In a Friday announcement, Microsoft said that its Office for Mac 2011 is now being classified as “Release to Manufacturing”; thereby hinting that the software is apparently on track for an October-end release, as earlier tweeted by Microsoft.

With Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit team having Friday published a celebratory post disclosing that they had “signed off on final testing” and sent Office for Mac 2011 to production, reports based on Amazon’s product page say that Microsoft will likely begin shipping the product on October 26.

The development of Office for Mac 2011 took two and a half years; and involved contributions from team members in Redmond, Silicon Valley, Beijing, and Tokyo. The forthcoming productivity suite was put up for preview by the Mac community at the Macworld trade show held last February. 

In a last-week video put out by Microsoft, the young design team of the Mac Office 2011 showed its new features, including the controversial “ribbon” interface that has been borrowed from the two latest Windows versions of the suite - Office 2007 and Office 2010 - and a new template gallery boasting thousands of pre-designed document designs.

The cost of Mac Office 2011, as per an earlier announcement by Microsoft, will range from between $119 for the single-copy Home and Student Edition and $199 for Home and Business Edition. However, the cost of multi-pack options of the suite will be higher.