Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 2 is what the marketing folks call it. Engineers call it Mac Office 12.2.0 or “SP2” for short. No matter what you call it, it’s available today from Mactopia and Auto Update.
MacBU put a lot of love into SP2. Of course SP2 contains the usual roll-up of security, stability, and performance enhancements that you expect from a Microsoft service pack, but we also went further with SP2.
Take PowerPoint for example, an application near and dear to my heart. SP2 adds top features requests that we’ve heard from our customers, including the ability to author custom path animations (PowerPoint 2008 could always play back existing path animations), and the ability to set your own default theme (including custom themes!) to replace the black on white Office theme that you get each time you create a new presentation.
We didn’t stop there. With SP2, you can double-click anywhere on a slide and just start typing; you can turn off PowerPoint 2008’s default behavior of mirroring displays when you switch from PowerPoint slide show directly to another application such as Finder; animated GIFs once again animate in PowerPoint slide show; and dynamic guides are now easier to use in all new presentations.
We took a bite out of start up and scroll speed in Word – for example in Word’s Outline View scrolling is now up to 10 times faster! We also improved calculation performance in Excel with an increased speed of up to 24%.
We love SP2 and we think you will too. But don’t take our word for it: try Office 2008 yourself with our 30-day free trial. The trial download will be refreshed soon to include SP2. In the meantime, update your trial or non-trial Office 2008 to version 12.2.0 today!
One more thing.
It wasn’t that long ago that my colleagues and I were envisioning the concept of a desktop application for working with SharePoint and Office Live Workspace and integrated with Office for Mac. Well now it’s here: it’s called Document Connection and it comes with Office 2008 SP2, free and available today.
It’s been a real pleasure watching Document Connection come together, and it’s been an even greater pleasure adding Document Connection to my daily workflows. Office 2008 SP2 with Document Connection makes it a breeze to find, review, and edit documents from the places I use most, and improved Safari support from the SharePoint and Office Live teams mean it’s never been a better time to be productive on your Mac.
So is the Entourage for Web Services part of the SP or a (hopefully) close to follow release?
roopesh
Aug 13, 2009
11:34am
MS Messenger is broken now?
I use MS Messenger at work with our corporate Exchange/Messaging server. Before this release (SP2), everything was working fine.
After the update, the first time I started MS Messenger, it wanted to go through setup again. It never connected automatically, and no matter how many times I enter my server address, it fails to connect.
Can this be fixed?
slaurel
Jul 28, 2009
2:42pm
Great News - but what about Exchange Web Services Beta?
How does this affect those of us with the beta installed?
Thanks
Buus
Jul 28, 2009
2:42pm
yeah mac messenger!
Oh.. Sorry.. Of course not.....
Bobbi
Jul 28, 2009
2:42pm
SP2 & Powerpoint
I installed SP2 but it still does not resolve the problem of exporting ppt to a movie with the audio track. Is there a fix for this in the offing?
jsamuels
Jul 28, 2009
2:42pm
EWS in SP2?
Don't see any mention so I assume I should not do update if I want to keep EWS?
mwxiao
Jul 28, 2009
2:42pm
Re: Announcing Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 2
Great job on SP2. Speed increase indeed.
I would suggest you give a raise to the Office group and fire everyone in the MAC MSN group.
Bertrand Morin
Jul 28, 2009
2:42pm
Language
I tried to get an evaluation copy (Trial) of Office 2008 in French, frome the MS site in Canada (alternating between English and French, to make sure). After numerous attempts, using 3 email addresses to make sure I would not mix the numerous informations required and fairly complex navigation scheme, All I got was the ENGLISH version! That is a lot of Downloading and Intallation moves.
What to make of it?
Bertrand
jklein
Jul 28, 2009
2:42pm
Entourage EWS
Thank you for the email to Beta users of Entourage's Exchange Web Services today. Now, the big question: A summer release? When?
Fall technically begins two months from now. Do we have to wait that long?
