♬  Modern technology
unleashed upon mankind…♬

Lyrics, music and recorded by Cause For Effect.

Microsoft Office for the Mac

Well I thought it was about time to try the latest version of Microsoft’s Office for the Mac, version 2011.  2011 was released in Oct, 2010 and has been followed by ‘bug fixes’ and the usual series of updates (one major one shortly after release), so I thought it would be safe to download this latest version by now.

I had been using the 2008 version with Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Entourage.

One of the major differences in the 2011 version is the incorporation of Outlook onto the Mac to replace Entourage.   I won’t go into an extensive review of the differences between the 2008 and 2011 version since PCMag did such a great job, giving the 2011 version of Microsoft Office for the Mac a Best of the Year 2010 Award.

Now I have to say that while I learned to adjust to Entourage, I use Outlook on a PC daily (I work concurrently on a PC and a Mac).  I learned to like (and know) Entourage, I knew Outlook from years of use and experience.  So yes, I was actually looking forward to seeing Outlook on the Mac.

Well I was dismayed to find out that Outlook 2011 will not synch with iCal (or my Google Calendar)! This is a patch or fix that is *expected* at some time in the near future, but which isn’t out as of yet.  Outlook will synch with Exchange (great news for those wanting to use their Mac on a Windows network) but not with Exchange Server 2003 or earlier. I only hope this is released sooner rather than later!!!

Following the upgrade I eagerly opened Outlook 2011 only to have it crash.  I tried it again.  It crashed again. I rebooted (my PC experience coming in here) and it crashed again.  Turns out the culprit was that Office 2011 had used up the last remaining space on my hard drive (I have a white MacBook with a 150 GB HD).  There wasn’t enough remaining HD space to allow it to run.

So I had to start deleting old (bad) photos and (not particularly liked) music files to open up the space required to let Outlook run.  Finally I had deleted enough that Outlook would open and stay open. To my dismay I realized that in the conversion from Entourage, every single email and folder in Entourage (now Outlook) had been duplicated.  YIKES!..

Fortunately a little Googling led me to: Remove Duplicate Message v2.1, An Applescript by Barry Wainwright, 15th October 2010.  This little script was simply Wonderful!  Barry’s Applescript eliminated the duplicate emails (deleting the duplicate folders by hand didn’t take all that long thereafter).

Once I eliminated the duplicate files and folders, I then realized I needed a longer-term solution to my ‘running out of hard drive space’ problem. I was accustomed to running utilities on my PC to keep it in tune, but frankly I had thought that this wasn’t necessary on the Mac.

Further searching on Google turned up: MacKeeper, which is billed as “911 for your Mac”.   Softpedia gave it a review which stated: “Make Sure Your Mac Purrs As Smoothly As It Did the First Day”.  I read the review and decided to give it a try.

Well after running the different scans (and purchasing the product – $38.95 for one Mac, $58.95 for two) I went from under .5 gigabyte free space to 4.76 gigabytes free.  It also has a number of other features that clean, scan and de-duplicate things. The Wise uninstaller can get rid of things beyond just applications.

So I have to say that at this point I am a happy Microsoft Office 2011 user, now that my (venerable) MacBook is tuned up and ready to roar.  I will be posting on my experiences with Office 2011 for the Mac in the near future – stay tuned.  But for the moment I have to say that I have survived the latest in modern technology unleashed upon mankind.