Office 2008 - What is it like?

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I don't understand what makes Office better then? I mean what features does office have that iWork doesn't?

This is just a small thing, but when saving a document in Pages why do I have to export it each time to a Word.doc? Why not a "save as" option then each save is in that format. No, each save has to be exported, which is just plain silly.
 
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yh I know what you mean. I assigned a keyboard shortcut for the export command. I set it to Command + E. makes it super fast and easy :D
 
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While I'm usually working with Adobe Indesign for most of my work, I still find it much simple to create a nice document in Pages. First of all, it's an apple software. This means that it is really tightly integrated with the rest of the system. A big plus for me.

Second, when I drag and drop in an image, it is automatically moveable. And the option to either follow text or free of it is very easy to find in the inspector. Sure it's there in Word as well, but it is definitely much harder to find considering that it has so many 'features' around.

Word is meant for Word processing, (whatever that is). Pages on the other hand can handle both Word processing and page layout. For instance, with text boxes, which are now linked for flowing text. It's almost as good as Indesign is. I am forever looking for where to draw text boxes in Word.

Where does this leave us? Word seems to be geared up with a whole lot of features which most people don't use. Sure there will be some business types who use all those weird ones, but for the regulars, Pages is mighty enough (and mighty cheaper I might add).

I would also highly recommend anyone who is working with a lot of Windows PCs (and passing Doc files to and fro) to get MS Office cause while the capability is there in Pages, it's far from perfect.

@Dellinger: The save as option usually signifies that the application is capable or reading and writing that file properly. Pages on the other hand can't properly read Doc files, neither can it write them properly. So in order to keep someone from saving their important file as a "Doc" file, and later opening it to find that it's completely borked, the option is to "Export" it. So you have your original Pages file, but have the capability of exporting to Word.
 
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@Dellinger: The save as option usually signifies that the application is capable or reading and writing that file properly. Pages on the other hand can't properly read Doc files, neither can it write them properly. So in order to keep someone from saving their important file as a "Doc" file, and later opening it to find that it's completely borked, the option is to "Export" it. So you have your original Pages file, but have the capability of exporting to Word.

Yes, but once I use the "export" it would be nice if that mode of save so to speak was then the default format, instead of reverting back to the "pages" format. I really want to go all Mac software, and not use any MS, but I still need some word processing features that Pages is lacking. Lastly, the 2008 Word really offers nothing new (at least for me) so I'll be sticking with the 2004 version.
 
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You cannot open Entourage 2008 in two separate windows like you could 2004. I would open a window for email and one for my calendar, but not any longer.

Yes you can - just ctrl-click on the calendar view and select 'Main Window' and it'll get it's own window. In fact you can have unlimited separate windows by doing this - you could have 20 mail windows open if you want.

To say that Office 2008 is quicker on Intel than Office 2004, would be an understatement of truly biblical proportions. And also, I think people give iWork a little more credit than it really deserves. There are many features absent in Pages compared to Word, same as Number vs Excel. As has been said, if you just need to type the odd letter or do your school work, it's fine, but Office really does have enormous depth - and if you use Word on a daily basis, you'll know what these features are.

I'd love to do a full review, but had little time this weekend. but, I have been using the retail version since Thursday and it's pretty good - although at the end of the day, it's just a Office suite!
 
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Yes you can - just ctrl-click on the calendar view and select 'Main Window' and it'll get it's own window. In fact you can have unlimited separate windows by doing this - you could have 20 mail windows open if you want.

I wonder why they changed the way you open a 2nd window. In 2004 it was very easy, there was an option to open Entourage in a "new window" and that was it. So is there a way to open two Entourage windows like this from boot up?
 
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I wonder why they changed the way you open a 2nd window. In 2004 it was very easy, there was an option to open Entourage in a "new window" and that was it. So is there a way to open two Entourage windows like this from boot up?

You can create an Automator script
 
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what is the new office 2008 like in your opinion?

Is it much better than 2004? I have 2004 but Im using pages as I prefer it. I think I will probably get 2008 if its a big upgrade as all the systems in my university are windows and use office and having to export the documents all the time is a pain.

If i save an office 2008 document on a mac, to get it to run and display correctly exactly how it should do in office 2007 on windows, will I have to export it or save it as a set format or will it just work straight out the box so to speak?

I was really looking forward to Office 2008 just to get Entourage but now that I have it I'm going to stick with Mail.

Entourage has a known bug where it doesn't play alert sounds for New Mail arrival consistently. It also does not allow you to set your own sounds, you're stuck with the default set.

It does not recognized mailing address or phone number contact info in the body of an email and automatically insert that information into your Address Book like Mail does.