I'm sure the delay is because the MacBU is working to make continued improvements, and we appreciate that. For the sake of organizational planning, when do you anticipate launching that? Can you at least share that information with Beta users?
Thanks!
Bob A.
Jul 28, 2009
2:42pm
Update for Office 2008
I received up grade today for Office 2008. Since installing this upgrade (12.2.0) today, Entourage opens to the address page and crashes if i try to go any place within Entourage. Cannot access emails, Calendar, et al.
You should contact Microsoft tech support to help resolve this issue. With your purchase of Office 2008, you get two free calls to tech support. To get the correct phone number for your area, go to the following URL: http://support.microsoft.com/
To answer the questions about Entourage for Web Services ...
If you're currently using the Entourage for Web Services beta, please stay on 12.1.5 if you wish to continue using the beta. Entourage for Web Services is not part of SP2.
I don't yet have a better date to share about the final release of Entourage for Web Services, but it is coming soon. We're putting the final polish on the bits right now.
somerandom
Aug 13, 2009
11:09am
Powerpoint Presenter View
Phew! SP2 has half fixed the presenter view! The ability to turn off Automatic Mirroring is great, all it needs as a final touch is the ability to leave the presentation always running on the second monitor and switch out of powerpoint on the primary, perhaps even letting you put other windows above the presentation on the secondary monitor.
bombil
Aug 13, 2009
11:09am
Re: Announcing Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 2
So.... did the messenger get an update too? At least to fix the bugs from 7?
if not, have any idea when that day will come???
zimmer62943
Aug 13, 2009
11:09am
GREAT
Great update, my word is running so much faster and smoother now, looking forward to the next version 2009 or 10
How about we get on with the msn messenger update promised months ago!!! i am commenting here because the blog for msn is disabled, everyone need to speak up about it otherwise it will sit in the dark and nothing will be forgotten.
Moderators, please do approve this comment, this is criticism is welcome so says the rules and its not mean.
richfbrown
Aug 13, 2009
11:09am
Document Connection
I just installed Document Connection, but when I try to Add a Location for our Sharepoint server, the "Connect to a Sharepoint Site: menu item is greyed out. I can connect to our Sharepoint from Safari. Any suggestions?
Thanks.
jayco
Aug 13, 2009
11:09am
Document Connection is great!
This is a great tool!
qysh
Aug 13, 2009
11:11am
Great
It's been a long time since a new blog posting, but I'm glad to see one like this. To see all these changes that improve stability, convenience, and productivity all come into one free, and easy to download update is a total pleasure. So thanks for listening to user requests, however, there is still one more thing at the top of my wish list... and improved Messenger for Mac, and I hope I don't have to wait until Christmas to get it
willytk
Aug 13, 2009
11:26am
Thanks for many great fixes!
Especially the bug that made images disappear when merging labels in Word.
Question: Office 2008 still seems to handle saves to network volumes the same way, using the .TemporaryItems/folders.501/TemporaryItems hidden volume way, 501 being the user id of the client-Mac.
Pretty much all other Mac applications seems to handle this a more logical way, like just having a lock file in the same directory as the document.
This issue has been around at least since Office 2004. There's no plans for changing this? It causes much headache in businesses where many users share one drive using AppleShare.
If I could get a response from someone who can tell me why this is, I'd be very happy.
Thanks,
Willy T. Koch
Norway
kevinv
Aug 13, 2009
11:26am
Great!
I have been waiting for this a long time.
I'm very happy that it has finally been released.
Unfortunately, I am receiving an error while trying to use the 'New' button. It says that it was unable to retrieve meta data from the URL. Also, when uploading a document, it is checked-out and there is no way to specify required meta data.
Other than that: great!
will_col
Aug 13, 2009
11:28am
Thanks for the update
I have noticed a marked improvement in Word, seems to run more tolerably. I think you guys get a bit of bad press because you're not a big team compared to the Windows Office team yet you have the task of porting Word, Excel and Powerpoint onto a completely different operating system. So thanks a lot!
