Office 2008 is out in the field, and we're carefully watching the early data. Yes, that's right, we're watching what you're doing.
'WHAT?!' I can hear the cries echoing 'round the world. When you install Office 2008, one of the last screens during the installation process asks whether you'd like to participate in the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP). (The name leaves something to be desired!) If you opt in, anonymous non-traceable data about how you use Office is occasionally uploaded to us in the background. And if you're wondering what happens to that data, well, I'm looking at it right now.
This data tells us some fantastically useful and interesting things about what happens when real users use our apps in their real-world settings. Jensen Harris from the Windows Office team talked about his team's experience with CEIP. As a result of his post, I bet that somewhere, someone has added a new question to a trivia game: what is the most commonly-used command in Microsoft Office? It's through the CEIP that the Windows Office team learned that paste is the most-used command in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (accounting for 11%, 15%, and 12% (respectively) of all commands issued in each application).
What do we do with the data we collect through the CEIP? It helps us shape our future work. If we learn through this data that a particular feature isn't used very frequently, we have to find out why. It could be that the feature isn't discoverable (that is, you want to use the feature, but you can't figure out where it is or how to use it), or it could be that the feature isn't as useful as it once was. If we learn that people tend to use a given sequence of commands, then we have to figure out what action they're trying to perform and whether there's any way that we can streamline it. This data is hugely useful to us as we start our work on the next version of Office.
If you didn't enable it when you installed Office, you can do so at any time in any of our apps by going to Preferences -> Feedback and selecting “Yes, I want to participate ... “. This is one of the ways that you can help us to help you.
Courtney’s post gives you another way to give us directed feedback about our apps and what you'd like to do with them. And I'd be remiss if I didn’t add in a plug for the usability studies that are conducted by my team -- sign up for them, and if we're in your neck of the woods (most of our studies are conducted at our labs in Redmond, Washington, and Mountain View, California, but we do travel to meet our users elsewhere), you might get a call from one of us asking you if you can spend some time checking out our latest work.
Help us help you. We want to better meet your needs, and giving us data to help us is one way to make that happen.
...if you'd send me my copy of Office 2008 that I ordered the week after Black Friday (hint hint) then I would opt in!
Why don't you tell us why there's been such a delay in shipping the Black Friday upgrades? (I bought a second copy of Office 2004 to get in on the deal.)
What I was told is you anticipated 10,000 people would avail themselves of the deal, but 50,000 of us did and we overwhelmed the duplicator for the "cheap people who want it for nearly free" crowd.
mr.saint
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
From Korea
In advance, I appreciate you for your effort to make the very quality product. But, I am sorry to say that your product is too much poor at localization. That is not about localization in user interface.
It is about poor text encoding. When I type in Korean with PowerPoint 2008, Korean letters are shown broken. if I type "마이크로소프트", meaning "Microsoft", then PowerPoint shows "망잌클롯솦픝트". This mispresentation is shown only in PowerPoint.
If you are watching over me, then, please fix this error. Otherwise, I cannot help but using Apple Keynote.
Further to that, In the process of installation, Office is not installed when mac's language configuration is set to Korean. So I have to set English above Korean.
Dr.Braida
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
International Remote Desktop Version
Does anyone know when an international version of the latest RDP software will become available? The current version will only support US keyboard layouts.
JR1051
Mar 06, 2008
3:16pm
Whatever.....
Downgrade from Outlook.......
No synching to Palms....
Late delivery.....
Sure feels like an intentional push to Windows. Would that be XP or Vista? And which version, home, pro, or what?
Shaftz650
Mar 06, 2008
3:16pm
Quicktime compressor errors??
We have just installed Office 2008 on MAC's in our Publishing Department thinking it would behave in the same way as Office 2004.
We primarily use Office to process data we receive in Excel from PC users in our company for insertion into client presentations. The received data is formatted into graphs & pie charts using Excel and then the chart or graph is copied and pasted into Freehand MX as a vector graphic to be reformatted into corporate colours and styles.
This is having quite a serious effect on our work flow and I am seriously considering downgrading to Office 2004 again as it worked.
After the install of Office 2008 when we try to copy & paste from Excel we receive a “Quicktime compressor” error. All the MAC’s are running the latest software and are all up to date with the latest software updates.
Is there a download that can fix this? Bearing in mind that the chart or graph must remain as a fully editable vector graphic (SVG) image so it can be edited in Freehand or Illustrator. I have tried going through Photoshop but the result are really poor quality low res bitmaps. I have also tried printing the Excel spreadsheet to a PDF but any graphs or pie charts that appear are “Sliced up” or un-editable in Illustrator.
Stuart Reynolds
Mar 28, 2008
8:55pm
Entourage and MS Project
1. I was promised (actually not me personally, but as a collective we, the Mac users were)better/easier connectivity to MS Exchange 2003 servers. It's no damn different, easier, or less painful, that 2004's version of Entourage. And I'm an Exchange 2K3 certified technician.
2. If you really want to "improve" the Office for Mac suite, add MS PROJECT, PLEASE! As a PMP I "live" on MSP, and get tired of having to use Parallels Desktop.
So if you are, in fact, watching/listening to us, let's see if there's any answers.
nils
May 12, 2008
10:29pm
Excel pagebreak preview
previously posted comments indicate your team does not have a stellar record at listening to/responding to user feedback. Here's your chance to prove 'em wrong...
How about quickly correcting the bonehead move that eliminated the pagebreak preview function from excel 2008? The faster the better. Not sure how anyone could've thought it was a wise move to get rid of that useful function!
justin
Feb 29, 2008
11:55am
not watching me
because my copy of office has been on backorder for 2 months!
Judy
Feb 29, 2008
11:55am
Not able to sync my palm with Entourage 2008
I was so excited when the new Office came out, I bought it the first week. I loaded it on my imac and had no problems. i added a few things to the calendar and went to sync it with my palmone TungstenE2 and it wouldn't work. i contacted palm and microsoft support and was told the software to sync with palm was intentionally left out of Office 2008. I had just spent $150 for a program that it useless for THE MAJOR part of my using Office. I was told i have to spend another $40 to buy a program to make it compatible. (and we all know how loading that kind of software never seems to work right anyway). Needless to say, I AM HUGELY DISAPPOINTED IN THE NEW OFFICE!! Please make a patch so the program is compatible with syncing palms like Office 2004 was.
Thank you.
Not listening
Feb 29, 2008
11:55am
Not listening
You haven't listened to our needs for four years, I don't believe that you're going to start listening now.
Sorry.
eponymous
Feb 29, 2008
11:55am
Re: we are watching you
How does force quit rank?
Mr. Stat
Feb 29, 2008
11:55am
I have enabled SEIP
But I dont think it record the amount of time I spend working in Excel 2003 (via Fusion)?
You should have translated the statistical analysis tools to AppleScript for me... *sigh*
Adrian Bool
Feb 29, 2008
11:55am
Microsoft Office accepting connections..?
I installed my copy of MO2008 today and enabled CEIP. My Mac also asked me should I allow Word to accept network connections. Why is Word trying to accept connections from the outside..?
brett_x
Feb 29, 2008
11:55am
You're watching?
Good.. can you see that I already have duplicate calendar events because the updated events didn't take away the old one? I was really hoping these exchange sync problems would be cleared up.
Honestly, it's getting tougher to justify spending the money on a product like Entourage when we could have just a few more issues by using the built-in Mail with it's Exchange support.
macmanc
Feb 29, 2008
11:55am
Some of us would just like to use it...
You could gather even more feedback if you'd ship the upgrade or at lest release a demo.
Daiya
Feb 29, 2008
11:55am
good post
very nice--thanks, Nadyne
Marco Polo
Feb 29, 2008
11:55am
You know what I wish you'd watch...
This blog!!!
I hate to break it to you, but many of us aren't buying 2008. Why do you ask?
Let me tell you...
You haven't provided a demo, as you did with 2004. This leaves users unsure if they want to upgrade because they don't know if it will run well on their current setups.
You took away VBA(take note, this will become the rallying cry of the anti-Office 2008 movement of two-thousand and eight)! Hey guys, look, we need VBA. That leaves us with a couple of options. First, we can stick with 2004 and NOT buy your new product, or second, we can buy 2007 and run it on parallels. Hint. Hint. Give it back!
It doesn't really run much faster as a universal application! Not the way it's supposed to anyway. Why are you guys still using Carbon? Let's go Cocoa!
Entourage is a poor man's Outlook. Another news flash guys, the Macintosh is fast gaining market share, even in corporations. We need solid Exchange support, and not just with 2007! Give us Outlook, for goodness sake!
To be honest, 2004 is probably the best we're going to get. It looks like you guys did a GUI makeover for 2008, and that's about it.
Do me a favor, just one: respond to my angst-ridden post. Let us know what you intended to do about these problems. If the answer is nothing, fine! We just won't buy your product, and I'll probably continue to poke daily fun at the Mac BU team. If the answer is... something, well, that's a start.
@Marco Polo: As my boss posted a few days ago (the 'Office 2008 update' post - I'd link, but I don't think HTML works in the comments), we're working on the 12.0.1 update (due on 11 March) as well as the file format converters (coming in June), so the demo isn't quite ready for prime time yet.
We've made continuous improvements to our Exchange support in Entourage. Remember Office 2004 SP2: we added more Exchange support in that release. We know that we have gaps, and we're working to get them into the app in priority order. Don't forget - we're also Entourage users in an Exchange environment, so our knowledge of our gaps is not just academic.
@Judy - One of our goals is to be a good Mac citizen. We support OS technologies that benefit our users. We added support for OS X Sync Services in Office 2004 SP2. (We added support via a service pack because Sync Services was introduced in Tiger, after the release of Office 2004.) In Office 2008, we shifted our focus to improving our Sync Services support because it's much more efficient for us to support OS X Sync Services (which supports LOTS of devices) instead of having to create our own syncing method for each mobile device that's out there. If you find that Sync Services doesn't meet your needs, you can submit feedback to Apple that you'd like them to improve it so that you can seamlessly sync all of your data.
Simon
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
Have you seen that Autofilter has a bug?
Have you seen that in Excel, Autofilter doesn't automatically filter, but that you have to click back in your spreadsheet to get it to filter.
Have you seen that Office doesn't play nice with Spaces?
RG
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
Faster Universal Code..?
Pleaaassseee, it is crwaling slow compared to 2004 on Rosetta. Crashes twice as much as 2004. NO VBA !!!!!, sluggish interface, Thinks for about two to three seconds when issued a Copy to pasete Command, so if PASTE is the most widely used command...then you forgot the Copy because is DAMN SLOW.
The new XML file formats, well yes they are faster than 2004, but overall, performance is terrible ! stability Terrible...just hope you guys are not getting the same sickness that plagues VISTA..bloaded software with useless functionality.
2008 DOES NOT offer any improvements worth moving from 2004, it just looks nicer but other than that it looks as if is just a make up of interface.
sorry guys, waste of years and typical microsoft NOT LISTENING to user needs
Tom
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
Run your headlines past your PR department, if you have one.
I have been a fairly loyal Microsoft Mac user for a long time; I even gave you the benefit of the doubt that the missing conduit issue in 2008 was an oversight, albeit a big one, and that you'd offer it in the service update. But then some arrogant blogger tells me I'm being watched; good lord man, can you be more 'Microsoft'?
RO
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
Re: we are watching you
Office 2008 Excel I've been waiting for several months and now I got it but I am so disappointed. I lost many files (i.e.several days of work and datas) (I don't have any previous version but only new files I typed). I can't open anymore that last file and I got several times the message telling it was a problem and I have to contact Microsoft. ... a nightmare ...
asdf
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
Re: we are watching you
Notebook view is a great tool, but its quite instabel, e. g. when you listen to iTunes and write, you have delays in the music?? thats s****
James Calhoun
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
Calendar
I use Ent for my Business as a Electrical Contractor, what I would like to see is that after recieving a email I can have the option to apply that email to my Calendar as either a meeting or a to do list that will show up on my Calendar.
When applying a new event evef it is a to do or task I would like to have the option for it to show up on a calendar event, and when plugging in my I phone it will down load all my calendar events even if it is a task or a to do list.
What I would do is plug in my nid invitations on my to do list this way when going to a GC location I can pull up my list. right now I have to schedule a meeting type for it to show up on my I phone. it would be nice to all calendar events like the over view option to show up on my phone. right now you only have like meetings that will show up and if I put in a reminder from my email it does not show up on my calendar only my Day.
Sanjeev
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
Where is my upgrade?
Can someone make an official statement if there is a delay in processing the mail-in upgrade offer applications? I have contacted customer support and received a response that it takes 2 to 4 weeks. I would at least want the order website updated with the fact that my application has been received and an expected ship date. Comments?
Watching?
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
Watching?
Your not watching for better support of programs. You only spy so that like the RIAA you can go after people with hacked copies.
Nixon Haus
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
2008 OFFICE...really
Heck, I guess the Microsoft advertising machine is sure hitting the spot. Didn't even know that Mac Office 2008 was available. I guess I'll run over the Apple Store and check it out.
@James - We've built a script into Entourage that might help you. Click on the script menu (it's the graphic in your menu bar), then select 'Create New Event from Message'. The New Message dialog will appear, with most of the details already filled in. You can then select the time and duration so that it will show up on your calendar.
@Watching? - We're not collecting any data that is traceable. We're strictly collecting data about your usage (such as what you're clicking on). I don't even see what countries are represented in the data, let alone anything narrower than that.
Juan
Mar 03, 2008
4:02pm
So then...
you´re seeing that I´m using a Messenger version that would look modern only in a Mac II.
Is it THAT hard for Microsoft to release a decent Messenger client?
C´mon, Nadine... Apple (which is significantly smaller than MS) released two major OS versions in the same time Microsoft even didn´t got one small app...
anonymous and afraid of the NSA
Mar 03, 2008
4:02pm
Office 2008 support?
Microsoft seems to have arrogantly left user support behind. I got a copy of Office 2008, installed it, and now my wife (second user on our iMac 24 running Leopard) cannot set her default Normal style and template. Why? I have no clue, but I suspect the installation is really only clean and really was only ever tested for one user (the administrator) per Mac in OS X. Of course, there's no Microsoft support person to submit a query to or through. Yet another reason to reconsider the switch to Open Office or Pages+Numbers+Keynote. Who knows when this might get fixed by the 2008 product team. Oh yes, one's position in life is irrelevant. I am a CIo and have a Microsoft License Agreement to cover my entire organization. I still can't help.
Jeremy
Mar 03, 2008
4:02pm
Not to throw another stone, but...
1 word...ONENOTE!
WHEN OH WHEN WILL YOU ADD ONENOTE FOR MAC?! Thank God for VMware Fusion.
RE: other comments on this post so far...I was considering upgrading to 2008, but man, all but 1 comment was negative! WTH(eck)? I guess I'll wait.
On the sunny side, thanks for watching or listening or whatever.
Tim
Mar 03, 2008
4:02pm
Exchange
Here's the thing:
You had a perfectly good working version of Outlook for Mac (2001) and then unleashed the beast that is Entourage to us Mac users. Why would Microsoft spend the resources on creating a new email client for Mac users when they could have just updated Outlook?
I keep reading that you're Mac users in an Exchange environment. While this is true due to the fact of where you work, I don't believe you're really trying to give full Exchange support to us Mac users. Thankfully, a copy of Fusion and Office 2003 works perfect for us Intel Mac users. I wish I didn't have to resort to that but after reading the blog for Office 2008 and hardly any mention of Entourage and the changes/features you've worked on, I realized what a joke it is to anticipate the new Office release.
