Office 2004 for Mac is a version of Microsoft Office developed for Apple's Mac OS X operating system. Microsoft has stated that Office 2004 would not be updated as a universal binary and therefore it runs on Intel Macs through the Rosetta emulation layer and not natively. However, Office 2004's successor, Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, is a universal binary, and was released on January 15, 2008.

Editions

Microsoft Office for Mac 2004 is available in three editions; Standard, Professional and Student and Teacher. All three editions include Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage. The Professional Edition adds Virtual PC. The Student and Teacher Edition can't be upgraded, which means when a later version of Office is released, people who purchased the Student and Teacher edition must buy a new package.

Features

Word 2004

Main article: Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is a word processor which possesses a dominant market share in the word processor market. Its proprietary DOC format is considered a de facto standard, although its most recent Windows version (Word 2007) uses a new XML-based format called .DOCX, but has the capability of saving and opening the old .DOC format.

The new Office Open XML format will be built into the next version of Office for Mac (Office 2008). However, it is also supported on Office 2004 with the help of a free conversion tool available from Microsoft.

Excel 2004

Main article: Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program. Like Microsoft Word, it possesses a dominant market share. It was originally a competitor to the dominant Lotus 1-2-3, but it eventually outsold it and became the de facto standard for spreadsheet programs.

Entourage 2004

Main article: Microsoft Entourage

Microsoft Entourage is an email application. Its personal information management features include a calendar, address book, task list, note list, and project manager. With Entourage 2004, Microsoft began offering a Project Center, which allows the user to create and organize projects. Information may come from within Entourage or outside the program.

Entourage 2008 is expected to feature a new "My Day" utility, which assists in organising one's day.

PowerPoint 2004

Main article: Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint is a popular presentation program used to create slideshows composed of text, graphics, movies and other objects, that can be displayed on-screen and navigated through by the presenter or printed out on transparencies or slides. It too possesses a dominant market share. Movies, videos, sounds and music, as well as wordart and autoshapes can be added to slideshows.

Virtual PC

Main article: Virtual PC

Included with Office 2004 for Mac Professional Edition, it is a virtualization application which emulates Microsoft Windows operating systems on Mac OS X which are PowerPC-based. Virtual PC does not work on Intel based Macs and in August 2006 Microsoft announced it would not be ported to Intel-based Macintoshes, effectively discontinuing the product as PowerPC-based Macintoshes are no longer manufactured.

History of Office on Mac OS

See also: Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office has had quite a long history on the Mac OS platform. In fact, Office made its first appearance in 1989 on Mac, with a version for Windows following it in 1990.

Version history