I would love an update on Microsoft Messenger for Mac 8.0. I liked using version 7, but the lack of off-line messaging has kept me using Adium. Even if it is just an update saying that it's taking longer than anticipated, I'm sure many people would appreciate it.
nicjohnson
Aug 13, 2009
11:28am
Where to report bugs?
I've been enjoying the aspects of Document Connection that work. However, there are a few things that are quite broken. What's the best venue to address these problems?
Thanks for the good work?
mcic
Aug 13, 2009
11:28am
Love the update!
My favourite feature, by far, has got to be Path Animation in PowerPoint. Finally! It was weird when Keynote could do it with imported PowerPoint files, but PowerPoint itself couldn't. lol. Also the speed improvements are very nice; and Document Connection worked great with my Office Live Workspace.
Not sure what the priorities are for the Mac BU but I'm hoping for:
• Webcam support in Windows Live Messenger mode for Microsoft Messenger;
• Better feature parity between Mac and Windows version of Excel i.e. more than one filter on a sort; Data Bar-based, top 10, color-based, icon-based data filters; structured references; Excel tables; table styles.
• Word (OMML) Equation support.
johnfkitchen
Aug 13, 2009
11:28am
Still incompatible with Office 2007
Office 2008 is still incompatible with 2007.
Excel 2008 still doesn't support any of the following 2007 functions:-
Advanced multi-item filtering,
Advanced conditional formatting - e.g. graduated color
Filter by color
Sort by color
VBA macros
There may be more, but I found these in the first hour of using 2008 and on my first Excel Workbook that I tried to use on 2008
There is still no way to transfer autocorrects between 2007 and 2008
I have given up trying to use 2008.
These incompatibilities make it unusable since I need to be sure that I can transfer files back and forth between PC and Mac, editing on each platform.
My workaround is to continue to use Office 2007 in a virtual Windows machine on my Mac.
What puzzles me is why Microsoft would even bother developing 2008 and choosing to omit backward compatibility. Seems like a real waste to me, although they did get my money for 2008, and now it's shelfware.
No one likes being caught off guard, especially when the pressure’s on. That’s why it’s vital that shared documents, presentations, and spreadsheets open as they were designed—regardless of the computer or operating system.
Office 2008 for Mac is the smart choice for people who share Office files at work, school, or anywhere else. Research shows that 75% of Mac users use a PC at least once a week. And almost every Mac user exchanges documents with PC users. With Office 2008 for Mac, you can feel confident in your compatibility."
kevinv
Aug 13, 2009
11:29am
Great!
I have been waiting for this a long time.
I'm very happy that it has finally been released.
Unfortunately, I am receiving an error while trying to use the 'New' button. It says that it was unable to retrieve meta data from the URL. Also, when uploading a document, it is checked-out and there is no way to specify required meta data.
Other than that: great!
GIIS
Aug 13, 2009
11:29am
Exchange Web Services
Team: The changes are nice as far as I can tell and the addition of AV for Messenger is a nice catch up as well. However, following the application of the SP2 update, I can no longer maintain attachments to calendar entries; which is quite disruptive? Is there a way that I'm missing to re-enable this capability?
shahroozohio
Aug 13, 2009
11:29am
Excel 2008 is still SLOW for large files with charts
I was hoping that the new update, "SP2", will take care of the sluggishness of Excel 2008 for relatively large files with charts. However, Excel 2008 has at best improved marginally. Excel 2008 is still MUCH MUCH slower than Excel 2003 running on Parallels. For crying loud, I have the latest Mac with 4GB of RAM, but I still can't use Excel 2008! Please do something about Excel 2008. Why do serious users like me have to keep on going back to a legacy program such as Excel 2003?
I have posed similar complaints in the past several months, but the developers appear to be aloof to fixing this major shortcoming of Excel 2008. The question is WHY? Have the developers lost their talents? What happened to those developers who wrote powerful programs such as Excel 2003????
