Microsoft confirmed that it is working on OS X 10.7, or Lion, feature support for Office 2011 for the Mac, but that update won’t be available for a few months. When the update does roll out, however, the Office suite will be able to take advantage of Lion’s auto-save, versioning and full-screen features.
Microsoft’s Pat Fox, senior product development director, confirmed the Office for the Mac update is in development in a post on the company’s blog, although the question of when it will ship was left open. “Unfortunately I can’t answer that — but it’s likely measured in months not days — just to set expectations.”
The company will be releasing a Lion compatibility update for Communicator for Mac in the coming days that addresses an app crashing issue users have been experiencing. The update will be pushed out through Microsoft AutoUpdate.
Lion compatibility updates for Office 2004 aren’t, however, in the works. The older version of the Office suite requires Rosetta — Apple’s PowerPC emulation layer found in earlier versions of OS X — which was dropped with the launch of Lion.