Microsoft includes Lion features in Office 2011

They say never to put all your eggs in one basket, so it was quite a relief many years ago to see Intel play nice with Apple, and having Microsoft jump aboard to deliver Office on the Mac? That was a surreal experience, and today’s generation might not even realize that there was no such thing as Office for Mac twenty years ago. Well, since there is an ever growing number of Mac apps that are compatible with OS X Lion, it makes perfect sense for Microsoft’s Office suite for Mac to be up next.

It seems that engineers over at Microsoft are busting their chops trying to churn out Lion features such as Auto Save, Versions, and full-screen mode in Office 2011. This is definitely a race against time, since Apple’s very own iWork productivity suite already sports the Lion-specific features mentioned, while Microsoft hopes to complete their task in a few months’ time.

For those who use Microsoft’s Communicator for Mac, there is an update which fixes crashing issues in Lion. You can opt for Microsoft’s AutoUpdate or go through the Download Center.