SPH
Aug 13, 2009
11:31am
Anyone notice any difference?
Just wondered if any Mac users have noticed any difference? I know people who have had a lot of problems with Office 2008's speed and stability. Has SP2 fixed much?
fer.java
Aug 13, 2009
11:31am
HI ALL
Microsoft has launched Mac office 2008 trial edition for 30 days validity. The user who used this 30 days trial edition, could not afford to purchase this sfotware, his/her whole work is now in collapse.
Is it not against the Microsoft education plan?
If Microsoft is claiming free basic computer education in the world, now they are charging huge amount for this little package of software.
This is against education law and humanity, they should not launch this trial edition if their plan was to sell this software.
I hope Micrsoft will re-think on this issue, to set this software free. This is the basic need in day to day life like food and people will not stop praising on Microsoft. Microsoft has outstanding role in free basic education and it will remain forever.
Thanks
johnfkitchen
Aug 13, 2009
11:31am
Still incompatible with Office 2007
Office 2008 is still incompatible with 2007.
Excel 2008 still doesn't support any of the following 2007 functions:-
Advanced multi-item filtering,
Advanced conditional formatting - e.g. graduated color
Filter by color
Sort by color
VBA macros
There may be more, but I found these in the first hour of using 2008 and on my first Excel Workbook that I tried to use on 2008
There is still no way to transfer autocorrects between 2007 and 2008
I have given up trying to use 2008.
These incompatibilities make it unusable since I need to be sure that I can transfer files back and forth between PC and Mac, editing on each platform.
My workaround is to continue to use Office 2007 in a virtual Windows machine on my Mac.
What puzzles me is why Microsoft would even bother developing 2008 and choosing to omit backward compatibility. Seems like a real waste to me, although they did get my money for 2008, and now it's shelfware.
No one likes being caught off guard, especially when the pressure’s on. That’s why it’s vital that shared documents, presentations, and spreadsheets open as they were designed—regardless of the computer or operating system.
Office 2008 for Mac is the smart choice for people who share Office files at work, school, or anywhere else. Research shows that 75% of Mac users use a PC at least once a week. And almost every Mac user exchanges documents with PC users. With Office 2008 for Mac, you can feel confident in your compatibility."
Harm
Aug 13, 2009
11:31am
Document Connection without Service Pack 2?
It's definitely great to read about Document Connection and I look forward to using it with SharePoint at my university. I'm a user of iWork '09 and I don't have Office 2008 for Mac installed. Is there a possibility to download Document Connection separately from the new service pack? If so, where exactly? I wasn't able to find it on the Microsoft site.
gldadis
Aug 13, 2009
11:31am
Thanks for MS Office 2008 SP2
Just a brief note to say thanks for Office and for SP2. Yes, Office 2008 for Mac has its quirks and missing features, but SP2 is a big step in the right direction. And Office 2008 is far superior to the competition.
I hope that the Redmondians will continue to improve the product and keep it available for those of us who like and need a full-featured spreadsheet application.
Other spreadsheet vendors (not all) seem to believe that by leaving out key features that Excel (for example) pioneered years ago is a good way to "differentiate" themselves in the marketplace. Except that what they are really doing is preventing experienced users from moving to their product.
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are the common-denominator products today. And when looked at from the perspective of a couple of decades of experience with them, today's versions are true marvels. Many, many thousands of business users could not get along without them.
So, congrats to MS and to the Mac team for excellent work and accomplishment.
Scoobyduder
Aug 13, 2009
11:31am
Too little, too late
What's the point of being able to open documents from SharePoint and Office Live Workspaces if those documents can only be opened as "read-only" because they were created in Office 2007 for Windows. You should really focus on getting the compatibility issues worked out before adding features that only emphasize how incompatible Office 2008 really is with its Windows counterpart.
Michel Guillaume
Aug 13, 2009
11:33am
Just a pity that...
The bug with the copy command ha not been fixed yet: when you paste a ChemDraw drawing in Word 2008 and copy it again, the ChemDraw-specific information is lost. This proble is not observed in Word 2004...
