New Office for Mac this year

Microsoft will later this year ship a new version of its Office suite for Mac users that shares features with the Windows-based Office 2007, including file formats and user interface improvements, Microsoft said.

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, set to be available in the second half of 2007, will be the first universal version of the productivity suite, designed to run on both Power-based Macs and the newer Intel-based models.

"Office 2008 is by far the most comprehensive, Mac-complementary productivity suite we’ve developed to date," said Roz Ho, general manager of Microsoft's Mac business unit.

Applications in the new suite use the same Office Open XML file formats as Office 2007, which will improve collaboration between Mac and Windows Office users, according to Microsoft. The new formats were officially recognised by the Ecma International standards body in December.

The firm also said it will release converters to let users of the current Office 2004 for Mac read the new file formats, but these will be available only in beta versions from the spring, with final versions after Office 2008 ships.

Office 2008 for Mac consists of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, plus the Entourage personal information manager (PIM) application. The applications share with Office 2007 a new graphics engine to help users spruce up documents, Microsoft said. Additionally, user interface refinements akin to the Ribbon introduced in Office 2007 are designed to give users quicker access to the relevant tools for the job in hand.

The new suite also includes some Mac-only features, such as a publishing layout view with tools to aid desktop publishing tasks; a My Day applet offering a quick view of schedule and task information in Entourage; and common financial management tasks built into Excel.

Microsoft did not disclose pricing for Office 2008 for Mac, but this is ex pected to be in line with Office 2004 pricing.