Microsoft to Deliver Entourage 2004 and Messenger 5.1 Enhancements in March and Open XML Format Converters

In its announcement of the formal 5-year deal with Apple to continue to produce Office for the Mac, Microsoft noted that it is putting the final touches on a number of Entourage 2004 enhancements scheduled for delivery in March 2006. Since the release of Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), the Mac Business Unit (BU) has worked with Apple to enable Sync Services integration with Entourage information and data. Customers will soon be able to sync their Entourage calendar, address book, notes and tasks with handheld devices that also work with Sync Services. Support for Spotlight, another Tiger feature, will allow customers to more effectively search Entourage e-mail messages, as they are already able to do with their Office 2004 for Mac Word, PowerPoint and Excel files. The Mac BU has enhanced Smart Card technology for customers who need to send digitally signed and encrypted e-mail messages.

The Mac BU will release new features that continue to make Messenger for Mac an ideal messaging application for Mac enterprise customers. While the current version of Messenger for Mac provides more secure messaging and file transfers within the firewall, Messenger for Mac 5.1 will allow users to send files more securely to external contacts. The updated version also will be better able to determine a user’s location and where to send the message if the user is logged into Microsoft Office Live Communications Server on more than one machine. In addition, IT managers will have improved control over how they save chats at an organizational level. Messenger 5.1 is expected to be released in March.

To ensure that Office for Mac customers receive the highest level of compatibility, Microsoft's Mac BU will issue converters that let Office for Mac users read the new Microsoft Office Open XML Format. These downloadable converters will be released for current versions of Office for Mac following the availability of the next version of Office for Windows.

The next release of Office for the Mac will run natively on Intel-based Macs. More... [Bill Fox]