Please, fix this bug asap!!!
N.B. Same issue with PowerPoint 2008...
nicjohnson
Aug 13, 2009
11:33am
Where to report bugs?
I love what you've done with DC. However, I've encountered some things that seem like they may be bugs. Where is the best place to post those and work through them with you guys?
chippatt
Aug 13, 2009
11:33am
Contextual Menus in Entourage
So, for the first time with this Service Pack, additional contextual menus (mostly plug-ins) appear in _certain_ emails. Additional inspection reveals that if there is, for example, an HTML table in the email, the contextual menu will appear (for example, the "Entourage Template" menu item). Is there any way to make Entourage recognize these additional contextual menus in all email messages?
Ganesh
Aug 13, 2009
11:33am
VBA support for Office 2008
Is Microsoft planning to reinstate VBA support for Office 2008?
Arkhaz
Aug 13, 2009
11:33am
THANKS SO MUCH!
thanks for the update, really wanted animated Gifs and the other stuff is interesting too.
I think office for mac is an excellent piece of software and it just got better.
Just one thing missing, please please please upgrade msn messenger for mac!!!
Thx!
Jeff Chapman
Aug 13, 2009
11:34am
Fantastic news!
Great to hear about the improvements to PowerPoint 2008, especially the animation path feature. It's about time! I can't imagine that it was easy to implement for the Mac version, but it will save a lot of people headaches, and add to the flexibility and power of PowerPoint 2008. The reductions in Word 2008 startup time are likewise impressive. Many thanks for this - it helps relieve frustration and increases productivity as well
Having said this, there were some things I really missed and was desperately hoping to see in SP2 that apparently didn't make it, such as drag-and-drop functionality for to-dos (tasks) to the calendar in Entourage, the ability to hide whitespace at the top/bottom of the page with a double-click for Word, or sync Entourage <--> Google/Windows Live Calendar. (I suppose there won't be an SP3... ?)
At any rate, I'm glad to see that the Mac BU is investing time and effort into making a more stable and useful product... even if the efforts have come more than a year-and-a-half after initial product release. Kudos to all at the Mac BU for making the choice to add value to an already-released product, rather than abandoning it and passing the costs onto the consumer.
Paul Naassan
Aug 13, 2009
11:39am
Re: Announcing Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 2
You've been silent for over 2 months.
Sp1 was fine.
do you know what's not fine? microsoft messenger 7.02. that needs an update.
magoo
Aug 13, 2009
11:39am
Word 2008 great stability improvement, but still with some issues
Dear Blair,
thank you so much for this Office 2008 SP2 release!!
This version finally gives me a relief against countless Word 2008 freeze problems associated with figure captions and cross-references (including the nasty "Disk Full Error" problem and so on) and repagination issues after moving some of them (see my earlier posts on your Word 2008 forum).
I tested the update with some sample documents that I knew they were having problems with all earlier versions of Word 2008.
Please trust me, these kind of errors almost drove me nuts, as I experienced up to 10 (or more) Word freezes per day (and associated loss of work).
I have since the publication of Office 2008 provided a lot feedback to the Microsoft Mac BU and posted many reports on your forums. May be that my contributions (and descriptions on how to reproduce the errors) have at least partially helped you solve those major problems? Whatever, I am glad to have this SP2 update now.
Still, the new 12.2.1 version has some problems with some of my "test" documents. These seem related to inserting some text into an existing document, which pushes the remaining text (including capitons and cross references) further down.
[I sent an e-mail to "blog-at-officeformac-dot-com" with a sample Word document where this kind of error can easily be reproduced. I hope that someone at the Mac BU will be able to retrieve this e-mail. If not, please let me know where I could send it].
Comments | Who's Blogging This
edoug
Jul 28, 2009
2:42pm
Web services for Entourage included?
roopesh
Aug 13, 2009
11:34am
MS Messenger is broken now?
