Hi All,
I have a Mac setup running OS X Moutain Lion 10.8 as the VMWare host with several virtual machines as guests. iWork '09 has proven useless inside a virtual guest due to some complicated issue of lack of VMWare support for accelerated Mac graphics. So, I want to try and use Office apps across all my virtual machines, which include Lion 10.7, Mountain Lion 10.8 and Windows 8 Preview.All of these VMs work fine on their own, but I'm running into several complications. Any help would be much appreciated.
Scenario #1: I have MS Office 11 for Mac fully installed on the Mt. Lion host drive. I do not have possession of the install media for Office 11 because I bought this Mac from a local retail shop and their base image clone they use to image the drive installs the Office 11. In any case, I don't want to run it under the host anyway ... I want to do all my work in a virtual machine to greatly simplify system backup, portability, testing software, etc. etc. And, I want to do all my documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. inside my VMs. The Mountain Lion host would simply function as a host, if you will, a server running the VMs.
Here's the problem: How can I associate the document file extension (.doc, .xls, .ppt, etc.) on an Office document to be worked on in the guest vm such that clicking on the guest file will start up the corresponding Office 11 app that's installed on the host? A one-time run in the vm invoking the app. Is this possible? I really, really don't want to have to copy the file up to the host via Dropbox or Skydrive in order to work on it, nor can I duplicate install Office 11 down in the OS X VM without the install media.
Scenario #2: Coming at this from another direction, I have Skydrive.com set up and bookmarked into the host and each virtual machine. My thinking is I could maybe use the Skydrive as the shared document repository and create, update and manage my Office documents using the Office Web Apps provided under Skydrive. If there's something with formatting or whatever that I just can't get right using Office Web Apps, I could download the document from Skydrive in the host browser and manhandle it using the host's Office 11 install. BUT ... should I assume compatibility problems to watch out for when I uploaded it back to SkyDrive.
Scenario #3: So I downloaded the Office 2013 User Preview and installed that under my Windows 8 Preview virtual machine. That all seems to work nicely. Problem is, of course, it won't install under OS X Mountain Lion or Lion VMs. But ... if I use Ofice 2013 inside my WIndows 8 vm to create / modify Office documents, will they play nicely with Skydrive and the Office Web Apps? That is, may I expect that changes made or features added to a document under Office 2013 my cause the corresponding Office Web App to choke up a hairball? I will experiment with this, but thought I would throw this in here to give a complete picture.
Thank you.
Michael
MacBook Model A1342 late 2009, Core 2 Duo 2.26, 8GB RAM, 500 GB HD 7,200 rpm
Mountain Lion OS X 10.8 host
Guests: Mountain Lion OS X 10.8, Lion OS X 10.7, Windows 8 Preview, Office for Mac 2011, SkyDrive & Office Web Apps, Office 2013 User Preview
I have a Mac setup running OS X Moutain Lion 10.8 as the VMWare host with several virtual machines as guests. iWork '09 has proven useless inside a virtual guest due to some complicated issue of lack of VMWare support for accelerated Mac graphics. So, I want to try and use Office apps across all my virtual machines, which include Lion 10.7, Mountain Lion 10.8 and Windows 8 Preview.All of these VMs work fine on their own, but I'm running into several complications. Any help would be much appreciated.
Scenario #1: I have MS Office 11 for Mac fully installed on the Mt. Lion host drive. I do not have possession of the install media for Office 11 because I bought this Mac from a local retail shop and their base image clone they use to image the drive installs the Office 11. In any case, I don't want to run it under the host anyway ... I want to do all my work in a virtual machine to greatly simplify system backup, portability, testing software, etc. etc. And, I want to do all my documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. inside my VMs. The Mountain Lion host would simply function as a host, if you will, a server running the VMs.
Here's the problem: How can I associate the document file extension (.doc, .xls, .ppt, etc.) on an Office document to be worked on in the guest vm such that clicking on the guest file will start up the corresponding Office 11 app that's installed on the host? A one-time run in the vm invoking the app. Is this possible? I really, really don't want to have to copy the file up to the host via Dropbox or Skydrive in order to work on it, nor can I duplicate install Office 11 down in the OS X VM without the install media.
Scenario #2: Coming at this from another direction, I have Skydrive.com set up and bookmarked into the host and each virtual machine. My thinking is I could maybe use the Skydrive as the shared document repository and create, update and manage my Office documents using the Office Web Apps provided under Skydrive. If there's something with formatting or whatever that I just can't get right using Office Web Apps, I could download the document from Skydrive in the host browser and manhandle it using the host's Office 11 install. BUT ... should I assume compatibility problems to watch out for when I uploaded it back to SkyDrive.
Scenario #3: So I downloaded the Office 2013 User Preview and installed that under my Windows 8 Preview virtual machine. That all seems to work nicely. Problem is, of course, it won't install under OS X Mountain Lion or Lion VMs. But ... if I use Ofice 2013 inside my WIndows 8 vm to create / modify Office documents, will they play nicely with Skydrive and the Office Web Apps? That is, may I expect that changes made or features added to a document under Office 2013 my cause the corresponding Office Web App to choke up a hairball? I will experiment with this, but thought I would throw this in here to give a complete picture.
Thank you.
Michael
MacBook Model A1342 late 2009, Core 2 Duo 2.26, 8GB RAM, 500 GB HD 7,200 rpm
Mountain Lion OS X 10.8 host
Guests: Mountain Lion OS X 10.8, Lion OS X 10.7, Windows 8 Preview, Office for Mac 2011, SkyDrive & Office Web Apps, Office 2013 User Preview
