The upcoming MS Office 2011 is 32-bit only

Historical text from HellasProject (2009–2014). It is not current advice or a present-day service.

“In a post on Microsoft’s Mac blog, Jake Hoelter, referring to the company’s presence at WWDC10, announced that the upcoming Office 2011 would run in 32-bit.”

In his post Hoelter (Product Unit Manager / MacBU) notes that the final Office for Mac 2011 is approaching, and refers to their presence at WWDC10, explaining that they will always look for ways to work with Apple in order to meet their customers’ demands.

He then says they have invested in better compatibility of Office between the Mac and Windows editions, which is after all users’ main demand, with the result that they cannot complete moving the suite’s entire UI to Cocoa. Consequently, because Apple requires a full move to Cocoa in order to adopt 64-bit, the upcoming Office 2011 would ship in 32-bit only.

Hoelter notes that this fact would not matter much for the end user. He points out that the biggest difference between 32 and 64 bit is the maximum amount of memory the app can use, so most users with ordinary files or larger than ordinary would not notice differences in performance. Using the app in 64-bit would benefit users with very large files, for example Excel files with millions of cells, or PowerPoint presentations with thousands of high-resolution photos.

MS Office 2011 for Mac was expected to ship by the end of that year.

Source: MacLife.gr, written by MihalisGR