Office 2008 reviewed

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What's the release date for 08? I'd like to get my hands on it ASAP as well
 
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I had read that they removed support for macros. What's up with THAT?
 
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It's supposed to hit shelves on the 15th of this month. I hope it doesn't take too long for my university to get it on so I can pick it up for ~$10-20! :) Like Zoolook, I use Entourage's Project Center quite extensively to organize my classes and projects. It's a handy feature. Since I won't have to use Office 2007 in order to open '07 documents any more (the converter doesn't always work 100%) I may just kick my gaming habit and take Windows off my MBP completely!
 
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Alright, why get Office over iWork? Just wondering, I haven't used office on mac, I've been using iWork.
 
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I had read that they removed support for macros. What's up with THAT?
The VBa implementation in Office 2004 and earlier could not be made Universal for Intel Macs.

Rather than re-implementing it, Microsoft just dropped the feature.

Alright, why get Office over iWork? Just wondering, I haven't used office on mac, I've been using iWork.

Three reasons:

1. Compatibility with other people who use Office
2. Compatibility with corporate Exchange servers
3. Numbers is not a replacement for Excel.
 
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1) You can save iWork files as Office files.
2) Huh?
3) Why not?
 
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Zoolook
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1) You can save iWork files as Office files.
2) Huh?
3) Why not?

1 - Just because you can save iWork files as .doc doesn't make them 100% compatible. When in a corporate environment, this might be important at some point. iWork is also missing a a fair amount of the functionality of Office, especially in Word.

2 - There is no support for Exchange Servers in Apple Mail - you need to use Entourage, which comes with Office.

3 - Because it lacks much of the advanced functionality of Excel, in particular VB and advanced macros.
 
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1 - Just because you can save iWork files as .doc doesn't make them 100% compatible. When in a corporate environment, this might be important at some point. iWork is also missing a a fair amount of the functionality of Office, especially in Word.

2 - There is no support for Exchange Servers in Apple Mail - you need to use Entourage, which comes with Office.

3 - Because it lacks much of the advanced functionality of Excel, in particular VB and advanced macros.
Exactly...except for the part about VB, which is supported in Numbers exactly as it is supported in Excel 2008...that is, not at all. :)
 
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Yes, I hate having to use Rosetta
 
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Exactly...except for the part about VB, which is supported in Numbers exactly as it is supported in Excel 2008...that is, not at all. :)

Oh really? Nice one, I didn't know that.
 
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Oh really? Nice one, I didn't know that.
There's been a lot of discussion of this. (But I say, not enough, especially in the review you linked to.) It's a dealbreaker for some people who depend on VBa macros for compatibility. The Macworld review of Excel gives it some mention.

Microsoft's "solution" is to switch to AppleScript. Which is fine, unless you need the scripts to work in Office for Windows.
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/resources/resources.aspx?pid=fordevelopers

Essentially, the VBa engine in Office was written, or rather, kludged together, a decade ago, and hasn't had any serious maintenance. There was no way to make it Universal, and Microsoft isn't going to bother kludging together a new one.
http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2006/08/08/saying-goodbye-to-visual-basic/
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/04/25.html
http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2006/08/10/microsoft-mac-business-unit-open-source-or-die/
 
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I have debated on whether to buy Office 2008. On one hand, I think Microsoft Office products, whether Windows or Mac are well done, although admittedly bloated.

For my Job, I can certainly create documents in iWork, as long as I have the ability to export in Word Format, and the same for spreadsheets. Since I work in Education, I usually get the Teacher/Student addition. This time around, Microsoft Entourage does not support exchange servers, with the Education version. Plus, I never use PowerPoint. In short, I am having a difficult time justifying Office 2008 purchase. If I was able to just get Word as a Stand-Alone, that would be nice, although Microsoft does not do that on the Mac version of Office.
 
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What are VBa macros? Does that mean all macros? I sometimes use simple macros in Word and Excel, for example in Excel to automatically fill out a form. Will I still be able to do this in 2008?
 
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OK, so the home/ student version doesnt have exchange support, but does it have entourage and can it access.mac accounts?

bit of a noob question, but i dont want to waste cash!
 
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Alright, why get Office over iWork? Just wondering, I haven't used office on mac, I've been using iWork.

I'd recommend searching. This has been discussed here ad nauseum.
 
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Anyone know if you can open PST files created on a Windows PC in Mac Office 08?

Regards

Mailman
 
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Anyone know if you can open PST files created on a Windows PC in Mac Office 08?

Regards

Mailman

No. You may want to give feedback to Microsoft.
 
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OK, so the home/ student version doesnt have exchange support, but does it have entourage and can it access.mac accounts?

bit of a noob question, but i dont want to waste cash!

The home version will connect to other accounts (pop, imap, etc).
 
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1 - Just because you can save iWork files as .doc doesn't make them 100% compatible.

I second that. I have tried very hard to restrict myself to Pages and Numbers but have yet to export any document to Word or Excel that stays in the same format as intended. Sure my documents look nice but if I'm the only one who can see them what's the point. It's a pain having to use my copies of Word and Excel (in XP in Fusion) and then passing them back to my mac environment to send them out but at least I can do it and work gets done.

Oh and before anyone suggest NeoOffice. I can and do use that - usually for reading MS documents sent to me, but again recipients of my NeoOffice documents have had problems reading them in Word so now I'm playing careful and using the Pukka MS product, much as it pains me to do so.
 

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