After the update, the first time I started MS Messenger, it wanted to go through setup again. It never connected automatically, and no matter how many times I enter my server address, it fails to connect.
Can this be fixed?
slaurel
Jul 28, 2009
2:42pm
Great News - but what about Exchange Web Services Beta?
Thanks
Buus
Jul 28, 2009
2:42pm
yeah mac messenger!
Bobbi
Jul 28, 2009
2:42pm
SP2 & Powerpoint
jsamuels
Jul 28, 2009
2:42pm
EWS in SP2?
mwxiao
Jul 28, 2009
2:42pm
Re: Announcing Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 2
I would suggest you give a raise to the Office group and fire everyone in the MAC MSN group.
Bertrand Morin
Jul 28, 2009
2:42pm
Language
What to make of it?
Bertrand
jklein
Jul 28, 2009
2:42pm
Entourage EWS
Fall technically begins two months from now. Do we have to wait that long?
I'm sure the delay is because the MacBU is working to make continued improvements, and we appreciate that. For the sake of organizational planning, when do you anticipate launching that? Can you at least share that information with Beta users?
Thanks!
Bob A.
Jul 28, 2009
2:42pm
Update for Office 2008
I need help very much! Can someone contact me?
Jul 28, 2009
2:46pm
http://support.microsoft.com/
Nadyne Richmond
Jul 28, 2009
2:44pm
about Entourage for Web Services
If you're currently using the Entourage for Web Services beta, please stay on 12.1.5 if you wish to continue using the beta. Entourage for Web Services is not part of SP2.
I don't yet have a better date to share about the final release of Entourage for Web Services, but it is coming soon. We're putting the final polish on the bits right now.
somerandom
Aug 13, 2009
11:09am
Powerpoint Presenter View
bombil
Aug 13, 2009
11:09am
Re: Announcing Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 2
if not, have any idea when that day will come???
zimmer62943
Aug 13, 2009
11:09am
GREAT
How about we get on with the msn messenger update promised months ago!!! i am commenting here because the blog for msn is disabled, everyone need to speak up about it otherwise it will sit in the dark and nothing will be forgotten.
Moderators, please do approve this comment, this is criticism is welcome so says the rules and its not mean.
richfbrown
Aug 13, 2009
11:09am
Document Connection
Thanks.
jayco
Aug 13, 2009
11:09am
Document Connection is great!
qysh
Aug 13, 2009
11:11am
Great
willytk
Aug 13, 2009
11:26am
Thanks for many great fixes!
Question: Office 2008 still seems to handle saves to network volumes the same way, using the .TemporaryItems/folders.501/TemporaryItems hidden volume way, 501 being the user id of the client-Mac.
Pretty much all other Mac applications seems to handle this a more logical way, like just having a lock file in the same directory as the document.
This issue has been around at least since Office 2004. There's no plans for changing this? It causes much headache in businesses where many users share one drive using AppleShare.
If I could get a response from someone who can tell me why this is, I'd be very happy.
Thanks,
Willy T. Koch
Norway
kevinv
Aug 13, 2009
11:26am
Great!
I'm very happy that it has finally been released.
Unfortunately, I am receiving an error while trying to use the 'New' button. It says that it was unable to retrieve meta data from the URL. Also, when uploading a document, it is checked-out and there is no way to specify required meta data.
Other than that: great!
will_col
Aug 13, 2009
11:28am
Thanks for the update
I would love an update on Microsoft Messenger for Mac 8.0. I liked using version 7, but the lack of off-line messaging has kept me using Adium. Even if it is just an update saying that it's taking longer than anticipated, I'm sure many people would appreciate it.
nicjohnson
Aug 13, 2009
11:28am
Where to report bugs?
Thanks for the good work?
mcic
Aug 13, 2009
11:28am
Love the update!
Not sure what the priorities are for the Mac BU but I'm hoping for:
• Webcam support in Windows Live Messenger mode for Microsoft Messenger;
• Better feature parity between Mac and Windows version of Excel i.e. more than one filter on a sort; Data Bar-based, top 10, color-based, icon-based data filters; structured references; Excel tables; table styles.
• Word (OMML) Equation support.
johnfkitchen
Aug 13, 2009
11:28am
Still incompatible with Office 2007
Excel 2008 still doesn't support any of the following 2007 functions:-
Advanced multi-item filtering,
Advanced conditional formatting - e.g. graduated color
Filter by color
Sort by color
VBA macros
There may be more, but I found these in the first hour of using 2008 and on my first Excel Workbook that I tried to use on 2008
There is still no way to transfer autocorrects between 2007 and 2008
I have given up trying to use 2008.
These incompatibilities make it unusable since I need to be sure that I can transfer files back and forth between PC and Mac, editing on each platform.
My workaround is to continue to use Office 2007 in a virtual Windows machine on my Mac.
What puzzles me is why Microsoft would even bother developing 2008 and choosing to omit backward compatibility. Seems like a real waste to me, although they did get my money for 2008, and now it's shelfware.
On the site http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office2008/why-office.mspx Microsoft has the following words, and I stupidly believed them
"Compatibility is Essential
No one likes being caught off guard, especially when the pressure’s on. That’s why it’s vital that shared documents, presentations, and spreadsheets open as they were designed—regardless of the computer or operating system.
Office 2008 for Mac is the smart choice for people who share Office files at work, school, or anywhere else. Research shows that 75% of Mac users use a PC at least once a week. And almost every Mac user exchanges documents with PC users. With Office 2008 for Mac, you can feel confident in your compatibility."
kevinv
Aug 13, 2009
11:29am
Great!
I'm very happy that it has finally been released.
Unfortunately, I am receiving an error while trying to use the 'New' button. It says that it was unable to retrieve meta data from the URL. Also, when uploading a document, it is checked-out and there is no way to specify required meta data.
Other than that: great!
GIIS
Aug 13, 2009
11:29am
Exchange Web Services
shahroozohio
Aug 13, 2009
11:29am
Excel 2008 is still SLOW for large files with charts
I have posed similar complaints in the past several months, but the developers appear to be aloof to fixing this major shortcoming of Excel 2008. The question is WHY? Have the developers lost their talents? What happened to those developers who wrote powerful programs such as Excel 2003????
SPH
Aug 13, 2009
11:31am
Anyone notice any difference?
fer.java
Aug 13, 2009
11:31am
HI ALL
Is it not against the Microsoft education plan?
If Microsoft is claiming free basic computer education in the world, now they are charging huge amount for this little package of software.
This is against education law and humanity, they should not launch this trial edition if their plan was to sell this software.
I hope Micrsoft will re-think on this issue, to set this software free. This is the basic need in day to day life like food and people will not stop praising on Microsoft. Microsoft has outstanding role in free basic education and it will remain forever.
Thanks
johnfkitchen
Aug 13, 2009
11:31am
Still incompatible with Office 2007
Excel 2008 still doesn't support any of the following 2007 functions:-
Advanced multi-item filtering,
Advanced conditional formatting - e.g. graduated color
Filter by color
Sort by color
VBA macros
There may be more, but I found these in the first hour of using 2008 and on my first Excel Workbook that I tried to use on 2008
There is still no way to transfer autocorrects between 2007 and 2008
I have given up trying to use 2008.
These incompatibilities make it unusable since I need to be sure that I can transfer files back and forth between PC and Mac, editing on each platform.
My workaround is to continue to use Office 2007 in a virtual Windows machine on my Mac.
What puzzles me is why Microsoft would even bother developing 2008 and choosing to omit backward compatibility. Seems like a real waste to me, although they did get my money for 2008, and now it's shelfware.
On the site http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office2008/why-office.mspx Microsoft has the following words, and I stupidly believed them
"Compatibility is Essential
No one likes being caught off guard, especially when the pressure’s on. That’s why it’s vital that shared documents, presentations, and spreadsheets open as they were designed—regardless of the computer or operating system.