John
Mar 03, 2008
4:02pm
Office 2008 & Math Symbols
One gripe I have with Office '08 is that it does a really poor job of importing symbols from MathType or symbols inserted with MS Math on Office '07. However, Pages '08 will import them without ANY problems! Needless to say, I'm hugely disappointed with Office '08 and using Pages '08 about 98% of the time.
Scott
Mar 03, 2008
4:02pm
What's up with slideshows??
I've been waiting to take advantage of the graphics features in Office 2008 since my friends migrated to Office 2007 on Windows. After upgrading, I put together a great presentation. And it runs like a dog in slideshow! Wow, what a step backward in performance.
So, I read the help section. And it basically says not to use the new graphics features. Well, why on earth are they there?
I'm running on a 2GB MacBook Pro with a 2Ghz+ processor. Even Photoshop CS2 (non native) feels snappy compared to running a PowerPoint slideshow.
I'm hoping y'all are going to pop out an early patch to clean this up. Hard to imagine how QA missed this, and if they caught it, how program management chose to ship.
Michael
Mar 03, 2008
4:02pm
Re: we are watching you
If it's anonymous, then how can you contact back to me? I bought the Office 2008 for the super suite deal last year, didn't receive it yet... was delayed few times, but few days ago, I called, and I was told "10 days".. 10 days I'll get it... really can't wait..... I'll turn the CEIP on once I have it ..
Marco Polo
Mar 03, 2008
4:02pm
Thanks... Nadyne...
Thanks for responding Nadyne, but your post hardly responds to the bulk of my questions. How can you guys work on a campus that uses Outlook, and not feel like second class citizens when using Entourage?
VBA?
CK
Mar 03, 2008
4:02pm
Refund
I wish I could get a refund for Office 2008. I thought it would be better than 2004 because of all the hype, but I was wrong. I understand your desire to keep the Mac software separate from that of Windows, but I do not agree with it. Office for Windows continues to be a better product. I wish I could run it in Mac (not Boot Camp or VMware I already use those).
Fire you marketing department
Mar 04, 2008
11:17pm
Watch me not buy the grossly overpriced Canadian edition
I don't know who your marketing people are but they deserve a pink slip.
Give me a fair market value price based on the US pricing and I'll buy it, otherwise collect data on my not purchasing your product.
Jane Watson
Mar 04, 2008
11:17pm
Re: we are watching you
If you really are watching perhaps you would have noticed that new Entourage doesn't have any alert sounds. You may have also noticed that it is not free and most people paid for it. Let me tell you what I have noticed - you didn't test this software before you released it - otherwise you would have realised that Entourage doesn't work properly. Or perhaps you are profoundly deaf and just didn't hear that the alerts didn't work?
Warren Buffet
Mar 04, 2008
11:17pm
Completely agree with Marco Polo's first post!!!
Please provide a demo of Office 2008. It would help us all know whether we can actually use your product. You provided a demo for 2004 and it was a good decision.
Why did you take away VBA??? This is THE reason that Microsoft Office trounces iWork, NeoOffice, Openoffice, etc. Please add VBA back ASAP!!!.
Some of us are starting to look elsewhere now that so many things have been left out of Excel (VBA, Analysis Tool Pack, Solver, etc). Numbers is starting to look appealing for simple spreadsheet work. Openoffice are working on getting VBA interoperability. Obviously they realize how important VBA is. Why can't the MACBU team???
Having FULL compatibility with the Windows version of Office was the trump card for many of us who use your Mac products. I really hope this is not a sign of Microsoft beginning to abandon the Mac platform.
Rowin
Mar 04, 2008
11:17pm
Cross-language upgrade?
I upgraded from Office 2004 UK to Office 2008 NL version. Doing so I got mixed languages in Entourage, e.g. both Calendar and Agenda for calendar... Would be nice to make this upgrade work. Export/import does the job, but removes links between emails, so that's not really an option.
eponymous
Mar 04, 2008
11:17pm
Re: we are watching you
If only we could get a high level MS exec to use Entourage to connect to Exchange. By the end of the day, Outlook for the Mac would be the MACBU's only priority.
hortonwho
Mar 04, 2008
11:17pm
AAAIIGHHHH!
I've been a PPT user since the first version. Somehow with every upgrade you add marvelous new special tools and remove an oft needed hammer and screwdriver.
I VEHEMENTLY regret purchasing 2008 for Mac and 2007 for PC, yes we're bi-platform here. As a graphic designer production speed it key (I'm not talking processing speed). Anything that adds additional clicks takes than it did before means I can produce less and make less money. That's a problem.
The zoom function went from inconvenient to horribly inconvenient--huge time waster. Why in the world would the zoom always go to the upper-left corner? If there's a work around, then why isn't it in the help documentation?
If there's a Grid and Guides dialog box to help with that, then I sure can't find it. Grid functions seem to have changed, but I can't find answers.
Borders going on the outside of the object edge instead of the center of the edge makes for very challenging alignment. Especially when snap-to snaps the object and not the border edge.
Default attributes of objects should be plain. As it is I have to change the color, line, and shadow on every one, every time. The pick up and apply style tools don't work right now and the format painter can't hold a style past one click. Huge time waster. I should be able to set defaults, If I can, I can't find any information on this in the help documentation.
Things that are simple, should stay simple. One click should not become two (or more).
AND NOW I FIND OUT there are no plans for a viewer? So how functional it that? I feel like I've been snookered. From "the buzz" I expected PC 2007 & Mac 2008 to be more universal and completely compatible.
I've worked in every major graphics package since their first versions. Consistently Powerpoint is the only package that I have to wrestle to the ground to make it do what I want it to do. If only you hadn't taken over the world.
Doug
Mar 04, 2008
11:17pm
Just turned CEIP on
Hope you will be able to see the number of times I try to restart numbering in an outline list and fail or get completely random results. Will you be able to see me clicking in the window and failing to bring it to the front after using another application? When do you expect to iron the bugs out of this beta version?
PHL
Mar 04, 2008
11:17pm
Entourage 2008 is not up to snuff yet
I work in a mixed PC/Mac/Unix/Linux environment (at a LARGE academic institution.) I am on a Macbook Pro using Office 2008 and Exchange Server for e-mail. Almost all of the administration uses Exchange and majority are PC users. Entourage 2008 is better than 2004 but hey it is really frustrating. Why, why, why don't you give typing the priority rather than syncing the inbox (and other boxes) a billion times a day and my typing is greatly hampered as a result?? I have to go offline to do anything. I thought that this would be fixed in 2008, but it is not. Can't typing an e-mail have enough priority so background tasks don't overwhelm the process and make using Entourage a pain in the neck? It is really almost unusable. I have been a loyal Office fan since before Office (original Word and Multiplan!)
@Jane - We're aware of the sounds issue in Leopard, and are working on resolving it.
@Marco Polo - We've talked about VBA in the past. Schwieb, one of our devs, wrote a great post to his blog about the technical issues inherent in it, and a websearch for 'schwieb vba' will turn it up.
@anonymous - I'm not quite sure what you mean by "cannot set her default normal style and template". I've been playing with this to try to get an understanding, but haven't gotten there yet. Can you post the steps that you've tried and what you're trying to accomplish?
holmess001
Mar 05, 2008
1:31pm
Well I like it...
With all the negativity, I thought I'd let the MacBU team know that I like it. I've found that Entourage has gone from useless to my preferred groupware solution. Entourage 2004 was so slow on my Intel iMac that I ditched it in favor of Apple Mail, iCal, and Address Book. Boy did that suck. Entourage 2008, hooked into my Exchange 2007 server, is still no speed demon but then neither is Outlook. I'm more than pleased.
One caveat/heads up for the team: after a few weeks of blissful Entourage 2008 usage, I suddenly could not connect to the Exchange 2007 server. Nothing seemed to fix it until I installed the recently-released Rollup 1 to Exchange 2007 SP1 on the server. Microsoft tech support tells me it fixes lots of DAV problems. Anyway, the minute I installed it, Entourage connected and I've been a happy camper ever since.
Bottom line, I think Office 2008 is a good effort. Thanks.
Karl
Mar 05, 2008
1:31pm
VBA? Analysis Tool Pack?
I have been reading a number of posts here where your customers are asking you to give a response as to future plans concerning the inclusion of VBA and the Analysis Tool Pack into Office 2008. I have yet to see where you have provided any direct or definitive response to these questions. It would be a courtesy, if you could address these issues directly, so that those of us who need these features can make an informed decision as to whether to upgrade to Office 2008 or stay with Office 2004.
Kenneth W. Collins
Mar 05, 2008
1:31pm
Office 2008 is slow and kludgy
Microsoft and Adobe are famous for slow-loading applications, but this time, Office 2008 is the sloooooooowest. I start up Microsoft Word, and empires rise and fall before the program is loaded. Why?
I also have an 800 page document with only four styles and simple paragarphs, no pictures and n embedded anything. I noticed that saving it as DOCX takes twice as long as saving it as DOC. This is odd because DOCX is nominally the default format. It looks more like Office 2004 with some ee candy and DOCX tacked on. It's faster and easier to use NeoOffice as a file converter.
THANK GOD you did not introduce that ribbon, button, bow, hairpin, barrette interface from 2007. 2007 does not give expert users record to the menus, but there are third party solutions that restore them.
The UI looks a bit scatterbrained, but things are much easier to find than in Office 2007.
Bottom line, I think that 2008 is warmed over 2004. The best days of Microsoft Word are clearly behind us. You've been adding new features without perfecting the old ones and you have not been testing with real writers.
After seeing what you did to Windows Visa, Office 2007, Office 2007, money, and many other things, I have gradually moved to Mac. Make quality products that make me wat to go back..
rja
Mar 05, 2008
1:31pm
NO Solver, NO Data Analysis Tools Add-ins
I have used Excel for teaching undergraduates. The class makes extensive use of both Solver and the Data Analysis Toolpack. If these are not available, then it is a big mistake to continue to use Excel for the classroom. Yes, I know that some of the features in Toolpack could be done through the functions, but that is not the point. Moreover, without Solver, there are many nonlinear problems that will not be examined. This loss of functionality will mean that we will not update the department's computers to Office 2008.
rja
Mimk Pipfel
Mar 06, 2008
3:16pm
Re: we are watching you
Please fix the Entourage notification sounds ASAP.
Please restore the Excel Page Break Preview feature or we will go back to version 2004 because adjusting page breaks by adding them is not the same as what was there before and that was infinitely more useful. Also, don't like the floating formula bar. Not an improvement.
yoshi
Mar 06, 2008
3:16pm
No, you don't
I bought Office 2004 standard upgrade edition on 11/23/07 at jr.com and applied both BFD/SSD promos, however, I don't have anything yet. No check, nor 2008 software. Please process it now OR give me full refund. Otherwise I'll never believe you or your software.
Thanks,
MACKCO
Mar 06, 2008
3:16pm
Re: we are watching you
Can't sync Blackberry on POP account--this is crazy!
Robert Bayha
Mar 06, 2008
3:16pm
Why Bother - 2008 Can't Run VBA
With billions of dollars and hours invested in VBA macro based programs (especially Excel) that work fine in 2004 (and will work with PC versions with programming care), would anyone switch to 2008 is beyond me!
DO NOT buy Office 2008 if you use and-or need files that contain VBA programming!!!
Marco Polo
Mar 06, 2008
3:16pm
Listen to your Customers
Hey Nadyne,
I thought I would weigh in on your responses to my posts, and perhaps add a few other considerations. I sincerely hope you forward our correspondence to Geoff Price, and make him aware of the growing contingent of irate users banding together in their continued support for Office 2004 against 2008.
Regarding VBA, I understand the technical difficulties in porting VBA, but I suggest you take another look at the article you sent me. Erik Schwiebert admits that, while difficult, the process is not impossible. Two years he says. That's two years worth waiting for. AppleScript is not enough to replace the macros in Excel or Word. As much as I like AppleScript, it doesn't even come close to VBA for Office applications.
But, VBA is but ONE of MANY problems we have with 2008! Take the lesser problems, like the lack of notification sounds in Entourage, every file being an executable, and the installation permissions UID errors, for example. These errors irk us, make us complain, but they don't prevent us from buying your product outright. Maybe, at worst, we will hold off until you fix these glaringly obvious errors.
But that's not all. Add in the LACK of functionality in 2008. Now, we cannot use our VBA macros upon which we depend to do our job, or to continue to use Macs in our workplace. We don't have the Solver and Data Analysis Toolpack. Now, we're more than slightly annoyed: we're angry. These are real problems that turn us off from buying your product, which means real problems for you guys.
Add the fact that we still--STILL--do not have a functional Outlook replacement for Mac Office. I'm serious when I say I cannot even begin to understand why Entourage still exists.
Look, I use Macs, but I WANT Office to be a better product; however, when you spend four years to deliver a buggy, functionality-lacking program that is slow, I refuse to buy it.
Also, no one wanted "My Day". Not a single person I know would bother to use that pesky, useless widget. How many hours wasted on "My Day" would have gotten us that much closer to VBA, or Outlook on the Mac, or full (not good, or pretty OK) Exchange support, or a faster suite, or a correct installer, or notification sounds, or a demo. Where were your priorities in designing this software? You had four years--no one wanted "My Day" or a more Mac GUI instead of functionality, security, and speed. No one.
Four years.
I mean, we're not asking that you suddenly port over Access to the Mac. We're just asking for the functionality we need to do our jobs. The Office you delivered to us in 2008 is an insult.
Thanks for responding. Keep it up, and please get Geoff Price involved. Let him know we want to hear from him directly.
Davebert22
Mar 06, 2008
3:16pm
Perhaps you should be watching the Windows team
Office for the Mac is severely limited in performance and functionality relative to the Windows version. Excel and Entourage are particularly poor cousins.
Perhaps you should spend more time looking at what they have built rather than counting how many times I click paste.
We want to be able to move seamlessly between the two offerings not rethink everything we do to accommodate what you think we might do without.
Overall I'm very disappointed in this release, its slow and not at all feature complete.
Enterprise Mac User
Mar 07, 2008
2:18pm
MS Exchange
Now that Apple has announced today that there will be native Exchange support on the iPhone, what will Microsoft do now with Entourage? It's pretty sad that Apple is the one killing the competition in its own platform. I suffer using Outlook on my Boot Camp partition with my BlackBerry (because I am not to happy with the Macs or even the iPhone) to get things done. However I think Entourage is dead now, and the iPhone will be getting the former Mac Exchange users, and the Office is now dead.
Wake up Mac BU, "if you snooze - you lose".
Joe B
Mar 07, 2008
2:18pm
One new feature I like...
Uninstall Office 2008. It worked flawlessly for me. Once I learned that Excel was as crippled as it is (no analysis pack; no VBA) AND it completely messed up font rendering in other applications I uninstalled using the bundled tool and it worked as advertised. All traces of 2008 are gone. Yeah!
Seriously this is a downgrade from previous versions. As someone who has read the blog space surrounding this product for over a year the biggest wants of users were a full feature parity client with Outlook be it Entourage or Outlook. Second was complete cross platform document support including all media types and scripting. Neither of which have been even close to being delivered.
As I posted in a previous blog post on the old site. Had MS had a skunk works project started in 2000 working on moving the code base to the Cocoa frameworks this version of office could have been near feature parity with Office 2008 and better be able to use the OS integrated services AND even support right to left languages. Very short sighted and as a result a very lack luster product.
macmansc
Mar 07, 2008
2:18pm
In the channel...
