Microsoft Office 2001 is a suite of productivity software for Mac OS 8, Mac OS 9, or the Classic environment in Mac OS X. It is the Mac equivalent of Office 2000. It was developed by Microsoft and announced on September 13, 2000 before its release on October 11, 2000.

Applications

As with previous versions of Microsoft Office, Office 2001 includes Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. It also includes, for the first time, Entourage, a personal information manager that features an e-mail client, a calendar, an address book, task lists and personal notes.

New features

Word

PowerPoint

Excel

Entourage

Office 2001 was the first time Entourage was released. It features a calendar, to-do list, email and address book all into one. Entourage also lets users transfer all of their information from these features onto corresponding applications on a Palm device.

Value Pack

The Microsoft Office 2001 for Mac Value Pack contains several features that give Microsoft Office 2001 more functionality. All of these optional are available for install straight from the Office 2001 CD.

Updates

On October 12, 2004 Microsoft published the Microsoft Office 2001 for Mac Security Update (9.0.5). This update addresses security and stability issues with Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Entourage. The download is offered both as a .bin file and as a .hqx file. Microsoft Office 2001 for Mac Security Update (9.0.6) was released on July 20, 2005. Microsoft's description of this downloadable update says that it "addresses several buffer overrun vulnerabilities in all Microsoft Office 2001 programs." This update also fixes a problem that was occurring which affected the use of Japanese characters in Microsoft Excel. Once again this update was offered in the form of two different file types, .bin and .hqx. On January 1, 2001 Microsoft released a document highlighting keyboard shortcuts specifically for Microsoft Excel 2001. Support for Office 2001 ended on December 31, 2005. As 32-bit software, Office 2001 will not run on macOS Catalina or later versions of macOS. It is also not officially supported on OS X Leopard to macOS Mojave.

Bugs

Occasionally Office 2001 will report a "disk is full" error while saving a Word document, even if the hard drive is not actually full. This is caused by saving a document too frequently and the computer running out of the temporary space needed to save the file. The problem can be solved by restarting Word or restarting the Mac altogether.

Reception

When Steve Jobs announced Office 2001 at the Apple Paris Expo on September 13, 2000, the crowd booed in a manner similar to how Internet Explorer for Mac was booed. Jobs reassured the crowd by saying: "Isn't it great that the Mac is going to have the best version of Office?" The software was then demonstrated by Kevin Browne, the general manager of the Mac BU at the time, in a French user interface. Entourage 2001 was the first program shown, to which the crowd applauded upon hearing that it along with its unique features were only available for the Mac. Word 2001 and PowerPoint 2001 were also demonstrated to positive crowd reactions. Excel 2001 was not demonstrated.