[Macpartners] Microsoft Office 2004 Release Effort Underway

[Deb Bowser]

Date: Wednesday, 2 February 2005
To: MIT Community: itpartners at mit.edu, macpartners at mit.edu, 
sw-release-announce at mit.edu, ed-tech at mit.edu
Cc: itag at mit.edu, is&t at mit.edu
From: Software Release Team
Subject: Microsoft Office 2004 Release Effort Underway

Good Afternoon,

I am pleased to announce that the Microsoft Office 2004 release effort has 
begun. Microsoft Office 2004 is the latest version of the Office 
productivity suite from Microsoft for the Macintosh platform (OS X) and 
includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint.  Although included with Microsoft 
Office 2004, Entourage and Virtual PC 7 are not supported by IS&T at this time

Unlike previous release efforts for Microsoft Office which involved 
community testing as well as exhaustive functionality and compatibility 
testing, this release effort will focus primarily on compatibility testing, 
basic functionality testing, and identifying and documenting issues 
specifically relevant to the MIT computing environment. These changes, 
which apply to shrink-wrapped software, allow us to maintain the high 
quality of support while decreasing the time necessary to release the 
product to the MIT community.

New Features and Improvements to Microsoft Office:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Compatibility reports:
With the new Compatibility Report feature in Microsoft Office, you can 
check documents that you create in Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and 
Microsoft PowerPoint for compatibility with other versions of Office 
programs to ensure that your documents look the way you want when they are 
opened.
- Project Gallery:
Quickly find the documents you've worked on recently in the gallery, and 
use the new Learn tab to find instructive sample documents.
For a complete list of new features, please review the following page: 
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office2004/office2004.aspx?pid=highlights

For additional information regarding Microsoft Office 2004, please visit 
the Mactopia site:  http://www.microsoft.com/mac/default.aspx

The Microsoft Office 2004 Release Team will send updates throughout the 
process as necessary.  For more information on Microsoft Office 2004 and 
the release effort, see the Microsoft Office 2004 release notebook at 
http://web.mit.edu/swrt/releases/office. If you have questions, 
suggestions,or would like to participate in the release of Microsoft Office 
2004, please contact the team via email at office-release at mit.edu.

Regards,
  Al Willis and Deb Bowser for the Office 2004 Release Team
   Bill Brids
   John Fothergill
   Bronwen Heuer
   Esther Yanow