I think Office 2008 has been in the channel long enough to begin shipping the Super Suite Deals out. Every online store I've checked has stock and it looks like from the post here, it's going to stay on the shelf. So there's adequate stock. Ship it already
Gavin Sherlock
Mar 07, 2008
2:18pm
The irony
The irony is that Apple is going to bring the first decent exchange client to the Mac platform (on the iPhone of course!). Apple spends a fraction of what Microsoft does on engineering - I guess they just execute better.
eponymous
Mar 07, 2008
2:18pm
Re: we are watching you
Are you guys getting the message that maybe, just maybe, a few people out there might like Outlook for the Mac? Do you care?
Tim
Mar 07, 2008
2:18pm
Entourage + Exchange
Now with iPhone Mail integrating with ActiveSync, what's the MacBU response on Apple getting a working Exchange client for the phone when the MacBU can't do that for Entourage?
Dennis Cohen
Mar 07, 2008
2:18pm
Then all you're seeing from here are...
a whole boatload (maybe a fleetload) of crash reports. I haven't encountered an Office product that compared to this release in terms of flakiness since that abomination, Word 6 for the Mac. I can't get toolbars to show in Word and, if any dialog appears (for example, in response to choosing a menu option), then clicking OK in that dialog is virtually certain to precipitate a crash. Excel isn't quite as buggy, but its instability is still reminiscent of ground movement during a 6.0 earthquake.
At least, I archived my copy of Office 2004 and was able to revert.
Jim Burroway
Mar 07, 2008
2:18pm
CHARTS! CHARTS! CHARTS!
Are you watching me as I struggle in vain to change the range of the X-axis of my extremely simple line chart?
Common! Lotus 1-2-3 had this figured out back in the 1980's! Elementary stuff like this is inexcusable. When will Excel become useful to even the more simple uses like mine?
me
Mar 10, 2008
12:38pm
Re: we are watching you
I'm giving all of my Mac users iPhones so they can connect to my Exchange server. At least someone out there is addressing a need.
Jordan
Mar 10, 2008
12:38pm
data analysis tools
Excel 2008 doesn't have any excel add-ins like phstat2 or megastat capabilities. this is bad. I have been reading negative feedback about this all over the internet. Are you doing anythin to resolve this issue?
Vicariously Disappointed
Mar 10, 2008
12:38pm
We are watching You, too!
Our institution is considering the jump to 2007PC/2008 Mac. I appreciate this blog being provided for us to benefit from the observations of other in deciding whether/when to make the change.
Personally, I depend on the Excel's Solver and a PC/Mac parity client with an Exchange server. I also use a lot of PowerPoint to design a lot of graphic material. Reading here of the many problems with these aspects of Office 2008, I'll be recommending not to convert at this time.
Another consideration for us is a fairly large installed base of PowerPC G3 equipment, that appears NOT to be within the system requirement range for Office 2008.
Rory Loeb
Mar 10, 2008
12:38pm
Entourage + Exchange 2008 = Oy Veh
Listen guys,
Our creative group works in a corporate environment that uses Exchange Servers as their communications lifeline. The new Entourage is almost no improvement over the old one (with the exception of the calendar)! Add the ability to sync the damn task system and notes with Exchange servers for pete sake! Using Office 2007 + VMWare is ridiculous just for one app. If you guys seem to be having difficultly integrating Entourage with Exchange, then why not import one of the Outlook and Exchange geniuses to help you out!
allanh
Mar 10, 2008
12:38pm
Why are you a decade behind on Junk mail filtering?
The junk mail filter in 2008 is as big a joke as the one in 2004 was. (read my comments in the forum). Excel will not open spreadsheet that worked fine in 2004 (I have to use numbers to open them.) These are just the issues I have had after using Office 2008 for 12hrs. I can't upgrade any of my other MAC's because I need the features to actually work like they do now. An Upgrade is generally done to add functionality not remove it. If you are going to remove functionality you should publish a white paper detailing what you are removing so people can make an informed decision.
Lets See,
Keynotes - will open adn create Power point compatible items.
Numbers - will open and save Excel compatible spread sheets.
Pages - Will open and create Word compatible documents.
Mail - Will send and receive mail no better or worse than Entourage
Calendar - Will sync to what ever device I need it to sync to
Address Book - Will store contact information (just as much) and sync with my devices.
Please tell me why I pay so much extra to buy and upgrade Microsoft products on my MAC?
I have been a loyal Office user for many years, Either you are forbidden from keep Office for MAC as updated and useful as Office for Windows or you have some serious real world misconceptions.
I would really appriciate and thoughtful answer to all my points, because as I sit here and itemize all my points, I seriously wonder why I would continue to use any Microsoft products on my MAC more importantly OFFICE FOR MAC.
someone
Mar 10, 2008
12:38pm
Re: we are watching you
could i get a free office i am poor
Eric Whitley
Mar 10, 2008
12:38pm
It's not just Mac Office...
I'll be honest - I'm not upgrading to Mac Office 2008. I got a chance to play with it and between performance and the UI I'm just not seeing a reason to migrate.
But... I don't think it's all a "Mac team" problem. I've now been forced to shift from Office 2003 (Win) to Office 2007 (Win) and I see where you're being pushed. I think the entire Office team seems to have lost focus. Or maybe this is just a transitional product leading to a pure "web" version.
In either case, I'm really disappointed. I can't find _anywhere_ to send product feedback on the Windows Office 2007 suite, so I'm posting here for a few reason:
a) I'm hoping you at least might care and avoid the pain points of the Windows version
b) To let my other fellow Mac users know this - it's _not_ just Office for Mac that has issues. The entire Office suite seems misguided and confused.
My rants...
--------------
The tool tips were a nice touch, but the hot key are no longer displayed. (I'm thinking this is the first UI precursor to a web version w/o hotkeys). Just a bad idea IMO - the menu hot keys were extremely helpful for both learning/instruction and improved performance
DEAR LORD I _hate_ (passionately) the stupid Windows menu file/print/edit combination monstrosity. I don't know who decided to modify a UNIVERSALLY CONSISTENT set of menus into this one-off Office-specific anomaly, but it's just terrible. It's confusing, the menu sorting is awful, and it's just missing stuff as far as I can tell.
There's no longer a global find/replace for special characters in Excel (at least that I can find). Apparently one of the most powerful mass-edit-cleanup tools I used to use for data manipulation (replace ". " with tab ^t etc.) is just now left in the lurch. Thanks. At least the "show formula (ctrl~) is still there. Fine - I'll use textpad's regex replacement.
Despite the whole sales schtick about how "nice" the new ribbon is, I'm struggling with how Microsoft's usability team can argue it performs faster. The need to go from left ribbon tab to right ribbon tab then _back_ to the left 0,0 origin to select a button that used to be ~.25 inches away in a menu just boggles my mind. In certain apps, I get it - Powerpoint for example seems to benefit from graphical buttons that indicate the "effect" of an action (as opposed to a text menu item), but for the rest it's often more confusing. And the context of the menus is often bizarre. EX: the print and page layout menus are just...odd. Some in that bizarre windows menu - some in the display settings? I think.
By the way - I can accept change. Positive change is fine with me. But I would really love to see the performance and find/success #'s from usability testing to see why this approach was chosen. You're forcing users to scroll all over a screen to get to menus and then actively suppressing the shortcut key UI indicators... bad. Just bad.
The format painter is just broken as far as I can tell now. Used to be the most amazing way to get your stuff modified by styles - and now I'm finding it just doesn't always work. No, really. It sometimes just doesn't work.
You guys used to have a good balance between business and technology. No - I'll amend that - you used to have the _best_ balance between business and technology. To sum up what one of my pro-Microsoft co-workers told me one day - "Apple gives people what they want - Microsoft gives people what they need." So now we got what someone in marketing thought we wanted, but we already had what we needed. We had a fast, effective way to do some basic tasks that helped drive the business. Now I have a pretty, slow, bloated app that has _fewer_ useful features than its predecessors.
I feel for you guys. It sucks when you do great work the first time in - there's no real room for upgrade revenue. But at the same time I think you guys need to take a long, serious look at what you're doing and why. Give us what we need to do our jobs. This latest series of upgrades just isn't delivering on your history of great business solutions.
Jose
Mar 10, 2008
12:38pm
Re: we are watching you
I can't delete automatic page break so I can't print what I want. PLEASE BRING BACK PAGE BREAK REVIEW. It's so inconvenient.
JCB
Mar 10, 2008
12:38pm
Office 98 is back or what ?
Office 2008 is crashing and crashing all day long.
Remember what happened with Office 98.
I hoped performance to be better because of Universal platform. Bad guess !
When do you plan a reliable release ? first !
When do you plan a performing release ? second !
Several people have asked questions about specific bugs, such as the Entourage missing sounds bug under Leopard. As Geoff mentioned in his previous post, 12.0.1 is available for download today. You can download it through the Microsoft AutoUpdater, or by going into any Office app and selecting Help -> Check for Updates, or by going to our website to download it directly: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.mspx
Why do the windows in WORD 2008 constantly jump back to semi-minimized in the top left of the start up monitor. What a pice of JUNK!
Why to picture imports automatically decide to place themselves any-which location? The default should be to put them at the end of a paragraph, and the paragraph should stay put unless we want it otherwise.
On a new 8-core 2.8 ghz machine, starting up WORD takes 1 minute. Disgraceful.
The loss of screen real estate due to the new icon bars is terrible. I cannot turn them all off!
Excel will not move the top of the screen on secondary monitors. What gives? Dumb programming?
WORD has crashed multiple times with loss of 20 minutes of work. The recover command crashed too. What gives?
All I wanted was a program that was faster. I got a pile of slow software with no features of any use.
Ljuvefreya
Mar 11, 2008
3:31pm
Comment on Office 2008 for Partners?
Hi. I caved in and bought the retail upgrade for Office 2008 for Mac out of my own pocket for use on my own Mac at home.
I can't get my job to cover it because they don't take Mac all that seriously as long as Microsoft doesn't make software available to partners through the partner site.
I contacted the Microsoft partner support centre and they tell me that Office 2008 is supposedly going to get a trial version later this year, but they had no news on whether it would become available to partners.
Why are the Mac products kept out of the Partner program?
writer Memberspeed.com Jay
Mar 11, 2008
3:31pm
Re: we are watching you
I'm actually a huge fan of whatever Apple comes up with. And although we're talking about Microsoft Office here, the 2008 version for Mac is so much better than what came out last year for the PC. I haven't fully explored the extent of their capacities but I'm enjoying the designs in Word and Powerpoint.
Eric
Mar 11, 2008
3:31pm
Palm syncing
What? No conduit for palm devices?!? Seriously, I would not have upgraded had I known that.
Raj
Mar 11, 2008
3:31pm
Ie for MAC
Will MS ever offer IE for mac again, perhaps with IE8?
Please give us some kind of update on this?
Joe Maloney
Mar 11, 2008
3:31pm
Entourage 2008 should be the latest and greatest
I am a recent MAC convert and am appalled at the limited functionality of Entourage when you have such a strong PC counterpart in the form of Outlook. I have problems with simple things like creating groups! If you leave an open line at the end of the group listing (where you would enter another email address member), the program will read it as an invalid email and not process any mail to the group. What's up with that? Stationary? What is so complicated about including that with Entourage? So far, I am regretting my decision to use Entourage and may have to revert to Mac's mail.
Disgruntled J. User.
Mar 11, 2008
3:31pm
Force Quit
You're wrong about Paste being the most common command. Force Quit is.
mactopia_site
Mar 11, 2008
4:03pm
Glad to hear that 12.0.1 is out
Now, when will I finally receive my copy of Office 2008 that I ordered as part of the Friday after Thanksgiving special?
The Techno Kid
Mar 11, 2008
4:03pm
I'm glad you at least have a Blog
hey! I know there's a lot of flames here, and I'm sure you are trying to make your software the best... some features were removed (like Excel Print Preview View were you could set the print margins easily... hope it comes back) and some were added (like Applescript). I don't think is all that bad... It is slower than Word 2004 with Rosseta when having 100+ fonts but it doesn't have to be that way (Pages opens in like 3 seconds compared to the 54 secs. of Word 2008), but at least you are trying to hear us.
Apple has also a forum but they don't update it as much as your blog so I give you credits on that.
If people hate Microsoft soooo much then stop using the software... truth is, they don't really hate it that much. I know most of them started using computers with MS-DOS/Windows...
The "I have to use word because of the doc format" lost foundation with the birth of RTF, PDF, and OpenOffice... Truth is, people like using MS Office, so stop flaming the Mac Team and thank them for trying to fix all your issues... it'll take some time but at least I know they are trying by reading your comments.
Try to give good comments so they know what you really need and save the "MS sucks..." kind of comments.
macmansc
Mar 11, 2008
4:20pm
Reading comments?
Yes, but no one is answering as to when the Super Suite deal is going to ship.
Andre The Geek
Mar 12, 2008
12:24pm
Re: We are watching you
I recently switched to Mac from Windows. The only Office product I could get was 2004. It was terribly slow to launch, but it worked OK. When I heard you were putting out a Universal app, 2008, I couldn't wait to get it, so it would launch fast like my old PC version did.
So I got 2008, and was most disappointed to see that it is almost as slow as 2004 to launch. Really disappointed.
Other Mac users may not notice this one, but I also am annoyed that I can't use the F2 key to edit a cell in Excel. It seems I have to move my hand off the keyboard and grab the mouse.
Also, I heard a security update came out today, so I launched Excel, and told it to check for updates. Hmmm. It said there were no updates. I came to the website, and found the update, but why didn't my application find an update?
I think I can launch VMWare fusion, wake up my sleeping XP virtual machine, and launch Office in Windows - all faster than I can launch Office 2008 on the Mac.
I must say, the Office 2008 looks pretty, but the speed is awful. It should be able to pick up when there's an update. Also, shouldn't it have the new Office 2007 features, like the ribbon? Not that I like that much, but at least I would have a similar experience between the PC and the Mac.
I was hoping today's update maybe would fix the launch speed, but nope, just as slow. And yet my computer is so fast. I can't believe that Adobe Photoshop CS3 launches faster than Excel 2008!!!
jack
Mar 12, 2008
12:24pm
what's wrong with error bar
why the office2008 can not set error bar by custom?
pg
Mar 12, 2008
12:24pm
Listen to this, Improve Entourage and restore VBA
My comments, written as lyrics to older pop tunes...
Entourage, Pity
(sung to Suffragette City)
Oh don’t email me man, cause I can’t affort to read it
I’m back to Entourage, pity
Oh don’t email me man
Outlook syncs take long to check it
You know my database breaks daily
Its outta sight...no mail right.
My-V-B-A
(sung to YMCA)
Word man, there's no place you can go.
I said, Word man, you're short on work flow.
You can’t stay here, because you will not find
Many ways to write a script guy.
It's no fun with out my-V-B-A.
It's no fun with out my-V-B-A.
Thibault H.
Mar 12, 2008
12:24pm
Microsoft 2008 faster but...
Microsoft 2008 is quite a bit faster on the intel machines. I like that. But, it has broken compatibility with EndNote which is often used in the academic community. I wonder why a beta version of Word 2008 was not provided to Thomson Research so that they could develop a new EndNote version faster. Right now, they expect to ship a compatible version by June 2008. Yikes, that's quite a long time away. In the mean time, I keep Word 2004 and save Microsoft 2008 as .doc rather than .docx format. Its is quite unfortunate that Microsoft 2004 does not have the full .docx plugin compatibility. When you release 2008, you should have 2004 .docx plugin ready to go. It should be released simultaneously.
Ah, Microsoft! Vous êtes un béhémoth si lent, avançant lourdement autour dans les âges foncés. Peut-être bientôt vous serez éteint comme le gigantesque.
alicia
Mar 12, 2008
12:24pm
Office is out, what about messenger?
I've been waiting for ages to have a video capable Messenger to chat with my fds. Also all fun stuffs from Live Messenger still missing the Mac part.
