Office for Mac 2011 has yet to be updated for the new MacBook Pro’s Retina display. Apple sells its own iWork suite of productivity apps, including Pages, Numbers and Keynote, in the Mac App Store.
Take a peek at Word 2011 for Mac’s compatibility preferences by way of choosing Word→Preferences→Compatibility. The Compatibility preferences dialog for Word in Office 2011 lists a wide variety of specific behaviors of the application that have changed over the years. Turn specific behaviors on and off here, such as the following:
Font Substitution: If you open a document that used a font that isn’t available on your computer, Word substitutes a font that you do have for the font that you don’t have. If you’d rather choose the font, click the Font Substitution button and then choose the font you want.
Recommended Options For: This pop-up menu has preconfigured combinations of settings from the behavior options. You can change Word 2011 to behave like older versions of Word or even WordPerfect.
Options: You can turn individual Word behaviors on and off in this list by selecting or deselecting check boxes. The choices are eclectic. As you make choices, the Recommended Options For pop-up button changes to let you know which set an individual choice you check belongs to.
Default: Click this button to use the settings you’ve made as the default behavior for Word from now on. If you click this button, you must allow the Normal.dotm template to be modified in order to permanently change Word’s behavior.
Compatibility Report: In this section, select the Check Documents for Compatibility check box to activate the Compatibility Report feature. Click the Reset Ignored Issues button to tell the compatibility checker to recheck the entire document and also flag problems you had previously told it to ignore. Click Reset All Issues button to tell compatibility checker to recheck all documents for incompatibilities even if you told the checker to never check for errors again.
If you want to check whether a document is compatible with other versions of Word, choose Toolbox→Compatibility Report.
In Office 2011 for Mac, the Compatibility Report tool shows if a document that was created in an older version of Microsoft Office is compatible with Office for Mac. Compatibility Report knows almost every aspect of each Office version since Office 97 (that’s the last 11 versions of the software suite, collectively, on Windows and Mac platforms!).
Not only can Compatibility Report give you a report; it might be able to fix some aspects of your document so that what you see in Office 2011 is what your co-workers or friends see when they open your file in their older software.
Before you start using the Compatibility Report, it’s a good idea to keep a backup copy of your original document:
First save your document by choosing File→Save.
Or just click the Save icon on the Standard toolbar.
Now that all changes you last made are saved, choose File→Save As to create a new copy of your file. Give the compatible document a new name.
This way, if you use the Fix feature in the Compatibility Report, you will still have an unchanged version of your original document.
You can find the Compatibility Report tool in the Toolbox. To use it, start at the top and work your way down:
Check Compatibility With: Choose which version of Office you want your document to be compatible with.
You can opt to make your document compatible with a particular Windows or Mac version, or with all Windows and Mac versions.
Document: Click to start checking your document, spreadsheet, or presentation.
Results: Potential problems are displayed. Click a result to see an explanation.
Fix: If Compatibility Report knows how, the potential problem may be fixed if you click this button. Alternatively, the Fix option might be grayed out.
Formatting or other changes needed to make your document compatible with the version of Office you chose (see the top of this list) will be made. You may have to manually fix certain problems.
Ignore: TellsCompatibility Report to ignore instances of the selected problem. If you click the small downward arrow, you can: