Microsoft Announces Office 2004 for Mac OS X

As part of Steve Jobs’s keynote address at this week’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco, Microsoft today announced the upcoming release this spring of Office 2004 for Macintosh. The first major revision to Office since the release of Office v.X in fall 2001, the new Office suite offers a new Project Center feature to connect document types and allow project collaboration with shared material on a file server or an iDisk.

Mac-first features demonstrated during the keynote address included section tabs and notebook view in Word 2004, and a new page layout view in Excel 2004. Microsoft’s Technology Guarantee Program offers a free upgrade to Office 2004 when it becomes available, to anyone purchasing Office v.X starting today through 30-Jun-04. Microsoft says this spring’s release will offer three editions of Office; Office v.X is currently available in Standard Edition, Professional Edition (which includes Virtual PC), and a discounted Student and Teacher Edition.