Andy K
Mar 12, 2008
12:24pm
Re: we are watching you
@The Techno Kid
Much as I wish you point was valid, it isn't as valid as many of us wish it was.
We still do use MS Office because of the default file formats. Many of us know of alternative softwares and formats, but we're limited by what the world-at-large uses. And, for now anways, it's still the MS formats.
I work in IT in a university. On occasion people have been send things in OpenOffice's format. They never ask me to install alternative software. They always ask for the file to be converted to the 'correct' format.It's either that or retrain a couple of hundred staff members in how to use a product that, although I wish otherwise, is not all that widely used. Yet.
So yes, we use Office because we have to. And, as such, pretty much need 100% compatibility. And I think a lot of the more vocal people here are in the same boat.
longtime user
Mar 12, 2008
12:24pm
I would like you to explain
..why you think it is a good idea for PowerPoint to modify a file whenever it is opened.
/dev/null
Mar 12, 2008
12:24pm
IE8 for Mac
@Raj. I'm so glad the IE is dead and gone on the mac platform. Count me in on a vote AGAINST this implementation! I already spend my days hacking enough versions of IE into behaving properly! Perhaps the MS team count spend their time integrating Outlook or bringing Messenger to the feature level being offered in the PC environment many years ago as an alternative.
Tim
Mar 12, 2008
9:43pm
RE: Reading comments?
Nor are they commenting on the blow by Apple by integrating ActiveSync into iPhone/iPod Touch Mail.
Marco Polo
Mar 12, 2008
9:43pm
Hey Techno Kid
Techno Kid: AppleScript functionality was in Office 2004. Nothing new there. Unfortunately, removing VBA crippled macros, which many need to use Macs in a corporate setting. Having spent my time redoing a few macros with AppleScript is agonizing. I don't care what MS tells you, AppleScript is NOT a functional replacement for VBA.
We love Office, but the product rolled out for 2008 is seriously deficient. We want Office to be a great product--it isn't, and our concerns are real, not MS bashing.
Hear that Geoff Price?
Nadyne, can you ask your boss, Mr. Price, to get back on the boards and answer our concerns directly?
Greg Walker
Mar 12, 2008
9:43pm
This is interesting
It seems that Office 2008 is a very bad product if the feeback being received on this blog is true. All I would say is Microsoft must be trying to kill the program. There are alternatives available and I would suspect that we will see some company developing a real alternative to this piece of junk.
DrB
Mar 13, 2008
3:10pm
Question: Office 2008 and Mail
Since installing and then reinstalling Office 2004, I have started to notice some corruption in the Leopard Mail program with dropping of letters and words.
Have others been seeing this???
DrB
Mar 13, 2008
3:10pm
Endnote by Thomson
I also did not appreciate the lack of Endnote™ function/compatibility and thus will return to MSWord 2004.
I am surprised that this was not addressed early as I will not use any further products until they are clearly tested or demo provided) in our academic community!
Hater
Mar 16, 2008
10:19pm
iWork Pages?
I keep hearing how much better Apple Pages is than this new Office... Who has experience with Pages? How seamless is it to use when going back and forth with Word documents?
Medical Reports
Mar 16, 2008
10:19pm
Where are my medical words?
I agree with many of the posters here. We have quite a few Macs in our office but I refuse to upgrade to 2008 since essential plugins are not available yet. We have a third party dictionary with medical and legal terms that we purchased for 2004. However, I checked with the company and there is not a 2008 compatible version yet. With other programs, these third party add-ons, which are essential to our practice, are available immediately.
Chris
Mar 17, 2008
4:28pm
Stick with Office 2004 or Office 2007 for PC
Exchange support is still not that great and there are too many missing pieces from 2008. I work in the software industry and removing features that are frequently used is a big no no. Also, If you can match the features of 2007 for the PC then don't bother. OpenOffice.org will take over once they have their XML converter for Office 2007 files.
Grunt GI
Mar 17, 2008
4:28pm
Word issue
Question:
When I attempt to do the spelling and grammar check in Print Layout Vies, Word 2008 crashed EVERY SINGLE TIME.
However, it appears that if I do the spelling and grammar check in Draft View, it works just fine and switches to Print Layout View to check the spelling in my footnotes and caption boxes.
Is this how it is supposed to work or is this a bug? I like to work in Print Layout view so I can see my illustrations and footnotes.
Your advice?
Thanks
wally
Mar 18, 2008
8:32pm
Without VBA ..?!
I did too many macros with VBA for too many very important things I need daily...
Because of your wonderful maco language that is able to manipulate text like no one else can do!! - I HAVE TO STAY in Word 2004.
arctic
Mar 19, 2008
8:42pm
the funny thing that i've noticed
is that this office 2008 (i don't know about the previous one) has been developed by people who come from microsoft and have learnt the joys of mac and not the other way around.
there are a bunch of so many little things that are not mac, if you know what i mean. one of them that i just noticed is that you can't scroll the window if it's inactive. but it's such a comfortable feature! ..
Gave up on Entourage
Mar 19, 2008
8:42pm
Finally convinced me to ditch Entourage completely
Waited a long time for Intel-native Entourage. I've heard it's actually just as slow, or slower than 2004. But, the deal-breaker that kept me from even installing it: incompatibility with my Palm Treo 650. I already use Missing Sync, but even with that, I understand that I can't sync between Entourage 2008 and Palm and preserve categories, which I absolutely need. So, I just spent several hours migrating from Entourage to Mail/iCal/Address Book and, after years of using Entourage, deleted it from my dock. So far so good with syncing to my Palm (except for some weirdness with notes/memos), so we'll see. I'm just glad I bought Office 2008 through the great Black Friday deal: only about $25.
Jonas de Freitas
Mar 20, 2008
9:56pm
Are you for real?
I really feel that the software I just paid money for must be the spawn of satan, especially word which is so incredibly instable it's impossible to even write a short report on it.
The last few minutes while I was trying to do just that it crashed 5 times in as 10 minutes!
This is not a finished product, and I would very much like a refund.
/ Very dissapointed customer
Gerry
Mar 24, 2008
2:14pm
What's the point of watching, when you've removed the functions I use
I cannot believe that you have decided to _remove_ the ability to run Solver in Excel 2008. i.e. VBA support
This is utterly staggering!
I just spent £350 on Office 2008 and it is _less_ functional than Office 2004. How can you possibly think this is acceptable. Upgrades should give you more functionality than before.
Your product management team have done a very poor job on this. To be frank, what's the point of adding "pretty buttons" into Excel at the expense of core functionality. People who use Excel, use it because they need to automate calculations. That has to be considered as more important than the cosmetic changes that have been applied to 2008.
I am totally gob smacked.
p.s. having a check box that says "I understand that I will not be contacted in response to my feedback" is EXACTLY the same as saying, I don't care what my customers think, I am going to ignore their suggestions and only give them a feedback form because it allows us to filter them directly into the Trash can.
You don't even promise that you will read them
Tom
Mar 24, 2008
2:14pm
A trial could have made the difference
When I heard that Office 2008 was coming out, I watched the videos and eagerly awaited the debut. Then it happened... it debuted without a trial. I kinda get this vision of PC on the Mac commercials telling me; "It's better and you can't live without it, trust me." My response? I bought iWork (which had a trial) and removed every trace of Office 2004 from both of our Macs. I don't like the thought of spending that kind of money on a program I can't try first.
Steve
Mar 24, 2008
2:14pm
and now . . . the good!!
WOW - Surely I cannot be the only one who think that office 2008 is AWESOME! One my desk in the office i have a Vista machine with 2007 and my mac with 2008. So far, i have NO complaints about 2008 (with one program bug that i am submitting today). For those who are worried about product . . . GET IT! Enough said!
Stephane Gasparini
Mar 25, 2008
9:02pm
Office 2008 - not compatible with Office PC - exchange support not better
Office 2008 looks to me like Word 6 was.
Microsoft need to make a MAJOR upgrade and deliver OUTLOOK on OS X and make excuse like for Word 6 advertisement.
Powerpoint incompatibility with its windows counterpoint still solid and somewhat stupid (present since the 1st version of Office for OS X).
Embedded objet in a powerpoint (another powerpoint, a PDF, etc) will end-up with "cannot connect to server application xxxx !" As on Office 2004, Office X, this is often used in enterprise.
Word, same as PowerPoint for embedded Document.
Excel, cannot handle some pivot table coming from Windows counterpart!
You cannot anymore set a transparency for comment in excel sheet with Office 2008. It was doable in Office 2004 by selecting the comment (not in text mode) and using contextual menu. I can’t find a way to do it in 2008 version, however it is supported and if you have an old excel sheet with those setting on some comment you can even copy the style with the copy format button and paste it.
Entourage:
2 minor improvements.
1) Configuration is automatic and exchange server is found by Entourage alone, no need of manual configuration, jus need to say exchange account and to ender domain ID en password.
Prior to that the conifguration was manual for me.
2) At last we can do a reply, reply all to a calendar event !
But Don’t expect to book a room, meeting room resource are not managed !
Don’t expect to manage the mandatory and optional attendees !
Don’t expect to be able to propose another time in response to an invitation !
Don’t expect to decode correctly all the emails, the one coming from Mail.app or mailing list. Signatures of mailing list will ends-up in AT.....htm attachment and are not rendered ( as bas as Entourage 2004).
Don't expect table and some other special formating to be handled correctly when forwarding or replying messages (as bad as entourage 2004) whiel any other email application will handle it smoothly.
Still not support several languages ! Yes I’m French and I like to have my Professional account in English and my personal one in French.
So beside the Intel compatibility, this version as almost nothing to offer in my view.
And even Intel compatibility is not a gain in fact. Honestly, my application are not starting faster even slower I would say, I don't see any improvement in speed.
What is the worst, is that 7 years after the first version of Office for OS X we are still with big incompatibility with Office for Windows and not OUTLOOK that entourage can definitively not replace.
And we lost Visual Basic, so the compatibility with Office for Windows is even lower.
OLE are not there, it was on Mac OS previous to OS X release......
I tend to have the opinion that Microsoft can achieve full compatibility with Windows product and if Microsoft don't, it is for business reason.
Bubbipaula
Mar 25, 2008
9:02pm
Can't schedule recurring appointments in Entourage 2008
I can't seem to be able to schedule recurring appointments anymore. Is anyone else having this problem?
Cathalifaud
Mar 25, 2008
9:02pm
After updating to 12.0.1 ...
... things went downhill for Entourage 2008: As soon as the program is on the foreground, the CPU usage for the app. goes up and hovers between 92 and 95%; Real Memory usage is about 150MB and the hard-drive is constantly at work (first, I thought it was Spotlight doing its thing but it was Entourage doing who-knows-what). Interestingly, this hyper activity stops if I scroll down the email list or pull down a menu. On top of that, the communication between Entourage and the Exchange server is as efficient as one between two mortal enemies ... In short, I moved back to Entourage 2004 (CPU usage is a consistent 15% max and Real Memory usage is about 50MB).
I have read several of the commentaries by users in this Blog, and it is clear that many of them are very disappointed and worse. It is also clear that there are still more than "just a few, cosmetic" bugs to solve and that the release of this app. was premature by several months.
Then there is the notes on the release of the latest update: "Stability is improved", "Reliability is improved", etc. Who wrote that? The gurus in Legal and Marketing? How about "Stability and Reliability perfected"?. After all, you are selling this thing as a finished product, not a Beta ... or are you?
Perhaps the Entourage team is trying too hard to do what MS always does (poorly), copy the Mac and its apps. How about doing something unique and original, something that works well?
Victor Caballero
Mar 28, 2008
8:43pm
Word 98 Documents with type creator
Not sure if this is the right place, but I am having troubles opening some documents which appear to be Mac OS 9 Word 98 documents. Is there an faq for this?
Talal
Mar 28, 2008
8:43pm
Features and Performance
While I appreciate that MacBU has put a lot of effort into Office 2008, and it’s great that you’re looking for ways to better meet users’ needs by collecting usage data, but amount of missing features when compared to Office for Windows and the numerous performance issues cannot be overlooked.
There has been a lot of complaints in regards to performance. I think I can agree, and I'm shocked that Office 2008 is simply unusable on my 1.33GHz iBook G4 with 1.5GB of RAM running Leopard, which should be a perfectly capable machine for creating Office documents. For instance, typing a simple document in Word is a painful experience, as there's a significant lag between my keystrokes and letters appearing on the screen. Seriously, how can this be?
Missing features. Where can I start? A lot of people have mentioned bad Exchange support, and the lack of VBA. I personally don't use these features, but they're clearly important in many peoples' daily workflows. As for me, the most glaring missing feature is bi-directional text support. This particular feature has been built-in into Office for Windows since 2002, and even before that in the specially localized versions of Office. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for a feature that has been already implemented in the Office Drawing Engine back in 2002 to be included in Office 2008, something that should have been included in Office 2004.
Last, but not least, the embarrassment that is Messenger for Mac. I know a completely new version is being worked on at the moment and I can't wait to try it out, but it's has been more than 2 years since the last major update to Messenger. Version 6 doesn’t count as a major update. In these same 2 years, Apple came up with Leopard, a major update to an operating system. Please, it's not too much to ask to update Messenger for Mac to atleast the same level as MSN Messenger 7.5 on Windows, which incidentally was released less than 2 weeks after the last "real" major update to Messenger for Mac.
I’m currently typing this using Office 2007 for Windows on a 3-year old PC, and it’s a pleasure to use. Why can’t Office for Mac be atleast on the same level? I think most of us here can agree than Mac OS X is a superior platform to Windows.
I look forward to a better Office for Mac!
DaveChristie
Mar 28, 2008
8:43pm
One Question - PowerPoint
I use Office for MAC mainly for PowerPoint as it works a zillion times better than PowerPoint for Windows, especially in projector support.
Anyway, my one question, Does PowerPoint 2008 properly open up (and support) powerpoint documents created in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows? This has been my biggest pain with 2004, I get PowerPoints sent to me from people using 2007 (Saving as 2003) and yet, 2004 will not properly handle all the formats, I have to go back and fix things, like text boxes becoming pictures and not annimating correctly. So, will 2008 support PPTx files?
Thanks for the help...
Not a happy user of Entourage 2008
Mar 28, 2008
8:55pm
i opted out
If you want me to be part of your Market Research, how about paying me to be part of the research. Supply the software for free, and you can watch me all you want.
As for what you will see today:
Incredibly slow on all apps on a high end G5 PPC machine. Why?
Switching between calendar and mail view takes over 30 seconds. Why?
Word is cool, nice job there.
WHERE THE (*&(*&()* is Palm sync? Not all of us want that POS Windows Mobile on our handhelds. Or maybe, as Mac people, we are using iPhones?
I agree, bring back VBA
Seriously, I am SOOO sorry I moved from 2004 to 2008 Entourage. It is slower, adds NO new functionality that I can find, but removes Palm Sync.
I am curious, just what are you watching for? TO decided if this is the last update because we will all start migrating to Apple's apps?
After 4 years, this is not what I would have expected.
Ben Madin
Mar 31, 2008
10:18am
Endnote Compatibility
I have been involved in other Customer Experience programs, so well done for taking the leap. I haven't yet upgraded, as I am writing(or supposed to be!) my thesis, and I really need endnote support. I don't know if there is anything you guys can do to speed this up (or help the makers of endnote do it)
cheers
Ben
Mielke?
Apr 02, 2008
5:15pm
Do you know who Erich Mielke is?
Now, that is real satire: This post was "Posted by: Nadyne Mielke". And this post is about spying out users.
Do you know that Erich Mielke was the one who was responsible for building up the surveyance net in the old communist GDR?
I guess this speaks for itself. Microsoft is spying out users and the blog is posted by Mrs. Mielke. I hope she's no relative to Erich Mielke?
Uncle Louie
Apr 02, 2008
5:15pm
Not Going to Bash But...
I'll throw in my two cents here: I don't think Office 2008 is all that bad really. I really like the improvements to Word especially. Anyone who argues that Microsoft just "copied" Apple on this is being ridiculous. Apple has, especially in Leopard, the goal of a specific "unified" look. When Microsoft didn't follow that, they were criticized, now when they do follow it, they are criticized. I think he new interface is great.
Entourage is the biggest stumbling block in terms of applications. I do see a distinct irony in that Apple's iPhone is going to natively support Exchange before Entourage, Microsoft's own product. That, combined with the lack of Time Machine support and lack of tools that Outlook 2007 has really takes Entourage down in terms of a quality app.
VBA support is also something that I know many in the business world will decry and it should be put back.
Office needs to move to a complete Cocoa base. Carbon is going away, and there is little benefit in programming in it anymore. It will make Office faster and smoother on a Mac.
Lastly, here are some suggestions for improvements to future versions of Office: 1) Built-in native ODF support. It is great that OOXML is now standard, but so is ODF and the ability to interoperate is going to play a big role in determining the best Office Suite. 2) OneNote. This is perhaps, in my view, one of the GREATEST applications in the Office Suite. It's flexibility and integration is phenomenal. Students and business people alike would LOVE to have this app. 3) Groove for Mac. If there was ever a need for both integration into the workplace combined with the ability to sync files across multiple computers, this is one of the best apps for it.
Diganta
Apr 04, 2008
1:53pm
No VBA or Macro support!
I'm highly disappointed that Microsoft is unwilling to put in Macro and VBA support into Office 2008. In fact many users are choosing not to upgrade to Office 2008 for this reason. If Microsoft doesn't want to have the maximum sales on the Macintosh platform then this is the way to do it.
I'm cautioning users that if they use macros to consider the possibilities. Some of them are opting for NeoOffice or Open Office. If a group of free software developers can make XML and macro compatibility then I would hope 200+ Macintosh developers working for Microsoft could easily do the same. Disappointing Mac BU team.
Prasm
Apr 06, 2008
10:03pm
We are waiting
If you watch me using Word you will see the sign: "The custom dictionary danska.doc is not available" popping up 10-20 times a day. Please hurry up with a fix for that problem — and that all shortcuts with Command use US-keyboard and not the national.
Both are idiotic and annoying bugs that are easily fixed.
Robert
Apr 06, 2008
10:08pm
Duplicate Contacts being created upon synching
I know you guys have seen this issue in many forums around the web. Please please please fix this... I end up with 3 or more duplicates for every contact every time I synch. I use this for business so it is a very big issue. Somebody told me about a March patch coming up but not sure what it covers.. if that does not do it I am going to have to rollback to 2004. sign
Alexis Fernandez
Apr 09, 2008
3:06pm
Re: we are watching you
If you are watching this blog, then please give us MS Access for Mac!
Office for Mac has been a major let down because of it. People who sometimes work from home are not able to, because there is no software available.
YAZ
Apr 09, 2008
3:08pm
Not using it
Sorry, as a translator, I NEED to be able to install Wordfast. Guess what? It relies on VBA. Conclusion: not buying 2008…
OK, you had to ship it, but at SUCH an expense? It's like shooting in your own foot!
Michael
Apr 13, 2008
10:16am
BIdi support
I have tested the MS Office 2008 on Leopard and noticed something weird : The Hebrew (It's a BIDI language) letters are correctly represented but the order of the words in a sentence is reversed. After looking a little bit on the web I understood that the same behavior is there since Office 2004...
It tells me that MS doesn't care to fix that at all... Am I right ?
sparkstertom...mac newbie
Apr 13, 2008
10:16am
I'm actually impressed...
As a staunch windows user for many years, I came to rely on office for all of my day to day tasks... I made the switch a couple of months ago and decided to opt for neo office... Although a great use of open source software, its feels bloated and slow..
I'm on a mbp with 4gb ram and it flies... even on t'other half's macbook with 512 it runs well..
I'm impressed... but I see from many users above that this is not much of an upgrade. WIll watch this blog with interest!
Jessica Marie
Apr 13, 2008
10:16am
i never was asked about CEIP
Gr8Scott
Apr 14, 2008
1:39pm
Why No Demo for Office 2008?
I am 1 of those who will pretty much wait for either a demo to see for my self a quite a while longer before taking the plunge. Until then Office 2004 continues to serve my needs, but I would LOVE to support the Mac Business Unit as they have continue to support the Mac Community. But me something to at least consider guys. Thanks.
britt stromberg
Apr 18, 2008
12:34pm
are you watching how frustrated i am?
I just upgraded from Word 2004 and that was the biggest computing mistake I've made.
It's crucial for me to swap files with clients on Windows OS. I've never had problems with them being able to open files. Now I cannot send any .doc files and have them open properly. I have to send PDFs. Believe me, I've read all the forums and tried all of the little tricks. Nothing works.
This is a nightmare for me. This is a basic competency that I expect from Word. I've wasted hours of my time to solve this problem and it's still not working. I want to remove Office 2008 and reinstall 2004. Arggh!
Joe the Bug
Apr 21, 2008
12:04pm
a few improvements but...
Ok, so the "smart" object are a major improvement for anyone needing that sort of thing, however there's not much more apparent improvement over 2004. In fact, having to re-do the whole normal template and re-make all my custom toolbars was a real step backward.
Entourage is still terribly un-integrated with MacOS.
How long do we have to wait till Entourage syncs calendar categories with individual calendars in iCal? Same for Address Book? How 'bout syncing Entourage with things like google and Plaxo. People have been shouting about this since sync services was introduced and still nothing.
Emily
Apr 21, 2008
12:04pm
MSN
can anyone get their cam to work on msn or do we have to use skype? pls let me know if anyone knows how to. i am using the most updated msn of 6.03 so ur help much appreciated!
Ted Stout
Apr 21, 2008
9:35pm
Re: we are watching you
I am a school teacher. I love the new version of Office! I don't want to minimise the effect of the loss of VBL for certain professionals at all. I don't need it or use it, so this does not affect me.
The new version is much faster than Office 2004 on my MacBook.
Ted
richinnorthampton
Apr 23, 2008
3:15pm
Automatic Date
I cannot get Word to accept the correct automatic date. Its always yesterday. Checked every known place where the date can be checked. Anyone with a similar issue, or know how to fix it?
Brownie
Apr 24, 2008
12:51pm
WHY CAN'T I DO ANYTHING WITH EXCEL???????????
I have looked everywhere and i can't find a the Data analysis button or option anywhere in office 2008. In 2004 it was neatly placed in the menu bar. WHERE IS IT NOW?????? Office 2008 looks cool, but it doesn't do anything i need.
carol shep
Apr 24, 2008
12:51pm
Entourage 'forward' with attachment
re Entourage--on my new MacBookPro, I cannot find a preference for 'always include attachment' and attachments are automatically not included with forwarded messages--that preference was on my G4 I'm sure--am I missing something?
wooster
Apr 28, 2008
9:22pm
Speed, speed, VBA and Entourage / Exchange
- Please make Office 2008 apps lunch faster... As others put it - Adobe Photoshop CS 3 is faster than Word, Excel or Entourage on my MBP to.
- VBA, Not used by me personally but by many customers of mine
- The ability to sync Tasks and Nnotes with Exchange
We pay premium for Exchange support in Office 2008 and therefore we should get FULL Exchange support!!!
Emily
Apr 29, 2008
9:39pm
what
im confused.....
Want my guides back!
May 08, 2008
11:46pm
Anyone having trouble with guides in PowerPoint?
I've installed Office 2008 for Mac on my, you guessed it, Mac OSX Leopard. I also have a copy at work and both do NOT let me duplicate guides as I used to on ALL THE OTHER VERSIONS! Don't get me wrong, Dynamic Guides are all fine and dandy, but this doesn't help me from slide to slide. Is there a bug? A fix in the works? Can anyone help?
innuendo.
May 12, 2008
10:32pm
meSSENGER 7 MAC
really? 7?....i think 6.0.4!!!
MacDan2004
May 13, 2008
11:44am
Disagree on Comments about Entourage
Someone said, "Entourage is a poor man's Outlook. Another news flash guys, the Macintosh is fast gaining market share, even in corporations. We need solid Exchange support, and not just with 2007! Give us Outlook, for goodness sake!"
I disagree! Entourage 2008 is FAR superior to Outlook as a Mail/Calendar/ToDo/Project managing client. Outlook is old garbage. Yes, we want Exchange support on par with Outlook but the client functions and tools and interface of Entourage is better and more up-to-date than Outlook. Outlook 2007 feels like Microsoft Mail of 1994!
The Entourage team is doing great - just give it the FULL Exchange support Outlook enjoys - that's ALL it's missing.
Joby Kent
May 29, 2008
9:08pm
HOW COME MICROSOFT MAKES BETTER APS FOR MAC OS X THAN THEY DO FOR WINDOWS?
HOW COME MICROSOFT MAKES BETTER APS FOR MAC OS X THAN THEY DO FOR WINDOWS? They all run better? They're all easier, faster and more responsive. Is that just Windows or does my mac like Microsoft more than Microsoft likes Windows?
Steve
May 29, 2008
9:08pm
Office 2008, and why I'm not a fan.
Alright, let me start out by saying that I /do/ appreciate the valiant attempt at bringing over MS Office to the Mac. I also appreciate that if anything, I can edit Office files and send them to co-workers on my Macbook and they can see them the way I had intended.
The first thing I don't like, which is my biggest complain, is Entourage. Give us Outlook, or at least make Entourage comparable to Outlook. We need Exchange support that WORKS. We need RPC over HTTP support that WORKS, and is as easy to set up as it is on Windows computers.
The second thing I don't like is how non-intuitive the system is. Word, Excel, all the programs are great on Windows. Why? Because you made them easy to use. It's one giant window with all of the tools at the top. For Mac, it's a window, with separate toolbar windows that run down the side.
Step one: Use Cocoa. Stop supporting the older Macs with the next version of Office, or at least make separate installers. This will allow you to integrate much more nicely with the OS.
Step two: Make all of the programs look and act as they do on Windows. For one, people that have to use both Mac and Windows will appreciate everything being uniform, and two, it just looks cleaner on Windows.
Step three: This one is similar to step two, but we desperately need Entourage to be completely overhauled. We need Exchange, we need synchronization with phones and whatnot.
One of my biggest upsets with my Mac right now is the fact that SmarterMail allows for synchronization between Outlook, Smartphones, etc. If Mac were using Outlook instead of Entourage, maybe I would've had a minimal shot of getting something to work for synchronization there. Instead, I must use the web-based mail client.
Again, I appreciate that Microsoft is thinking smart and porting their software over to Mac. I just hope they're smart enough to pick up their game for the next release (which is hopefully 2009...)
Steve Taylor
Systems Engineer
algorhythm
May 30, 2008
12:47pm
then why does no one answer posts???
I've posted three times here over the past couple of years. Each time I asked reasonable questions...the kind you'd expect experts in a forum to have at least a clue or suggestion for. Each time, I've been met with complete, deafening silence.
I'm not a noob...I'd be considered a power user. I phrase myself clearly, I provide details of the issue I'm asking about, and I neither rant nor ramble to excess.
So how can you folks claim you're listening, when you never respond to people's questions?
Greg
May 30, 2008
12:47pm
Word:Mac to Word:Win styles and fonts
Hoping to find some answers...I have a situation where I have used Word:Mac 2004 to make a document. I have several text boxes and several paragraph styles. When I open the doc in Word Windows the size of the fonts changes slightly and most of the styles are not recognized. By that I mean the text that was previously styled has defaulted to the "normal" style and the fonts (even though I have loaded them via the font control panel) are not recognized. I have relaunched and restarted, but no luck. One odd detail about the font recognition issue is that this particular family (Avenir, open type format) shows up in the font list, but only the thin, italic, roman and medium. The heavy and black don't even show.
Also, I opened and re-saved the doc in Word:mac 2008, just in case there was an improvement with the new version. By the way, this happens all the time, but I never know when or how it will happen - really a pain.
Vito
May 30, 2008
2:07pm
Fix The Broken Parts First
Truth be told, I'm mighty disinclined to shell out my hard-earned cash for Office 2008 eye candy if what's under the hood is still broken.
"Broken?", you say. Yes, broken. Two features in particular were badly broken in Word 2004:
1. Insert cross-references – Every insertion forces the dialog to rebuild the entire list. When you have a technical document that comprises hundreds of pages and thousands of cross-referencable items, it takes a long time to repopulate the interface every time I insert a link. It's a complete waste of time. Plus, the dialog window isn't resizable, so the user is forced to scroll through that tiny pane to find the desired item. Microsoft MVPs acknowledge the bug, but say it probably will never be fixed. Microsoft Support also (grudgingly) acknowledges it, but refuses to say whether it will ever be fixed. I invested the time to develop a workaround, but why should that be necessary? As far as I'm concerned, I've already paid for software that was supposed to work the first time. I'm not going to pay still more to get a dressed up version of the same old dysfunctionality.
2. Merge Documents – In Word 2004, the Merge Documents function works precisely backward from the way Word Help says it's supposed to work. Try it for yourself and see. In the Windows version, it works the way it's supposed to work. Clearly, Word 2004 for Mac has a major bug in the merge function.
Now, if Office 2008 had a "test drive" (as Office 2004 did), at least I'd be able to see whether the bugs have been fixed. If so, I would buy Office 2008 immediately, happily, and without a second thought. But given Microsoft's past recalcitrance to even acknowledge the bugs, let alone commit to fixing them, I'm not optimistic on that point. I'm certainly not going to buy a pig in a poke, untested, without knowing whether it's still the same bug-infested code, all prettied up for 2008.
tser
Jun 06, 2008
4:57pm
Cut and Paste
It's true! We paste a lot.. and the _most_ annoying feature is, that by default, your are pasting the FORMAT of the source as well .. so because in 99.9% of the cases I want to have it formated in the destination style.. I have to go through a painful Paste Special..
Couldn't that be reversed..somehow...
Dude
Jun 26, 2008
8:53pm
Word still broken
Installed the latest update 12.1.1 and itstill doesn't resolve the Word crash on launch issue.
Thomas Levine
Jun 30, 2008
9:25pm
Comparable MAC product to OneNotes 2007
I am a long time user of OneNotes on my PC before changing to a MAC. Is there a similar product and is there a product that will read my OneNotes files?
Teri S.
Jun 30, 2008
9:25pm
Resend
I just hate it when a software programmer eliminates a feature that was really helpful in previous versions.
2 such features:
1. Re-send an email that is in the sent folder.
Really helpful when the person(s) didn't get it in the
first place or it was sent thru the wrong account.
2. Error alerts were able to be group deleted. No longer.
Now you have to delete each one or close & reopen!
Dude
Jul 07, 2008
12:10pm
Word still broken
IS there any resolution ins sight to the Word crashing on launch issues?
Comments | Who's Blogging This
Eric
Feb 29, 2008
11:55am
Well...
Why don't you tell us why there's been such a delay in shipping the Black Friday upgrades? (I bought a second copy of Office 2004 to get in on the deal.)
What I was told is you anticipated 10,000 people would avail themselves of the deal, but 50,000 of us did and we overwhelmed the duplicator for the "cheap people who want it for nearly free" crowd.
mr.saint
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
From Korea
It is about poor text encoding. When I type in Korean with PowerPoint 2008, Korean letters are shown broken. if I type "마이크로소프트", meaning "Microsoft", then PowerPoint shows "망잌클롯솦픝트". This mispresentation is shown only in PowerPoint.
If you are watching over me, then, please fix this error. Otherwise, I cannot help but using Apple Keynote.
Further to that, In the process of installation, Office is not installed when mac's language configuration is set to Korean. So I have to set English above Korean.
Dr.Braida
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
International Remote Desktop Version
JR1051
Mar 06, 2008
3:16pm
Whatever.....
No synching to Palms....
Late delivery.....
Sure feels like an intentional push to Windows. Would that be XP or Vista? And which version, home, pro, or what?
Shaftz650
Mar 06, 2008
3:16pm
Quicktime compressor errors??
We primarily use Office to process data we receive in Excel from PC users in our company for insertion into client presentations. The received data is formatted into graphs & pie charts using Excel and then the chart or graph is copied and pasted into Freehand MX as a vector graphic to be reformatted into corporate colours and styles.
This is having quite a serious effect on our work flow and I am seriously considering downgrading to Office 2004 again as it worked.
After the install of Office 2008 when we try to copy & paste from Excel we receive a “Quicktime compressor” error. All the MAC’s are running the latest software and are all up to date with the latest software updates.
Is there a download that can fix this? Bearing in mind that the chart or graph must remain as a fully editable vector graphic (SVG) image so it can be edited in Freehand or Illustrator. I have tried going through Photoshop but the result are really poor quality low res bitmaps. I have also tried printing the Excel spreadsheet to a PDF but any graphs or pie charts that appear are “Sliced up” or un-editable in Illustrator.
Stuart Reynolds
Mar 28, 2008
8:55pm
Entourage and MS Project
2. If you really want to "improve" the Office for Mac suite, add MS PROJECT, PLEASE! As a PMP I "live" on MSP, and get tired of having to use Parallels Desktop.
So if you are, in fact, watching/listening to us, let's see if there's any answers.
nils
May 12, 2008
10:29pm
Excel pagebreak preview
How about quickly correcting the bonehead move that eliminated the pagebreak preview function from excel 2008? The faster the better. Not sure how anyone could've thought it was a wise move to get rid of that useful function!
justin
Feb 29, 2008
11:55am
not watching me
Judy
Feb 29, 2008
11:55am
Not able to sync my palm with Entourage 2008
Thank you.
Not listening
Feb 29, 2008
11:55am
Not listening
Sorry.
eponymous
Feb 29, 2008
11:55am
Re: we are watching you
Mr. Stat
Feb 29, 2008
11:55am
I have enabled SEIP
You should have translated the statistical analysis tools to AppleScript for me... *sigh*
Adrian Bool
Feb 29, 2008
11:55am
Microsoft Office accepting connections..?
brett_x
Feb 29, 2008
11:55am
You're watching?
Honestly, it's getting tougher to justify spending the money on a product like Entourage when we could have just a few more issues by using the built-in Mail with it's Exchange support.
macmanc
Feb 29, 2008
11:55am
Some of us would just like to use it...
Daiya
Feb 29, 2008
11:55am
good post
Marco Polo
Feb 29, 2008
11:55am
You know what I wish you'd watch...
I hate to break it to you, but many of us aren't buying 2008. Why do you ask?
Let me tell you...
You haven't provided a demo, as you did with 2004. This leaves users unsure if they want to upgrade because they don't know if it will run well on their current setups.
You took away VBA(take note, this will become the rallying cry of the anti-Office 2008 movement of two-thousand and eight)! Hey guys, look, we need VBA. That leaves us with a couple of options. First, we can stick with 2004 and NOT buy your new product, or second, we can buy 2007 and run it on parallels. Hint. Hint. Give it back!
It doesn't really run much faster as a universal application! Not the way it's supposed to anyway. Why are you guys still using Carbon? Let's go Cocoa!
Entourage is a poor man's Outlook. Another news flash guys, the Macintosh is fast gaining market share, even in corporations. We need solid Exchange support, and not just with 2007! Give us Outlook, for goodness sake!
To be honest, 2004 is probably the best we're going to get. It looks like you guys did a GUI makeover for 2008, and that's about it.
Do me a favor, just one: respond to my angst-ridden post. Let us know what you intended to do about these problems. If the answer is nothing, fine! We just won't buy your product, and I'll probably continue to poke daily fun at the Mac BU team. If the answer is... something, well, that's a start.
So, what's it going to be?
Nadyne Richmond
Feb 29, 2008
1:01pm
Re: we are watching you
@Marco Polo: As my boss posted a few days ago (the 'Office 2008 update' post - I'd link, but I don't think HTML works in the comments), we're working on the 12.0.1 update (due on 11 March) as well as the file format converters (coming in June), so the demo isn't quite ready for prime time yet.
We've made continuous improvements to our Exchange support in Entourage. Remember Office 2004 SP2: we added more Exchange support in that release. We know that we have gaps, and we're working to get them into the app in priority order. Don't forget - we're also Entourage users in an Exchange environment, so our knowledge of our gaps is not just academic.
@Judy - One of our goals is to be a good Mac citizen. We support OS technologies that benefit our users. We added support for OS X Sync Services in Office 2004 SP2. (We added support via a service pack because Sync Services was introduced in Tiger, after the release of Office 2004.) In Office 2008, we shifted our focus to improving our Sync Services support because it's much more efficient for us to support OS X Sync Services (which supports LOTS of devices) instead of having to create our own syncing method for each mobile device that's out there. If you find that Sync Services doesn't meet your needs, you can submit feedback to Apple that you'd like them to improve it so that you can seamlessly sync all of your data.
Simon
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
Have you seen that Autofilter has a bug?
Have you seen that Office doesn't play nice with Spaces?
RG
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
Faster Universal Code..?
The new XML file formats, well yes they are faster than 2004, but overall, performance is terrible ! stability Terrible...just hope you guys are not getting the same sickness that plagues VISTA..bloaded software with useless functionality.
2008 DOES NOT offer any improvements worth moving from 2004, it just looks nicer but other than that it looks as if is just a make up of interface.
sorry guys, waste of years and typical microsoft NOT LISTENING to user needs
Tom
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
Run your headlines past your PR department, if you have one.
RO
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
Re: we are watching you
asdf
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
Re: we are watching you
James Calhoun
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
Calendar
When applying a new event evef it is a to do or task I would like to have the option for it to show up on a calendar event, and when plugging in my I phone it will down load all my calendar events even if it is a task or a to do list.
What I would do is plug in my nid invitations on my to do list this way when going to a GC location I can pull up my list. right now I have to schedule a meeting type for it to show up on my I phone. it would be nice to all calendar events like the over view option to show up on my phone. right now you only have like meetings that will show up and if I put in a reminder from my email it does not show up on my calendar only my Day.
Sanjeev
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
Where is my upgrade?
Watching?
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
Watching?
Nixon Haus
Mar 03, 2008
11:31am
2008 OFFICE...really
Nadyne Richmond
Mar 03, 2008
12:21pm
Re: we are watching you
@James - We've built a script into Entourage that might help you. Click on the script menu (it's the graphic in your menu bar), then select 'Create New Event from Message'. The New Message dialog will appear, with most of the details already filled in. You can then select the time and duration so that it will show up on your calendar.
@Watching? - We're not collecting any data that is traceable. We're strictly collecting data about your usage (such as what you're clicking on). I don't even see what countries are represented in the data, let alone anything narrower than that.
Juan
Mar 03, 2008
4:02pm
So then...
Is it THAT hard for Microsoft to release a decent Messenger client?
C´mon, Nadine... Apple (which is significantly smaller than MS) released two major OS versions in the same time Microsoft even didn´t got one small app...
anonymous and afraid of the NSA
Mar 03, 2008
4:02pm
Office 2008 support?
Jeremy
Mar 03, 2008
4:02pm
Not to throw another stone, but...
WHEN OH WHEN WILL YOU ADD ONENOTE FOR MAC?! Thank God for VMware Fusion.
RE: other comments on this post so far...I was considering upgrading to 2008, but man, all but 1 comment was negative! WTH(eck)? I guess I'll wait.
On the sunny side, thanks for watching or listening or whatever.
Tim
Mar 03, 2008
4:02pm
Exchange
You had a perfectly good working version of Outlook for Mac (2001) and then unleashed the beast that is Entourage to us Mac users. Why would Microsoft spend the resources on creating a new email client for Mac users when they could have just updated Outlook?
I keep reading that you're Mac users in an Exchange environment. While this is true due to the fact of where you work, I don't believe you're really trying to give full Exchange support to us Mac users. Thankfully, a copy of Fusion and Office 2003 works perfect for us Intel Mac users. I wish I didn't have to resort to that but after reading the blog for Office 2008 and hardly any mention of Entourage and the changes/features you've worked on, I realized what a joke it is to anticipate the new Office release.
John
Mar 03, 2008
4:02pm
Office 2008 & Math Symbols
Scott
Mar 03, 2008
4:02pm
What's up with slideshows??
So, I read the help section. And it basically says not to use the new graphics features. Well, why on earth are they there?
I'm running on a 2GB MacBook Pro with a 2Ghz+ processor. Even Photoshop CS2 (non native) feels snappy compared to running a PowerPoint slideshow.
I'm hoping y'all are going to pop out an early patch to clean this up. Hard to imagine how QA missed this, and if they caught it, how program management chose to ship.
Michael
Mar 03, 2008
4:02pm
Re: we are watching you
Marco Polo
Mar 03, 2008
4:02pm
Thanks... Nadyne...
VBA?
CK
Mar 03, 2008
4:02pm
Refund
Fire you marketing department
Mar 04, 2008
11:17pm
Watch me not buy the grossly overpriced Canadian edition
Give me a fair market value price based on the US pricing and I'll buy it, otherwise collect data on my not purchasing your product.
Jane Watson
Mar 04, 2008
11:17pm
Re: we are watching you
Warren Buffet
Mar 04, 2008
11:17pm
Completely agree with Marco Polo's first post!!!
Why did you take away VBA??? This is THE reason that Microsoft Office trounces iWork, NeoOffice, Openoffice, etc. Please add VBA back ASAP!!!.
Some of us are starting to look elsewhere now that so many things have been left out of Excel (VBA, Analysis Tool Pack, Solver, etc). Numbers is starting to look appealing for simple spreadsheet work. Openoffice are working on getting VBA interoperability. Obviously they realize how important VBA is. Why can't the MACBU team???
Having FULL compatibility with the Windows version of Office was the trump card for many of us who use your Mac products. I really hope this is not a sign of Microsoft beginning to abandon the Mac platform.
Rowin
Mar 04, 2008
11:17pm
Cross-language upgrade?
eponymous
Mar 04, 2008
11:17pm
Re: we are watching you
hortonwho
Mar 04, 2008
11:17pm
AAAIIGHHHH!
I VEHEMENTLY regret purchasing 2008 for Mac and 2007 for PC, yes we're bi-platform here. As a graphic designer production speed it key (I'm not talking processing speed). Anything that adds additional clicks takes than it did before means I can produce less and make less money. That's a problem.
The zoom function went from inconvenient to horribly inconvenient--huge time waster. Why in the world would the zoom always go to the upper-left corner? If there's a work around, then why isn't it in the help documentation?
If there's a Grid and Guides dialog box to help with that, then I sure can't find it. Grid functions seem to have changed, but I can't find answers.
Borders going on the outside of the object edge instead of the center of the edge makes for very challenging alignment. Especially when snap-to snaps the object and not the border edge.
Default attributes of objects should be plain. As it is I have to change the color, line, and shadow on every one, every time. The pick up and apply style tools don't work right now and the format painter can't hold a style past one click. Huge time waster. I should be able to set defaults, If I can, I can't find any information on this in the help documentation.
Things that are simple, should stay simple. One click should not become two (or more).
AND NOW I FIND OUT there are no plans for a viewer? So how functional it that? I feel like I've been snookered. From "the buzz" I expected PC 2007 & Mac 2008 to be more universal and completely compatible.
I've worked in every major graphics package since their first versions. Consistently Powerpoint is the only package that I have to wrestle to the ground to make it do what I want it to do. If only you hadn't taken over the world.
Doug
Mar 04, 2008
11:17pm
Just turned CEIP on
PHL
Mar 04, 2008
11:17pm
Entourage 2008 is not up to snuff yet
Please fix this in the next update!!!
Nadyne Richmond
Mar 05, 2008
12:32pm
Re: we are watching you
@Marco Polo - We've talked about VBA in the past. Schwieb, one of our devs, wrote a great post to his blog about the technical issues inherent in it, and a websearch for 'schwieb vba' will turn it up.
@anonymous - I'm not quite sure what you mean by "cannot set her default normal style and template". I've been playing with this to try to get an understanding, but haven't gotten there yet. Can you post the steps that you've tried and what you're trying to accomplish?
holmess001
Mar 05, 2008
1:31pm
Well I like it...
One caveat/heads up for the team: after a few weeks of blissful Entourage 2008 usage, I suddenly could not connect to the Exchange 2007 server. Nothing seemed to fix it until I installed the recently-released Rollup 1 to Exchange 2007 SP1 on the server. Microsoft tech support tells me it fixes lots of DAV problems. Anyway, the minute I installed it, Entourage connected and I've been a happy camper ever since.
Bottom line, I think Office 2008 is a good effort. Thanks.
Karl
Mar 05, 2008
1:31pm
VBA? Analysis Tool Pack?
Kenneth W. Collins
Mar 05, 2008
1:31pm
Office 2008 is slow and kludgy
I also have an 800 page document with only four styles and simple paragarphs, no pictures and n embedded anything. I noticed that saving it as DOCX takes twice as long as saving it as DOC. This is odd because DOCX is nominally the default format. It looks more like Office 2004 with some ee candy and DOCX tacked on. It's faster and easier to use NeoOffice as a file converter.
THANK GOD you did not introduce that ribbon, button, bow, hairpin, barrette interface from 2007. 2007 does not give expert users record to the menus, but there are third party solutions that restore them.
The UI looks a bit scatterbrained, but things are much easier to find than in Office 2007.
Bottom line, I think that 2008 is warmed over 2004. The best days of Microsoft Word are clearly behind us. You've been adding new features without perfecting the old ones and you have not been testing with real writers.
After seeing what you did to Windows Visa, Office 2007, Office 2007, money, and many other things, I have gradually moved to Mac. Make quality products that make me wat to go back..
rja
Mar 05, 2008
1:31pm
NO Solver, NO Data Analysis Tools Add-ins
rja
Mimk Pipfel
Mar 06, 2008
3:16pm
Re: we are watching you
Please restore the Excel Page Break Preview feature or we will go back to version 2004 because adjusting page breaks by adding them is not the same as what was there before and that was infinitely more useful. Also, don't like the floating formula bar. Not an improvement.
yoshi
Mar 06, 2008
3:16pm
No, you don't
Thanks,
MACKCO
Mar 06, 2008
3:16pm
Re: we are watching you
Robert Bayha
Mar 06, 2008
3:16pm
Why Bother - 2008 Can't Run VBA
DO NOT buy Office 2008 if you use and-or need files that contain VBA programming!!!
Marco Polo
Mar 06, 2008
3:16pm
Listen to your Customers
I thought I would weigh in on your responses to my posts, and perhaps add a few other considerations. I sincerely hope you forward our correspondence to Geoff Price, and make him aware of the growing contingent of irate users banding together in their continued support for Office 2004 against 2008.
Regarding VBA, I understand the technical difficulties in porting VBA, but I suggest you take another look at the article you sent me. Erik Schwiebert admits that, while difficult, the process is not impossible. Two years he says. That's two years worth waiting for. AppleScript is not enough to replace the macros in Excel or Word. As much as I like AppleScript, it doesn't even come close to VBA for Office applications.
