I very carefully typed and retyped that product key and each time got the “Invalid” message. Since I wasn’t getting very far using the “Help” system I decided to try, try again. (They’re lucky I don’t call “Inaccurate Help files” Notable Gaffe #3. But, as you can see from the figure above, the link does not exist. I would have clicked “Activate By Phone” if such a link existed. Here’s the product key (serial number) from the back of the CD cover ( actual size, with most of the number blurred out for security):Īnd here’s the message I got when I typed it in:Īs you can see, according to Microsoft, “The product key is not valid.” I clicked that blue link to contact Microsoft Customer Service and Support, and got this: Notable Gaffe #2: registering the product– which you must do before using it– is a pain. No wonder we’re not keeping up with China. A giant time waster, multiplied across thousands or maybe millions of documents per day. They call this “Print Layout View” but if you can’t see the whole page at once, it’s not very useful… thus the endless zoom out to see how it looks on the page, zoom back in so you can edit. Thanks to this one poor design decision, every single user of Microsoft Word will spend extra time scrolling and zooming in and out trying to see how his documents look– every user, every document, forever and ever amen. Word could gain more than an inch of document space by putting toolbars on the sides of the window– where all of us have extra space– but no.
Meanwhile, the toolbars and “Ribbon”– a much-trumpeted feature that is, for the most part, simply a way to turn on and off toolbars– shove my document so far down that I get about half a page on the screen. Gee, that empty gray space looks nice and there sure is a lot of it. Notable Gaffe #1: lack of awareness that computer screens are wider than they are tall. I will, however, describe some of the more notable gaffes that I’ve found in just a few days of using Office 2011. You might be thinking that I’m just getting started, and I am, but I’ll spare you the details. Even Outlook’s predecessor, the not-very-good Entourage, could sync calendars (though, to be fair, Entourage’s synching was very unreliable, producing duplicates galore). Apple’s been doing calendar synching through Sync Services, something that is available to everyone who programs for the Mac, for something like five years. If they made a word processor that couldn’t do the letter “Z” it would not be more surprising than this lack of calendar synching. From what I hear, the iPhone is fairly popular with Mac users– what was Microsoft thinking? Yes, that’s right– if you’re going to use the calendar in Outlook from Office 2011, you won’t be able to sync it to your iPhone. They also don’t get that iPhone users would like to sync their calendars, carrying with them the events and appointments that they’ve entered into Office 2011’s Outlook.
#MICROSOFT OFFICE FOR MAC 2011 WON'T OPEN HOW TO#
They don’t get what’s important to Mac users, they don’t get how to make software that’s a pleasure to use, they don’t get that the out-of-the-box experience matters. Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit, which had suffered under previous “leadership,” was under new management, and Office 2011 was supposed to be the product that showed that Microsoft “gets it.” Based on my experience with Office 2011, which I bought with my own $200, it’s plain that Microsoft still doesn’t get it. Microsoft was not particularly quick to get this version out the door– the previous version was released in 2008– but it still feels rushed, and frankly it’s a huge disappointment. And they can open Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents just fine.) (There are some excellent non-Microsoft options available for Mac users today, notably Apple’s iWork, a word processor, presentation program, and spreadsheet that are pleasures to use.
#MICROSOFT OFFICE FOR MAC 2011 WON'T OPEN PC#
Until recently, Mac users who wanted to view documents created by PC users were essentially forced to purchase a copy of Microsoft Office for the Mac, even if they really didn’t want to use it themselves. Thanks to clever bundling arrangements on the PC side, Microsoft’s Word, PowerPoint and Excel have become a workplace standard. Microsoft’s Office, like McDonald’s hamburger, is very popular without being very good. And, keep in mind that in some ways it’s not even as good as the previous version. Executive Summary: we waited three years for THIS?!ĭon’t bother buying it, unless you absolutely have to.
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