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Office for Mac 2011 gets Outlook fixes

Microsoft releases a minor update to Office for Mac 2011, but there's no word on when the next version will be available.

Mary Jo Foley
Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 30 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008). She also is the cohost of the "Windows Weekly" podcast on the TWiT network.
Mary Jo Foley
2 min read

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Microsoft

Microsoft made available for download a minor update to its Office for Mac 2011 client on June 25.

The update, 14.4.3, includes a handful of fixes for Outlook for Mac. Specifically, it includes:

  • A fix for an issue that causes Outlook for Mac not to automatically detect and connect to the connection settings for the Exchange server. Instead Outlook for Mac prompts for manual settings when you use certain proxy auto-configurations.
  • A fix for an issue that causes Outlook for Mac to delete shared folders that are added by using the Open Other User's Folder feature when certain errors occur on the server.
  • A fix for an issue that causes Outlook for Mac to continuously try to connect to public folders that are disabled or removed from the Exchange server by the administrator.

The update requires Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later and also Office for Mac 14.1.0 or later. This update applies to both standalone copies of Office for Mac 2011, as well as copies that users may have via their Office 365 for Home or Personal subscriptions.

Microsoft has been regularly updating Office for Mac 2011, since Microsoft released the product back in the fall of 2010, with these kinds of point releases.

There's no new word from Microsoft as to when the company plans to deliver the next major update to Office for Mac.

Earlier this year, the expectation/rumor was that a new major version of Office for Mac would be out before the end of calendar 2014. Now that the Office team has reorg'd and the team building Office for Mac and Office for iPad are together, I'm not sure if Office for Mac is still on the same "12 months after the next major version of Office for Windows" trajectory as before. Right now, tipsters are telling me that the next release of Office for Windows -- both the Metro-Style/touch-first and the desktop versions -- are both looking like Spring 2015.

I also have no update on the whereabouts of the OneDrive for Business client for Mac beyond "some time before the end of calendar 2014." I asked the OneDrive team last week and that's all company officials still will say.

This story originally appeared as "Microsoft updates Office for Mac 2011 with Outlook fixes" on ZDNet.