But, VBA is but ONE of MANY problems we have with 2008! Take the lesser problems, like the lack of notification sounds in Entourage, every file being an executable, and the installation permissions UID errors, for example. These errors irk us, make us complain, but they don't prevent us from buying your product outright. Maybe, at worst, we will hold off until you fix these glaringly obvious errors.
But that's not all. Add in the LACK of functionality in 2008. Now, we cannot use our VBA macros upon which we depend to do our job, or to continue to use Macs in our workplace. We don't have the Solver and Data Analysis Toolpack. Now, we're more than slightly annoyed: we're angry. These are real problems that turn us off from buying your product, which means real problems for you guys.
Add the fact that we still--STILL--do not have a functional Outlook replacement for Mac Office. I'm serious when I say I cannot even begin to understand why Entourage still exists.
Look, I use Macs, but I WANT Office to be a better product; however, when you spend four years to deliver a buggy, functionality-lacking program that is slow, I refuse to buy it.
Also, no one wanted "My Day". Not a single person I know would bother to use that pesky, useless widget. How many hours wasted on "My Day" would have gotten us that much closer to VBA, or Outlook on the Mac, or full (not good, or pretty OK) Exchange support, or a faster suite, or a correct installer, or notification sounds, or a demo. Where were your priorities in designing this software? You had four years--no one wanted "My Day" or a more Mac GUI instead of functionality, security, and speed. No one.
Four years.
I mean, we're not asking that you suddenly port over Access to the Mac. We're just asking for the functionality we need to do our jobs. The Office you delivered to us in 2008 is an insult.
Thanks for responding. Keep it up, and please get Geoff Price involved. Let him know we want to hear from him directly.
Davebert22
Mar 06, 2008
3:16pm
Perhaps you should be watching the Windows team
Perhaps you should spend more time looking at what they have built rather than counting how many times I click paste.
We want to be able to move seamlessly between the two offerings not rethink everything we do to accommodate what you think we might do without.
Overall I'm very disappointed in this release, its slow and not at all feature complete.
Enterprise Mac User
Mar 07, 2008
2:18pm
MS Exchange
Wake up Mac BU, "if you snooze - you lose".
Joe B
Mar 07, 2008
2:18pm
One new feature I like...
Seriously this is a downgrade from previous versions. As someone who has read the blog space surrounding this product for over a year the biggest wants of users were a full feature parity client with Outlook be it Entourage or Outlook. Second was complete cross platform document support including all media types and scripting. Neither of which have been even close to being delivered.
As I posted in a previous blog post on the old site. Had MS had a skunk works project started in 2000 working on moving the code base to the Cocoa frameworks this version of office could have been near feature parity with Office 2008 and better be able to use the OS integrated services AND even support right to left languages. Very short sighted and as a result a very lack luster product.
macmansc
Mar 07, 2008
2:18pm
In the channel...
Gavin Sherlock
Mar 07, 2008
2:18pm
The irony
eponymous
Mar 07, 2008
2:18pm
Re: we are watching you
Tim
Mar 07, 2008
2:18pm
Entourage + Exchange
Dennis Cohen
Mar 07, 2008
2:18pm
Then all you're seeing from here are...
At least, I archived my copy of Office 2004 and was able to revert.
Jim Burroway
Mar 07, 2008
2:18pm
CHARTS! CHARTS! CHARTS!
Common! Lotus 1-2-3 had this figured out back in the 1980's! Elementary stuff like this is inexcusable. When will Excel become useful to even the more simple uses like mine?
me
Mar 10, 2008
12:38pm
Re: we are watching you
Jordan
Mar 10, 2008
12:38pm
data analysis tools
Vicariously Disappointed
Mar 10, 2008
12:38pm
We are watching You, too!
Personally, I depend on the Excel's Solver and a PC/Mac parity client with an Exchange server. I also use a lot of PowerPoint to design a lot of graphic material. Reading here of the many problems with these aspects of Office 2008, I'll be recommending not to convert at this time.
Another consideration for us is a fairly large installed base of PowerPC G3 equipment, that appears NOT to be within the system requirement range for Office 2008.
Rory Loeb
Mar 10, 2008
12:38pm
Entourage + Exchange 2008 = Oy Veh
Our creative group works in a corporate environment that uses Exchange Servers as their communications lifeline. The new Entourage is almost no improvement over the old one (with the exception of the calendar)! Add the ability to sync the damn task system and notes with Exchange servers for pete sake! Using Office 2007 + VMWare is ridiculous just for one app. If you guys seem to be having difficultly integrating Entourage with Exchange, then why not import one of the Outlook and Exchange geniuses to help you out!
allanh
Mar 10, 2008
12:38pm
Why are you a decade behind on Junk mail filtering?
Lets See,
Keynotes - will open adn create Power point compatible items.
Numbers - will open and save Excel compatible spread sheets.
Pages - Will open and create Word compatible documents.
Mail - Will send and receive mail no better or worse than Entourage
Calendar - Will sync to what ever device I need it to sync to
Address Book - Will store contact information (just as much) and sync with my devices.
Please tell me why I pay so much extra to buy and upgrade Microsoft products on my MAC?
I have been a loyal Office user for many years, Either you are forbidden from keep Office for MAC as updated and useful as Office for Windows or you have some serious real world misconceptions.
I would really appriciate and thoughtful answer to all my points, because as I sit here and itemize all my points, I seriously wonder why I would continue to use any Microsoft products on my MAC more importantly OFFICE FOR MAC.
someone
Mar 10, 2008
12:38pm
Re: we are watching you
Eric Whitley
Mar 10, 2008
12:38pm
It's not just Mac Office...
But... I don't think it's all a "Mac team" problem. I've now been forced to shift from Office 2003 (Win) to Office 2007 (Win) and I see where you're being pushed. I think the entire Office team seems to have lost focus. Or maybe this is just a transitional product leading to a pure "web" version.
In either case, I'm really disappointed. I can't find _anywhere_ to send product feedback on the Windows Office 2007 suite, so I'm posting here for a few reason:
a) I'm hoping you at least might care and avoid the pain points of the Windows version
b) To let my other fellow Mac users know this - it's _not_ just Office for Mac that has issues. The entire Office suite seems misguided and confused.
My rants...
--------------
By the way - I can accept change. Positive change is fine with me. But I would really love to see the performance and find/success #'s from usability testing to see why this approach was chosen. You're forcing users to scroll all over a screen to get to menus and then actively suppressing the shortcut key UI indicators... bad. Just bad.
You guys used to have a good balance between business and technology. No - I'll amend that - you used to have the _best_ balance between business and technology. To sum up what one of my pro-Microsoft co-workers told me one day - "Apple gives people what they want - Microsoft gives people what they need." So now we got what someone in marketing thought we wanted, but we already had what we needed. We had a fast, effective way to do some basic tasks that helped drive the business. Now I have a pretty, slow, bloated app that has _fewer_ useful features than its predecessors.
I feel for you guys. It sucks when you do great work the first time in - there's no real room for upgrade revenue. But at the same time I think you guys need to take a long, serious look at what you're doing and why. Give us what we need to do our jobs. This latest series of upgrades just isn't delivering on your history of great business solutions.
Jose
Mar 10, 2008
12:38pm
Re: we are watching you
JCB
Mar 10, 2008
12:38pm
Office 98 is back or what ?
Remember what happened with Office 98.
I hoped performance to be better because of Universal platform. Bad guess !
When do you plan a reliable release ? first !
When do you plan a performing release ? second !
Thanks in advance.
Nadyne Richmond
Mar 11, 2008
10:05am
12.0.1 out today
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.mspx
To learn more about what improvements were made, check out the following article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948057
Hope this helps!
john eidinger
Mar 11, 2008
3:31pm
Jumping windows Lousy upgrade
Why to picture imports automatically decide to place themselves any-which location? The default should be to put them at the end of a paragraph, and the paragraph should stay put unless we want it otherwise.
On a new 8-core 2.8 ghz machine, starting up WORD takes 1 minute. Disgraceful.
The loss of screen real estate due to the new icon bars is terrible. I cannot turn them all off!
Excel will not move the top of the screen on secondary monitors. What gives? Dumb programming?
WORD has crashed multiple times with loss of 20 minutes of work. The recover command crashed too. What gives?
All I wanted was a program that was faster. I got a pile of slow software with no features of any use.
Ljuvefreya
Mar 11, 2008
3:31pm
Comment on Office 2008 for Partners?
I can't get my job to cover it because they don't take Mac all that seriously as long as Microsoft doesn't make software available to partners through the partner site.
I contacted the Microsoft partner support centre and they tell me that Office 2008 is supposedly going to get a trial version later this year, but they had no news on whether it would become available to partners.
Why are the Mac products kept out of the Partner program?
writer Memberspeed.com Jay
Mar 11, 2008
3:31pm
Re: we are watching you
Eric
Mar 11, 2008
3:31pm
Palm syncing
Raj
Mar 11, 2008
3:31pm
Ie for MAC
Please give us some kind of update on this?
Joe Maloney
Mar 11, 2008
3:31pm
Entourage 2008 should be the latest and greatest
Disgruntled J. User.
Mar 11, 2008
3:31pm
Force Quit
mactopia_site
Mar 11, 2008
4:03pm
Glad to hear that 12.0.1 is out
The Techno Kid
Mar 11, 2008
4:03pm
I'm glad you at least have a Blog
Apple has also a forum but they don't update it as much as your blog so I give you credits on that.
If people hate Microsoft soooo much then stop using the software... truth is, they don't really hate it that much. I know most of them started using computers with MS-DOS/Windows...
The "I have to use word because of the doc format" lost foundation with the birth of RTF, PDF, and OpenOffice... Truth is, people like using MS Office, so stop flaming the Mac Team and thank them for trying to fix all your issues... it'll take some time but at least I know they are trying by reading your comments.
Try to give good comments so they know what you really need and save the "MS sucks..." kind of comments.
macmansc
Mar 11, 2008
4:20pm
Reading comments?
Andre The Geek
Mar 12, 2008
12:24pm
Re: We are watching you
So I got 2008, and was most disappointed to see that it is almost as slow as 2004 to launch. Really disappointed.
Other Mac users may not notice this one, but I also am annoyed that I can't use the F2 key to edit a cell in Excel. It seems I have to move my hand off the keyboard and grab the mouse.
Also, I heard a security update came out today, so I launched Excel, and told it to check for updates. Hmmm. It said there were no updates. I came to the website, and found the update, but why didn't my application find an update?
I think I can launch VMWare fusion, wake up my sleeping XP virtual machine, and launch Office in Windows - all faster than I can launch Office 2008 on the Mac.
I must say, the Office 2008 looks pretty, but the speed is awful. It should be able to pick up when there's an update. Also, shouldn't it have the new Office 2007 features, like the ribbon? Not that I like that much, but at least I would have a similar experience between the PC and the Mac.
I was hoping today's update maybe would fix the launch speed, but nope, just as slow. And yet my computer is so fast. I can't believe that Adobe Photoshop CS3 launches faster than Excel 2008!!!
jack
Mar 12, 2008
12:24pm
what's wrong with error bar
pg
Mar 12, 2008
12:24pm
Listen to this, Improve Entourage and restore VBA
Entourage, Pity
(sung to Suffragette City)
Oh don’t email me man, cause I can’t affort to read it
I’m back to Entourage, pity
Oh don’t email me man
Outlook syncs take long to check it
You know my database breaks daily
Its outta sight...no mail right.
My-V-B-A
(sung to YMCA)
Word man, there's no place you can go.
I said, Word man, you're short on work flow.
You can’t stay here, because you will not find
Many ways to write a script guy.
It's no fun with out my-V-B-A.
It's no fun with out my-V-B-A.
Thibault H.
Mar 12, 2008
12:24pm
Microsoft 2008 faster but...
Ah, Microsoft! Vous êtes un béhémoth si lent, avançant lourdement autour dans les âges foncés. Peut-être bientôt vous serez éteint comme le gigantesque.
alicia
Mar 12, 2008
12:24pm
Office is out, what about messenger?
Andy K
Mar 12, 2008
12:24pm
Re: we are watching you
Much as I wish you point was valid, it isn't as valid as many of us wish it was.
We still do use MS Office because of the default file formats. Many of us know of alternative softwares and formats, but we're limited by what the world-at-large uses. And, for now anways, it's still the MS formats.
I work in IT in a university. On occasion people have been send things in OpenOffice's format. They never ask me to install alternative software. They always ask for the file to be converted to the 'correct' format.It's either that or retrain a couple of hundred staff members in how to use a product that, although I wish otherwise, is not all that widely used. Yet.
So yes, we use Office because we have to. And, as such, pretty much need 100% compatibility. And I think a lot of the more vocal people here are in the same boat.
longtime user
Mar 12, 2008
12:24pm
I would like you to explain
/dev/null
Mar 12, 2008
12:24pm
IE8 for Mac
Tim
Mar 12, 2008
9:43pm
RE: Reading comments?
Marco Polo
Mar 12, 2008
9:43pm
Hey Techno Kid
We love Office, but the product rolled out for 2008 is seriously deficient. We want Office to be a great product--it isn't, and our concerns are real, not MS bashing.
Hear that Geoff Price?
Nadyne, can you ask your boss, Mr. Price, to get back on the boards and answer our concerns directly?
Greg Walker
Mar 12, 2008
9:43pm
This is interesting
DrB
Mar 13, 2008
3:10pm
Question: Office 2008 and Mail
Have others been seeing this???
DrB
Mar 13, 2008
3:10pm
Endnote by Thomson
I am surprised that this was not addressed early as I will not use any further products until they are clearly tested or demo provided) in our academic community!
Hater
Mar 16, 2008
10:19pm
iWork Pages?
Medical Reports
Mar 16, 2008
10:19pm
Where are my medical words?
Chris
Mar 17, 2008
4:28pm
Stick with Office 2004 or Office 2007 for PC
Grunt GI
Mar 17, 2008
4:28pm
Word issue
When I attempt to do the spelling and grammar check in Print Layout Vies, Word 2008 crashed EVERY SINGLE TIME.
However, it appears that if I do the spelling and grammar check in Draft View, it works just fine and switches to Print Layout View to check the spelling in my footnotes and caption boxes.
Is this how it is supposed to work or is this a bug? I like to work in Print Layout view so I can see my illustrations and footnotes.
Your advice?
Thanks
wally
Mar 18, 2008
8:32pm
Without VBA ..?!
Because of your wonderful maco language that is able to manipulate text like no one else can do!! - I HAVE TO STAY in Word 2004.
arctic
Mar 19, 2008
8:42pm
the funny thing that i've noticed
there are a bunch of so many little things that are not mac, if you know what i mean. one of them that i just noticed is that you can't scroll the window if it's inactive. but it's such a comfortable feature! ..
Gave up on Entourage
Mar 19, 2008
8:42pm
Finally convinced me to ditch Entourage completely
Jonas de Freitas
Mar 20, 2008
9:56pm
Are you for real?
The last few minutes while I was trying to do just that it crashed 5 times in as 10 minutes!
This is not a finished product, and I would very much like a refund.
/ Very dissapointed customer
Gerry
Mar 24, 2008
2:14pm
What's the point of watching, when you've removed the functions I use
This is utterly staggering!
I just spent £350 on Office 2008 and it is _less_ functional than Office 2004. How can you possibly think this is acceptable. Upgrades should give you more functionality than before.
Your product management team have done a very poor job on this. To be frank, what's the point of adding "pretty buttons" into Excel at the expense of core functionality. People who use Excel, use it because they need to automate calculations. That has to be considered as more important than the cosmetic changes that have been applied to 2008.