Office 2008 for Mac is the smart choice for people who share Office files at work, school, or anywhere else. Research shows that 75% of Mac users use a PC at least once a week. And almost every Mac user exchanges documents with PC users. With Office 2008 for Mac, you can feel confident in your compatibility."
Harm
Aug 13, 2009
11:31am
Document Connection without Service Pack 2?
gldadis
Aug 13, 2009
11:31am
Thanks for MS Office 2008 SP2
I hope that the Redmondians will continue to improve the product and keep it available for those of us who like and need a full-featured spreadsheet application.
Other spreadsheet vendors (not all) seem to believe that by leaving out key features that Excel (for example) pioneered years ago is a good way to "differentiate" themselves in the marketplace. Except that what they are really doing is preventing experienced users from moving to their product.
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are the common-denominator products today. And when looked at from the perspective of a couple of decades of experience with them, today's versions are true marvels. Many, many thousands of business users could not get along without them.
So, congrats to MS and to the Mac team for excellent work and accomplishment.
Scoobyduder
Aug 13, 2009
11:31am
Too little, too late
Michel Guillaume
Aug 13, 2009
11:33am
Just a pity that...
Please, fix this bug asap!!!
N.B. Same issue with PowerPoint 2008...
nicjohnson
Aug 13, 2009
11:33am
Where to report bugs?
chippatt
Aug 13, 2009
11:33am
Contextual Menus in Entourage
Ganesh
Aug 13, 2009
11:33am
VBA support for Office 2008
Arkhaz
Aug 13, 2009
11:33am
THANKS SO MUCH!
I think office for mac is an excellent piece of software and it just got better.
Just one thing missing, please please please upgrade msn messenger for mac!!!
Thx!
Jeff Chapman
Aug 13, 2009
11:34am
Fantastic news!
Having said this, there were some things I really missed and was desperately hoping to see in SP2 that apparently didn't make it, such as drag-and-drop functionality for to-dos (tasks) to the calendar in Entourage, the ability to hide whitespace at the top/bottom of the page with a double-click for Word, or sync Entourage <--> Google/Windows Live Calendar. (I suppose there won't be an SP3... ?)
At any rate, I'm glad to see that the Mac BU is investing time and effort into making a more stable and useful product... even if the efforts have come more than a year-and-a-half after initial product release. Kudos to all at the Mac BU for making the choice to add value to an already-released product, rather than abandoning it and passing the costs onto the consumer.
Paul Naassan
Aug 13, 2009
11:39am
Re: Announcing Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 2
Sp1 was fine.
do you know what's not fine? microsoft messenger 7.02. that needs an update.
magoo
Aug 13, 2009
11:39am
Word 2008 great stability improvement, but still with some issues
thank you so much for this Office 2008 SP2 release!!
This version finally gives me a relief against countless Word 2008 freeze problems associated with figure captions and cross-references (including the nasty "Disk Full Error" problem and so on) and repagination issues after moving some of them (see my earlier posts on your Word 2008 forum).
I tested the update with some sample documents that I knew they were having problems with all earlier versions of Word 2008.
Please trust me, these kind of errors almost drove me nuts, as I experienced up to 10 (or more) Word freezes per day (and associated loss of work).
I have since the publication of Office 2008 provided a lot feedback to the Microsoft Mac BU and posted many reports on your forums. May be that my contributions (and descriptions on how to reproduce the errors) have at least partially helped you solve those major problems? Whatever, I am glad to have this SP2 update now.
Still, the new 12.2.1 version has some problems with some of my "test" documents. These seem related to inserting some text into an existing document, which pushes the remaining text (including capitons and cross references) further down.
[I sent an e-mail to "blog-at-officeformac-dot-com" with a sample Word document where this kind of error can easily be reproduced. I hope that someone at the Mac BU will be able to retrieve this e-mail. If not, please let me know where I could send it].
I hope that you can find a solution to this, too.
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