much Windoze; not enough Mac.   December 7, 2002
Bob Zeidler (Charlton, MA United States)
12 out of 14 found this review helpful

Like a good boy, I had been regularly purchasing various Microsoft-for-the-Mac upgrades for a very long time. How long has it been? It's been so long that my first copy of Excel (1.0, in 1985) was free, because at the time I possessed registered copies of MS Multiplan and MS Chart. That's a long time by anyone's measure.

My most recent Excel upgrade prior to MS Office for the Mac 2001 was Excel 95; I took a bye on Office 98 principally because I've never been particularly fond of MS Word (even in the Mac versions that had worked reasonably well). For most of the fifteen years or so that I've been using Macs almost exclusively, my word processor of choice has been WriteNow: Lean, mean, full of most of the features that I need, still running on OS 9.2.2, and, regrettably, discontinued (abandoned would be a more appropriate term) several years ago.

However, with the ever-increasing hegemony of Windoze-based business networks, and with the fact that Excel 95 cannot run on a G4 Mac with OS 9.0 or newer, I bit the bullet and purchased this Office 2001 package. And, while I've now pretty much climbed its learning curve, the experience hasn't exactly been one that I'd write home about.

Here are a few nits I choose to pick (some small, some not so small):

* Somewhere between Excel 95 and Office 2001, Microsoft programmers seem to have lost track of the fact that Macs have both "Return" and "Enter" keys. (Windoze machines have no "Return" key.) The "Return" key no longer functions as it did, scrolling down one cell in an Excel spreadsheet; it now does precisely the same thing the "Enter" key does (which is limited to whatever one chooses from the "Preferences" menu). Not very bright!

* In like fashion, the MS programmers decided to reassign several of the common "Command" key functions (Fill Down, Fill Across, Insert, Delete, Clear, etc.) to the "Control" key, again in some ill-founded effort at "cross-platform"compatibility. (Imagine my surprise when I first went to insert a row or column, only to find that my selection was formatted in italics!) In the process, the ergonomic superiority of the Mac keyboard, requiring less "stretch" effort to activate these keyboard shortcuts, has now been sacrificed to the Bill Gates God of Uniformity. And Microsoft continues to place the Font menu on a toolbar, not as a Mac-standard menu. Not very bright!

* While tools have been added to the toolbox library, the ability to customize toolbars for one's own use has actually been reduced! And the tools don't always load consistently, suggesting some bugginess that requires a Microsoft patch or two, not yet available. And, unlike previous Excel upgrades in my experience, this one appears to provide no additional chart types. Not very bright!

* Word is incompatible with RamDoubler 9.0 (another patch still not available). But, for once, my newest (G4) Mac has more memory than RamDoubler can deal with. Nevertheless: Not very bright!

* Word files - as always - are bloated for reasons that have little to do with content or formatting. (As a comparison, a 25-page file, containing a few tables and some minor formatting, which occupies 91K of HD space as a WriteNow 4.0 file and 96K as a WordPerfect 3.5e file, occupies 194K as a Word 2001 file.) If not "Not very bright!", then "Why?"

* The ubiquitous Windoze paperclip "Advisor" has been transmogrified to a less-than-winsome "flex-toy Mac." Gimmee a break!

* Entourage is incompatible with Outlook or Outlook Express. Its inclusion is specious at best, and one wonders how many will use this module.

* Once again, as far as a database module is concerned, Mac users are left in the lurch. Access continues to be notable by its absence (not that it is every database user's "dream program"), and FoxPro has long been history as far as Microsoft support is concerned. Moreover, a Mac port of SQL is just a fantasy. And VisualBasic is only present in crippled form, to support the modules that are VB-capable.

There are a few (very few, I'm sad to say) gains:

* PowerPoint works fine. But I have little need for it, save for the odd PP file that gets attached to my e-mail thanks to some chain letter or other.

* The modules run acceptably fast. But I think this has as much or more to do with G4 speed and available RAM as it does to "tight" coding by software engineers.

* Word works acceptably well (but not particularly great) as a platform for HTML coding.

* I've got the cross-platform compatibility that my business-related activities require.

For those G4 users needing a single module but not needing "full" cross-platform compatibility for other applications, my advice is to limit yourselves to just the Office 2001 module (saving some bucks), hang on to your WriteNow 4.0 program (it'll run just fine on OS 9.x G4's) or download a free copy of WordPerfect 3.5e, take a bye on Entourage (Outlook Express works just fine, and is bundled free with Explorer), and, if you need a database program, there's always FileMaker Pro.

Summary: A "forced" upgrade for G4 Mac users who must use Excel. More steps backward than forward for those of us who prefer Macs but need the cross-platform compatibility. At best, three stars, and then only with the greatest of reluctance.

Bob Zeidler


why can't it be great?   October 11, 2000
10 out of 19 found this review helpful

Okay, so they're a monopoly. So why not take advantage of that market power and make a great product instead of a lousy one?

Powerpoint is reactive. It just tweaks a very mediocre tool instead of making it intuitive and powerful.

Excel abandons so many of the little things you're already used to. Command D no longer fills down. Command T no longer converts relative to absolute. Sigh.

And word is more of the same, with that stupid little paper clip guy.

I'm afraid to upgrade to entourage... maybe someday. The short version: if you're hoping that this round of upgrades will dramatically increase your productivity, you will be sorely disappointed...