I am totally gob smacked.
p.s. having a check box that says "I understand that I will not be contacted in response to my feedback" is EXACTLY the same as saying, I don't care what my customers think, I am going to ignore their suggestions and only give them a feedback form because it allows us to filter them directly into the Trash can.
You don't even promise that you will read them
Tom
Mar 24, 2008
2:14pm
A trial could have made the difference
Steve
Mar 24, 2008
2:14pm
and now . . . the good!!
Stephane Gasparini
Mar 25, 2008
9:02pm
Office 2008 - not compatible with Office PC - exchange support not better
Microsoft need to make a MAJOR upgrade and deliver OUTLOOK on OS X and make excuse like for Word 6 advertisement.
Powerpoint incompatibility with its windows counterpoint still solid and somewhat stupid (present since the 1st version of Office for OS X).
Embedded objet in a powerpoint (another powerpoint, a PDF, etc) will end-up with "cannot connect to server application xxxx !" As on Office 2004, Office X, this is often used in enterprise.
Word, same as PowerPoint for embedded Document.
Excel, cannot handle some pivot table coming from Windows counterpart!
You cannot anymore set a transparency for comment in excel sheet with Office 2008. It was doable in Office 2004 by selecting the comment (not in text mode) and using contextual menu. I can’t find a way to do it in 2008 version, however it is supported and if you have an old excel sheet with those setting on some comment you can even copy the style with the copy format button and paste it.
Entourage:
2 minor improvements.
1) Configuration is automatic and exchange server is found by Entourage alone, no need of manual configuration, jus need to say exchange account and to ender domain ID en password.
Prior to that the conifguration was manual for me.
2) At last we can do a reply, reply all to a calendar event !
But Don’t expect to book a room, meeting room resource are not managed !
Don’t expect to manage the mandatory and optional attendees !
Don’t expect to be able to propose another time in response to an invitation !
Don’t expect to decode correctly all the emails, the one coming from Mail.app or mailing list. Signatures of mailing list will ends-up in AT.....htm attachment and are not rendered ( as bas as Entourage 2004).
Don't expect table and some other special formating to be handled correctly when forwarding or replying messages (as bad as entourage 2004) whiel any other email application will handle it smoothly.
Still not support several languages ! Yes I’m French and I like to have my Professional account in English and my personal one in French.
So beside the Intel compatibility, this version as almost nothing to offer in my view.
And even Intel compatibility is not a gain in fact. Honestly, my application are not starting faster even slower I would say, I don't see any improvement in speed.
What is the worst, is that 7 years after the first version of Office for OS X we are still with big incompatibility with Office for Windows and not OUTLOOK that entourage can definitively not replace.
And we lost Visual Basic, so the compatibility with Office for Windows is even lower.
OLE are not there, it was on Mac OS previous to OS X release......
I tend to have the opinion that Microsoft can achieve full compatibility with Windows product and if Microsoft don't, it is for business reason.
Bubbipaula
Mar 25, 2008
9:02pm
Can't schedule recurring appointments in Entourage 2008
Cathalifaud
Mar 25, 2008
9:02pm
After updating to 12.0.1 ...
I have read several of the commentaries by users in this Blog, and it is clear that many of them are very disappointed and worse. It is also clear that there are still more than "just a few, cosmetic" bugs to solve and that the release of this app. was premature by several months.
Then there is the notes on the release of the latest update: "Stability is improved", "Reliability is improved", etc. Who wrote that? The gurus in Legal and Marketing? How about "Stability and Reliability perfected"?. After all, you are selling this thing as a finished product, not a Beta ... or are you?
Perhaps the Entourage team is trying too hard to do what MS always does (poorly), copy the Mac and its apps. How about doing something unique and original, something that works well?
Victor Caballero
Mar 28, 2008
8:43pm
Word 98 Documents with type creator
Talal
Mar 28, 2008
8:43pm
Features and Performance
There has been a lot of complaints in regards to performance. I think I can agree, and I'm shocked that Office 2008 is simply unusable on my 1.33GHz iBook G4 with 1.5GB of RAM running Leopard, which should be a perfectly capable machine for creating Office documents. For instance, typing a simple document in Word is a painful experience, as there's a significant lag between my keystrokes and letters appearing on the screen. Seriously, how can this be?
Missing features. Where can I start? A lot of people have mentioned bad Exchange support, and the lack of VBA. I personally don't use these features, but they're clearly important in many peoples' daily workflows. As for me, the most glaring missing feature is bi-directional text support. This particular feature has been built-in into Office for Windows since 2002, and even before that in the specially localized versions of Office. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for a feature that has been already implemented in the Office Drawing Engine back in 2002 to be included in Office 2008, something that should have been included in Office 2004.
Last, but not least, the embarrassment that is Messenger for Mac. I know a completely new version is being worked on at the moment and I can't wait to try it out, but it's has been more than 2 years since the last major update to Messenger. Version 6 doesn’t count as a major update. In these same 2 years, Apple came up with Leopard, a major update to an operating system. Please, it's not too much to ask to update Messenger for Mac to atleast the same level as MSN Messenger 7.5 on Windows, which incidentally was released less than 2 weeks after the last "real" major update to Messenger for Mac.
I’m currently typing this using Office 2007 for Windows on a 3-year old PC, and it’s a pleasure to use. Why can’t Office for Mac be atleast on the same level? I think most of us here can agree than Mac OS X is a superior platform to Windows.
I look forward to a better Office for Mac!
DaveChristie
Mar 28, 2008
8:43pm
One Question - PowerPoint
Anyway, my one question, Does PowerPoint 2008 properly open up (and support) powerpoint documents created in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows? This has been my biggest pain with 2004, I get PowerPoints sent to me from people using 2007 (Saving as 2003) and yet, 2004 will not properly handle all the formats, I have to go back and fix things, like text boxes becoming pictures and not annimating correctly. So, will 2008 support PPTx files?
Thanks for the help...
Not a happy user of Entourage 2008
Mar 28, 2008
8:55pm
i opted out
As for what you will see today:
I am curious, just what are you watching for? TO decided if this is the last update because we will all start migrating to Apple's apps?
After 4 years, this is not what I would have expected.
Ben Madin
Mar 31, 2008
10:18am
Endnote Compatibility
cheers
Ben
Mielke?
Apr 02, 2008
5:15pm
Do you know who Erich Mielke is?
Do you know that Erich Mielke was the one who was responsible for building up the surveyance net in the old communist GDR?
See this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Mielke
I guess this speaks for itself. Microsoft is spying out users and the blog is posted by Mrs. Mielke. I hope she's no relative to Erich Mielke?
Uncle Louie
Apr 02, 2008
5:15pm
Not Going to Bash But...
Entourage is the biggest stumbling block in terms of applications. I do see a distinct irony in that Apple's iPhone is going to natively support Exchange before Entourage, Microsoft's own product. That, combined with the lack of Time Machine support and lack of tools that Outlook 2007 has really takes Entourage down in terms of a quality app.
VBA support is also something that I know many in the business world will decry and it should be put back.
Office needs to move to a complete Cocoa base. Carbon is going away, and there is little benefit in programming in it anymore. It will make Office faster and smoother on a Mac.
Lastly, here are some suggestions for improvements to future versions of Office: 1) Built-in native ODF support. It is great that OOXML is now standard, but so is ODF and the ability to interoperate is going to play a big role in determining the best Office Suite. 2) OneNote. This is perhaps, in my view, one of the GREATEST applications in the Office Suite. It's flexibility and integration is phenomenal. Students and business people alike would LOVE to have this app. 3) Groove for Mac. If there was ever a need for both integration into the workplace combined with the ability to sync files across multiple computers, this is one of the best apps for it.
Diganta
Apr 04, 2008
1:53pm
No VBA or Macro support!
I'm cautioning users that if they use macros to consider the possibilities. Some of them are opting for NeoOffice or Open Office. If a group of free software developers can make XML and macro compatibility then I would hope 200+ Macintosh developers working for Microsoft could easily do the same. Disappointing Mac BU team.
Prasm
Apr 06, 2008
10:03pm
We are waiting
Both are idiotic and annoying bugs that are easily fixed.
Robert
Apr 06, 2008
10:08pm
Duplicate Contacts being created upon synching
Alexis Fernandez
Apr 09, 2008
3:06pm
Re: we are watching you
Office for Mac has been a major let down because of it. People who sometimes work from home are not able to, because there is no software available.
YAZ
Apr 09, 2008
3:08pm
Not using it
OK, you had to ship it, but at SUCH an expense? It's like shooting in your own foot!
Michael
Apr 13, 2008
10:16am
BIdi support
It tells me that MS doesn't care to fix that at all... Am I right ?
sparkstertom...mac newbie
Apr 13, 2008
10:16am
I'm actually impressed...
I'm on a mbp with 4gb ram and it flies... even on t'other half's macbook with 512 it runs well..
I'm impressed... but I see from many users above that this is not much of an upgrade. WIll watch this blog with interest!
Jessica Marie
Apr 13, 2008
10:16am
i never was asked about CEIP
Gr8Scott
Apr 14, 2008
1:39pm
Why No Demo for Office 2008?
britt stromberg
Apr 18, 2008
12:34pm
are you watching how frustrated i am?
It's crucial for me to swap files with clients on Windows OS. I've never had problems with them being able to open files. Now I cannot send any .doc files and have them open properly. I have to send PDFs. Believe me, I've read all the forums and tried all of the little tricks. Nothing works.
This is a nightmare for me. This is a basic competency that I expect from Word. I've wasted hours of my time to solve this problem and it's still not working. I want to remove Office 2008 and reinstall 2004. Arggh!
Joe the Bug
Apr 21, 2008
12:04pm
a few improvements but...
Entourage is still terribly un-integrated with MacOS.
How long do we have to wait till Entourage syncs calendar categories with individual calendars in iCal? Same for Address Book? How 'bout syncing Entourage with things like google and Plaxo. People have been shouting about this since sync services was introduced and still nothing.
Emily
Apr 21, 2008
12:04pm
MSN
Ted Stout
Apr 21, 2008
9:35pm
Re: we are watching you
The new version is much faster than Office 2004 on my MacBook.
Ted
richinnorthampton
Apr 23, 2008
3:15pm
Automatic Date
Brownie
Apr 24, 2008
12:51pm
WHY CAN'T I DO ANYTHING WITH EXCEL???????????
carol shep
Apr 24, 2008
12:51pm
Entourage 'forward' with attachment
wooster
Apr 28, 2008
9:22pm
Speed, speed, VBA and Entourage / Exchange
- VBA, Not used by me personally but by many customers of mine
- The ability to sync Tasks and Nnotes with Exchange
We pay premium for Exchange support in Office 2008 and therefore we should get FULL Exchange support!!!
Emily
Apr 29, 2008
9:39pm
what
Want my guides back!
May 08, 2008
11:46pm
Anyone having trouble with guides in PowerPoint?
innuendo.
May 12, 2008
10:32pm
meSSENGER 7 MAC
MacDan2004
May 13, 2008
11:44am
Disagree on Comments about Entourage
I disagree! Entourage 2008 is FAR superior to Outlook as a Mail/Calendar/ToDo/Project managing client. Outlook is old garbage. Yes, we want Exchange support on par with Outlook but the client functions and tools and interface of Entourage is better and more up-to-date than Outlook. Outlook 2007 feels like Microsoft Mail of 1994!
The Entourage team is doing great - just give it the FULL Exchange support Outlook enjoys - that's ALL it's missing.
Joby Kent
May 29, 2008
9:08pm
HOW COME MICROSOFT MAKES BETTER APS FOR MAC OS X THAN THEY DO FOR WINDOWS?
Steve
May 29, 2008
9:08pm
Office 2008, and why I'm not a fan.
The first thing I don't like, which is my biggest complain, is Entourage. Give us Outlook, or at least make Entourage comparable to Outlook. We need Exchange support that WORKS. We need RPC over HTTP support that WORKS, and is as easy to set up as it is on Windows computers.
The second thing I don't like is how non-intuitive the system is. Word, Excel, all the programs are great on Windows. Why? Because you made them easy to use. It's one giant window with all of the tools at the top. For Mac, it's a window, with separate toolbar windows that run down the side.
Step one: Use Cocoa. Stop supporting the older Macs with the next version of Office, or at least make separate installers. This will allow you to integrate much more nicely with the OS.
Step two: Make all of the programs look and act as they do on Windows. For one, people that have to use both Mac and Windows will appreciate everything being uniform, and two, it just looks cleaner on Windows.
Step three: This one is similar to step two, but we desperately need Entourage to be completely overhauled. We need Exchange, we need synchronization with phones and whatnot.
One of my biggest upsets with my Mac right now is the fact that SmarterMail allows for synchronization between Outlook, Smartphones, etc. If Mac were using Outlook instead of Entourage, maybe I would've had a minimal shot of getting something to work for synchronization there. Instead, I must use the web-based mail client.
Again, I appreciate that Microsoft is thinking smart and porting their software over to Mac. I just hope they're smart enough to pick up their game for the next release (which is hopefully 2009...)
Steve Taylor
Systems Engineer
algorhythm
May 30, 2008
12:47pm
then why does no one answer posts???
I'm not a noob...I'd be considered a power user. I phrase myself clearly, I provide details of the issue I'm asking about, and I neither rant nor ramble to excess.
So how can you folks claim you're listening, when you never respond to people's questions?
Greg
May 30, 2008
12:47pm
Word:Mac to Word:Win styles and fonts
Also, I opened and re-saved the doc in Word:mac 2008, just in case there was an improvement with the new version. By the way, this happens all the time, but I never know when or how it will happen - really a pain.
Vito
May 30, 2008
2:07pm
Fix The Broken Parts First
"Broken?", you say. Yes, broken. Two features in particular were badly broken in Word 2004:
1. Insert cross-references – Every insertion forces the dialog to rebuild the entire list. When you have a technical document that comprises hundreds of pages and thousands of cross-referencable items, it takes a long time to repopulate the interface every time I insert a link. It's a complete waste of time. Plus, the dialog window isn't resizable, so the user is forced to scroll through that tiny pane to find the desired item. Microsoft MVPs acknowledge the bug, but say it probably will never be fixed. Microsoft Support also (grudgingly) acknowledges it, but refuses to say whether it will ever be fixed. I invested the time to develop a workaround, but why should that be necessary? As far as I'm concerned, I've already paid for software that was supposed to work the first time. I'm not going to pay still more to get a dressed up version of the same old dysfunctionality.
2. Merge Documents – In Word 2004, the Merge Documents function works precisely backward from the way Word Help says it's supposed to work. Try it for yourself and see. In the Windows version, it works the way it's supposed to work. Clearly, Word 2004 for Mac has a major bug in the merge function.
Now, if Office 2008 had a "test drive" (as Office 2004 did), at least I'd be able to see whether the bugs have been fixed. If so, I would buy Office 2008 immediately, happily, and without a second thought. But given Microsoft's past recalcitrance to even acknowledge the bugs, let alone commit to fixing them, I'm not optimistic on that point. I'm certainly not going to buy a pig in a poke, untested, without knowing whether it's still the same bug-infested code, all prettied up for 2008.
tser
Jun 06, 2008
4:57pm
Cut and Paste
Couldn't that be reversed..somehow...
Dude
Jun 26, 2008
8:53pm
Word still broken
Thomas Levine
Jun 30, 2008
9:25pm
Comparable MAC product to OneNotes 2007
Teri S.
Jun 30, 2008
9:25pm
Resend
2 such features:
1. Re-send an email that is in the sent folder.
Really helpful when the person(s) didn't get it in the
first place or it was sent thru the wrong account.
2. Error alerts were able to be group deleted. No longer.
Now you have to delete each one or close & reopen!
Dude
Jul 07, 2008
12:10pm
Word still broken
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