Microsoft Office 2004 released; Test Drive available

Macworld - 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 today. Microsoft will eventually offer Office in three configurations and is going ahead with the launch despite the fact its 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 -- and some of the new features, like the Cube transition in PowerPoint, will be very familiar to Keynote users. Other new features will bring a higher 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 in Office 2004. 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 also 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.

Word

In addition to new features, users of Microsoft Word will also find many cosmetic changes in Office 2004. New to this version are translucent palettes that allow the user to see documents or the desktop behind the palette when it's not in use. Moving your mouse over the palette brings it back, removing the translucency.

Designed to look like a ruled notebook, the new Notebook Layout View not only allows users to take notes and search and flag information, but but allows them to record audio directly in a Word document.

A new Toolbox Palette combines many of the tools from previous versions of Word into one window. Using a tabbed interface, the Toolbox Palette features a Scrapbook, Reference Tools, Compatibility Report and a Project view.

Copying and pasting text from documents always left users selecting the pasted text and reformatting. But with Office 2004, when text is pasted, a small button appears in the document giving users the choice to Keep Source Formatting, Match Destination Formatting or Keep Text Only.

Entourage

Among the new features in Entourage, users will notice three things: A new three-pane view; the

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