It doesn't seem to have any stationary and is not as easy to drag and drop pics and edit them in the body of your email like Mail does. It does have a feature that allows you to insert a picture as your background. COOL

Unlike Mail, it puts all your emails in one LARGE file making searching slow and cumbersome. This method of storing your emails is also not good with Time Machine making it nearly impossible to restore just one email at a time. It also tends to take up vast amounts of space on the backup HDD if you have thousands of emails.

I realize that business users may not need or want these features but I do and as such I'm going to stick to using Mail which by the way has it's own issues. Im confident that Apple will correct the defects in Mail in a timely manner so I'll continue to use it.
 
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The other thing that is useful for me with Mail is if I receive an email with a meeting date in it, Mail allows me to add that date directly into iCal.
 
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Office 08 Also seems to use up a lot of ram as well, I have both Office 08 and iWork 08 and I opened both of them, Pages is using 42Mb of ram compared to Words 128mb. The same for the rest of both Suites apps, Iwork also takes much less time to start up than Office!
 
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Office 08 Also seems to use up a lot of ram as well, I have both Office 08 and iWork 08 and I opened both of them, Pages is using 42Mb of ram compared to Words 128mb. The same for the rest of both Suites apps, Iwork also takes much less time to start up than Office!

I think that is partly down to Office loading in a lot more fonts and templates into memory, but mostly because Pages is using a lot of the OS functionality (like Safari does for example) whereas Word does not. Word should integrate a lot better into the OS.
 
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I think that is partly down to Office loading in a lot more fonts and templates into memory, but mostly because Pages is using a lot of the OS functionality (like Safari does for example) whereas Word does not. Word should integrate a lot better into the OS.

That could possibly be it, I havn't had much time to experiment with Office and I rarely ever change fonts or use templates but thats just me as its just basic text typing so i'll be sticking with Pages cause I prefer faster startup times. But I still just love it how apple integrates everything together so neatly!
 
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personally i like it it but then again i got it free, for the money maybe not necessary as it doesn't, to my knowledge, have any more 'key' features than office 2004, its more of a very nice refurbish but that's just my opinion.
 
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personally i like it it but then again i got it free, for the money maybe not necessary as it doesn't, to my knowledge, have any more 'key' features than office 2004, its more of a very nice refurbish but that's just my opinion.

It's about 20 times faster on Intel.
 
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anyone noticed the lack of a flashing curser when you click inside a word document?
 
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I was able to purchase Office 2008 through my job, with a discount. At work, I like Entourage for exchange server email. It still does not have all the feature of even Office 2003 for Windows.

I spend much of the time in Word. Overall, it appears Word is okay, the interface is taking me a bit to get used to. Text rendering seems better than Office 2004. In my reports I place "Page X of X", it took me a few minutes of fooling around to figure that out. The header field check box dialogue has a delay. In other words, when I go to close the header field, I click on the (X) a few times before it responds. Word does not remember my toolbars from one session to another. I add the reviewing toolbar, quit word, re-open it and the have to add it again.

Entourage imported my old exchange server settings no problems. Unlike Outlook, I have to insert a background image every-time. Overall I like Entourage, and the my day has been helpful. At home I will stay with Mail.

My only complaint is a general one, Microsoft has always treated Mac users as second class citizens. This version of Office is more Mac like than pervious ones, still lacks features of the Windows counterpart.
 
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personally i like it it but then again i got it free, for the money maybe not necessary as it doesn't, to my knowledge, have any more 'key' features than office 2004, its more of a very nice refurbish but that's just my opinion.

O:) You "warezd" it didn't ya ;) - gwaaan, you can admit it; we are your counsellors! O:)

Only joking!.
 
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I recently imported all of my contacts from Outlook 2003 to Entourage 2008. In Outlook I could easily change the tag or "Display as" for, say, a married couple with individual email accounts. With Entourage, it appears that whatever I have in the name fields will automatically display when I send email. Is there a way in Entourage to change the email tag without creating separate accounts for each individual?
 
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I recently imported all of my contacts from Outlook 2003 to Entourage 2008. In Outlook I could easily change the tag or "Display as" for, say, a married couple with individual email accounts. With Entourage, it appears that whatever I have in the name fields will automatically display when I send email. Is there a way in Entourage to change the email tag without creating separate accounts for each individual?

In the Name & Email tab, you can input a Nickname, and this will be displayed. Go to any contact and open it, this is a field you can fill in.
 
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I like it, no complaints. Yes its different, its new, you have to learn where everything is, but what's new thats software for ya. I would recommend it over iWork for anyone that has to integrate at all with other Windows users.
 

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