MacDailyNews - Where Mac news comes first

Jul 20, 09 - 10:11 am Comment from: Jay-Z

Unfortunately, my job shoves Office down my throat. But even our IT department has said we will be upgrading to Snow Leopard within the first month because Entourage is such a piece of garbage.

Meanwhile we curse the Mac unit every day for no Visual Basic macro support in Office 2008. Constantly switching back and forth between 2004 and 2008 for different files is a major waste of time.

Jul 20, 09 - 10:32 am Comment from: Geo B

Sadly we are moving most "shared" web sites to Sharepoint - at least now maybe Office for the Mac will be able to open and save files to it directly.

Jul 20, 09 - 10:32 am Comment from: HMCIV

@MDN Take. Actually I think my boss uses a competitor to Apple's office productivity suite: iDelegate. It seems to keep her desk pretty clear but she won't let me use it.

I'm still stuck with MS Office due to work. Unfortunately, I use bootcamp to use excel 2003 for windows because the Macintosh version SUCKS! I use a ton of very advanced features in both excel and access that do not exist in either apple products or MS products (on the mac). I wish MS would at least at add-ins to their Macintosh version! I mean come-on, I can't even add use the Analysis Toolpak!?!

Jul 20, 09 - 10:41 am Comment from: qka

When Pages can do tables of contents, then I will no longer need MS Word. For that matter, when it adds a grammar checker. Pages lacks too many professional features that Word has.

Wish it weren't so, but that's the way it is.

(We'll miss you Walter.)

Jul 20, 09 - 10:43 am Comment from: MrMcLargeHuge

But will it fix the issues with Spaces? Why can every other developer get this right?

Jul 20, 09 - 10:50 am Comment from: Buster

Word 2008 keeps crashing everytime I do search and replacing in very large files. I have to switch to Word 2004 as it is more stable....hope the new download works.

@qka

Check latest version of iWork... (09 that is)
You got Contents, Grammar (in several languages), Endnote and Mathtype.

Jul 20, 09 - 10:54 am Comment from: Buster

hahahahahah I downloaded the update and in typical MS fashion, it cannot find my Office 2008 on my computer......hahahahah

Jul 20, 09 - 11:02 am Comment from: Jersey_Trader

Microsoft needs to focus on their software because their OS sucks and is being de de-throned! They are going to need something to sell and it isn't going to be a Zune!

@fisherbln:

Use Sun's *FREE* VirtualBox and install WinXP and Excel 2003 inside it. Then you won't have to dual boot. Much easier, faster and you can still use your Mac OS simultaneously.

iWork is awesome, but it doesn't have NATIVE file support for MS Office files, only import/export. That's just not friendly to work-flow. Apple ought to be adopting native Open Document formats so that they can pound MS further into the ground, but I think that they must have made a deal with the devil so that they could get Exchange licensing and probably so that MS would keep making Office for Mac.

WORD is so #(*& ed up I am losing business because I don't want to open it to do proposals. I pasted one sentence in from a client in Montreal and all of a sudden the english dictionary is out and the french is in and every word looks like it is spelled wrong, so I can't spellcheck the document. WTF? what a POS.

If you are a designer and have lots of fonts, MS Word SUCKS... but I have to launch it whenever a client sends me something... and hope it doesn't crash.

Jul 20, 09 - 11:44 am Comment from: cwa107

@Jersey_Trader

That's the whole idea.... may Ballmer reign for as long as it takes.

Jul 20, 09 - 11:58 am Comment from: grh

@Buster "in typical MS fashion, it cannot find my Office 2008"

I went through this circus before. You must not rename (I rhave Word 12.15 for example) and you must not move it (I keep it in Applications/Text). I must revert in both cases before I update. PITA.

But some Apple Apps commit the same sin.

I would love to move to iWork. As bad as Word is (please, I want my Word 5.1a) I think Pages is not there yet.

Jul 20, 09 - 12:20 pm Comment from: Yours Smugly

So MS says it should make Office 2008 snappier.

StarOffice from Sun is good but I had a problem opening a StarOffice document in OpenOffice 2.3.

Jul 20, 09 - 12:36 pm Comment from: LordRobin

My employer has some kind of deal with Microsoft (Home User Program?) that let me get Mac Office 2008 for $9.95. For that price, I said "what the hell". I won't spend any serious cash to purchase a Microsoft product, but we use Office (Windows version) at work and I was getting for next to nothing.

------RM

Regarding the Office/Spaces issue, I found this gem in the Office help files:

"When you use Office 2008 for Mac with Mac OS X Spaces, the Office 2008 applications might not behave as expected. This is caused by the architectural implementation of Spaces in Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard)."

No, Microshit, that's not the cause. The cause is you not following the rules established by the architecture you write for. Sheesh!

Jul 20, 09 - 03:36 pm Comment from: JAYGEE

I just download the office update the other day. I'll wait a few months, I think.

I gave away my copy of Office 2008 after switching to the latest version of iWork. Pages is great - once you get used to the non-MS way of doing things...

BLISS! The only MS app I still have is Messenger (I use Adium but sometimes it messes up my MSN contacts).

Lord Robin;

My employer has the same deal. The download version for $9.95 and the back-up DVD for 12.95. And it's the $399 retail version, not the Student version. So far no problems on my 1st gen G4 Mini.

Apple needs to do the offer the same kind of employer deals too.

Thank God I use Open Office so I don't have to care....