MS Office 2008 Mac vs PC

I just purchased a MBP and also purchased MS office 2008 (Student and teacher edition) for a college class that I am currently taking. The class requires Window XP or Vista, which I still have a pc with XP and a trial version of MS office 2008 on it, but my question here is .....Is there any way to get all the extra features in the PC version of Office 2008 on the Mac version? There are alot more chart options, menu options, etc. in the PC version....????

Howdy. Just to be clear, you have MS Office 2007 on the PC, not 2008.

Short answer is no. Office 2007 for Windows has far more capabilities than Office 2008 on the Mac (VBA non-existent on Mac, ActiveX which allows creation of many drop boxes, etc.).

If you want to use Mac, then get Parallels, Crossover, or VMFusion and run Office 2007 that way.

Thanks for the info and clarification....I will just suffer thru the class for now. I really only need all the little extras just for school. .......Just to make sure I understand this...do your suggestions above mean I have to install windows on my mac or just the PC version of the program desired?

If you used Parallels or Fusion you would need to install Windows.
Pros: Once installed, you could run other Windows applications.
Cons: If Windows is completely shut down, it takes a minute to boot Windows before starting Office.

If you used Crossover, you would not.
Pros: Office would start quickly with a single click.
Cons: Crossover doesn't work with most PC applications. PC Office is one of the few that it does.


Also, although there are a few limitations to Mac Office, it works fine for 99% Mac Office users. This is especially the case with Word, Powerpoint, Excel, etc. Most of the concerns seem to be with Entourage. And they aren't really Entourage problems, so much as they are "Why does Microsoft insist on doing it this way?" questions.

Thanks....sounds like Crossover might be the way to go for me since I am not interested in using Windows and don't have many other programs that I will be using.