09-13-2009, 11:13 AM

When MS released Office 2007 a site was created where one could play with an old 2003 Office menu and it would visually show you where the same function was located in Office 2007.

Is there something similar for using Office 2007 on a PC with Office 2008 on a Mac?

I teach at a university and in my statistics class I try to force the students to use Excel. I encourage them to bring their own laptops so they learn it on their own equipment. I am very proficient in 2007 Office products on PC, and although I own a Macbook Pro, I run Office in Virtual Box. However, I was a loss to help students with Excel 2008 on their Mac. I am sure I could figure it out with time and the software. However, I would like to give the students a resource.

Many students have recently converted to Mac from a PC and can't find all the functions/icons.

09-13-2009, 02:10 PM

I don’t know of any service that works specifically like that; however, I think there might be a simpler solution. If your students purchased their Macs recently and are running OS X 10.5 Leopard or newer, there is a fantastic Spotlight-like search available in the Help menu of every application. When you type in the name of a menu item, it will immediately display its location in the menu hierarchy. I can only think of two downsides to this: if the students don’t know the exact name of the command, they might not be able to find it, and this will not show tools in the Toolbox window. In either case, though, a search through Microsoft’s help should be able to bring it up.

09-13-2009, 02:40 PM

Thanks for the tip.

You are correct that if the student doesn't know the function to look for, then they are kind of lost

I was curious because I was struggling to help a student make a graph, while on a PC it would have been easy.

PS: I only wish students/people would use the Help function more often. I have told them their best friend is the F1 key.

09-13-2009, 03:17 PM

Originally Posted by Trolle

PS: I only wish students/people would use the Help function more often. I have told them their best friend is the F1 key.

How would that help?! The Help command is shift-command-?

Good luck