word crashing on new iMac

IWT said:

Hi Geoff. A warm welcome to Mac-Forums.

Your shiny new Mac will have shipped with macOS Sierra and Office for Mac 2008 does not play well with it.

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Where have you heard that?

I have a 27-inch iMac that is only a few months old. Office 2008 is running perfectly on it. Office 2008 also supports *all* of the latest Microsoft file formats.
http://roaringapps.com/app/microsoft-office-2008

I'm guessing that the original poster had problems with Office 2008 because of the way that it was installed. Office 2008 came on a CD, and recent Macs don't have an optical reader. In trying to transfer Office 2008 to a newer computer from an older one, there are a bunch of files strewn all over the computer that need to be moved over. He easily could have missed some of them.

LibreOffice is a credible replacement for Office. However, if one will be exchanging files with other Office users, and it's really important that they open and look perfect (e.g. in a business environment), then it may be that only Office will do.

In addition to what Randy posted above, Office 2008 did not require activation and the CD came with three serial numbers which meant it could easily be transferred from one Mac to another. It can still be installed via an external optical drive. The only downside that I can remember about 2008 is that it did not support macros. Not many folks use them anyway.

There were some updates published by Microsoft for compatibility. However, as I mentioned above, 2008 is no longer supported for updates and along with Office 2011 will likely no longer work with macOS when Apple requires that all apps be 64bit. Apple has not announced any official cutoff date for 32bit apps but rumor has that it will occur sometime in 2018 or early 2019.

The only downside that I can remember about 2008 is that it did not support macros. Not many folks use them anyway.

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That seems to be the case that seems to have been fixed with:
an upgrade to MS Office for Mac 2011, that feature was re-instated by Microsoft in that release.

For those that stayed with Office 2008 seemed to have found a bit of a workaround:

I understand MS Office 2008 does not support Visual Basic, the language for writing macros

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Jan 7, 2016 11:53 AM in response to Narfaz
I still use Office 2008 to avoid upgrade costs and found a workaround for macros: AppleScripts.
Check here: http://www.macworld.com/article/1132454/geekfactor2505side.html
Click on the "downloadable version" link in line 2 for May MacWorld Geek Column that has lots of scripts.
My most used is Paste Plain Text (i.e., unformatted), which I attached to a key combo (shift-cmd-v).
Good luck.

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Automating Word 2008 - Extra AppleScripts
http://www.macworld.com/article/1132454/geekfactor2505side.html

I don't know if that's of any help or not.




- Patrick
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chscag said:

In addition to what Randy posted above, Office 2008 did not require activation and the CD came with three serial numbers which meant it could easily be transferred from one Mac to another. It can still be installed via an external optical drive.

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It can also be installed by making a disk image of the installer CD on a Mac that has an optical drive, and then running the disk image on your new Mac.

Personally I just ran EasyFind
http://www.devontechnologies.com/products/freeware.html
on an old Mac with Office 2008 installed, looking for all files with "Office" or "Microsoft" in the name, and including invisible files in the search. I moved everything that I found over to my new iMac and that worked perfectly.

chscag said:

The only downside that I can remember about 2008 is that it did not support macros. Not many folks use them anyway.

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I never found that to be a problem. Office 2008 still has a very extensive AppleScript library, so I could still create macros if needed. Even many third party suppliers that offer very specialized products for Office/Mac offered AppleScript-based products for Office 2008. Most notably this very popular product for document assembly was re-written in AppleScript:

MacSimplePrompter
http://www.wordsite.com/products/sp.htm

chscag said:

There were some updates published by Microsoft for compatibility. However, as I mentioned above, 2008 is no longer supported for updates...

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Where did you hear that? I was pushed an update to Office 2008 just two weeks ago.

Where did you hear that? I was pushed an update to Office 2008 just two weeks ago.

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If that's true then the rumor of it's non support was exaggerated (to copy somewhat from a Samuel Clemins famous quote). However, how long 2008 and 2011 continue to work with macOS depends on when Apple stops supporting 32 bit apps. Again, a rumor has it that might be in 2018 or 2019. As you probably already know... Apple support for 32 bit iOS apps ends with the release of iOS 11. So I expect they will do the same sometime in the future with OS X apps.