While some users have reported receiving their copies of Office 2004 for several days now, Microsoft Corp."s Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) will officially announce availability of the application suite on Wednesday. Microsoft will eventually offer Office in three configurations and are going ahead with the launch despite the fact their high-end configuration will not be available until Virtual PC 7 is ready later this year.
Office 2004
Office 2004 comes with many innovative, useful features across the suite of applications -- some of the new features, like the Cube transition in PowerPoint, will be very familiar to Keynote users, while other, new features, will bring a new level of organization to Office users. Recognizing that most Office for Mac users will share documents with Windows-based PC users, Microsoft has included a Compatibility Report. The reports detail issues that may be problematic on another platform or with older versions of Office, giving users the option of fixing them or ignoring the problems.
Office 2004 now supports long file names, doing away with the 31 character limit of previous versions. With Unicode support, Office now supports input and display of more than 30 languages. Available from all four Office applications, the Scrapbook allows storage, advanced searching and direct input into a document. Through cut and paste or drag-and-drop, the Scrapbook offers access to often-used information, including text, logos and pictures.