REDMOND, Wash., May 19, 2004 — Disc jockey discovered creating fiscal budgets in Excel. Graphic designer found using PowerPoint® for new-business pitches. Available today, Microsoft®
Office 2004 for Mac helps Mac customers get in touch with their inner business suit to take care of business more efficiently, leaving more time for the pursuit of passions. In addition, Microsoft Corp. today announced that the popular Office 2004 Test Drive offers Mac users the opportunity to take this latest version for a free spin for 30 days.
“Office 2004 offers a new level of productivity never seen before on the Mac platform, and now users can try it free for 30 days before they buy it,” said Tim McDonough, director of marketing and business development for the Macintosh Business Unit (Mac BU) at Microsoft. “Office 2004 is packed with the tools to help Mac users work more efficiently. We all want to get our work done and move on to the fun things in life.”
Office 2004 for Mac Standard and Student and Teacher editions are now available at major resellers nationwide, including The Apple store ( http://www.apple.com/ ) and Apple’s retail stores CompUSA, MacConnection, MacMall and Mac Zone. Consumers can check http://www.microsoft.com/mac/ for more information and links to resellers.
“We are excited about the availability of Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac, the most innovative version of Office yet,” said Ron Okamoto, vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations at Apple Computer Inc. “Office 2004 offers many Mac-only and Mac-first features, making it a great productivity suite for consumers, professionals, educators and students.”
Office 2004 was built to help Mac users work smarter by offering better ways to manage information, share ideas and create documents. The following Office 2004 features, announced today, are designed to help Office users seamlessly share their ideas, whether collaborating with other Mac users or across platforms. An online Flash demo of the tools listed below, and other Office 2004 features, can be accessed at http://www.microsoft.com/mac/ .
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Track Changes. With new comment balloons, quick change accepting and rejecting, and MSN®
Messenger integration, tracking changes has never been this easy. -
MSN Messenger integration. Now users can launch instant conversations via MSN Messenger for Mac Version 4.0 directly from a comment in Microsoft Word.
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Unicode support. Office 2004 now supports input and display in more than 30 languages.
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Long-file name support. File names are no longer limited to 31 characters.
A full list of Office 2004 for Mac features can be found on the attached list of new Office 2004 tools.
Office 2004 for Mac Professional Edition, which includes Virtual PC for Mac Version 7, will be available after Virtual PC 7 is complete in the second half of 2004. In addition, in the coming weeks Office 2004 will be available in the following languages:
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Japanese and English: available today
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French: available by June 2
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Italian, Swedish and German: available by June 18
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Spanish: available by June 25
About Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit
The Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft is a leading developer of software and online products for the Macintosh platform. The group is composed of more than 165 full-time Mac product experts and is dedicated to creating innovative software for Mac customers worldwide. For more than 20 years, Microsoft has developed award-winning software for the Mac. Current products include Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac, a productivity suite that includes the e-mail application and personal information manager Entourage®
2004, Word 2004, Excel 2004, PowerPoint 2004 and MSN Messenger for Mac Version 4.0; Virtual PC for Mac Version 6.1; Internet Explorer 5.2 for Mac; and MSN for Mac OS X. More information about the Mac BU and Microsoft Macintosh products is available at http://www.microsoft.com/mac/ .
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
Microsoft, PowerPoint, MSN, Entourage and Encarta are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
Apple, Mac and Macintosh are registered trademarks of Apple Computer Inc.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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