From the “Microsoft on the Mac” card table out in the hall…

If you went to Macworld and were curious enough to check out the Microsoft booth, you already know all about the new version of Office:Mac. You will have especially heard of the Mac Business Unit (aka MacBU’s) answer to the Office division’s Ribbon, which garnered Microsoft the ”Most Innovative Product of 2007” award from PC World. According to Ars Technica’s Charles Jade, the Elements Gallery “...expand[s] when selected, temporarily devouring screen space and giving access to options like templates...”

Jade also commented on another Word feature, the Publishing Layout View, which they claimed that “Unlike Notebook View from Office 2004, PLV actually seems useful. It makes desktop publishing at least as easy as Pages, which sets the bar pretty low, but still.”

For Excel, the headlining new feature is Ledger Sheets. “Ledger Sheets enable anyone to use Excel to handle common financial management tasks,” Microsoft explained in a press release announcing the new version of Office:Mac, “Home and small-business users can balance checkbooks, track accounts or manage investment portfolios more easily than ever.”

PowerPoint is receiving Office Art 2, a feature carried over from Office 2007, with added support for Quartz technologies.

Mysteriously, Entourage was not covered as much by either Ars or Microsoft themselves. The only listed new feature is a large widget-like app called MyDay, which, while obtaining most of its data from Entourage, is not exactly a feature of the personal information manager itself.

When asked if the next version of Office:Mac will be released around 2012 by Charles Jade in an interview, MacBU Product Manager Geoff Price stated that “I hope not.”

Office:Mac 2008 is expected to go on sale in mid-2007.