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compsolver · Dec 8, 2003, 08:33 PM

how stable and reliable is microsoft office for osx? what about running under panther?

justinkim · Dec 8, 2003, 08:46 PM

Haven't had any problems, but I'm not constantly using it.

cpac · Dec 8, 2003, 09:08 PM

zero problems running it under Panther.

Truepop · Dec 8, 2003, 09:34 PM

I have had one problem with office under 10.2 and 10.3 and they weren't stability issues.

It seems to not find my printer so I have to preview the document first and print from preview.app.

MrNo · Dec 8, 2003, 09:58 PM

Have been using it constantly for a year and a half and had no problems with it.
Everything wors fine and it looks a lot better then Windows version

MartiNZ · Dec 9, 2003, 02:28 AM

Yep, agreed. No problems and the looks and experience of use are a lot better than those of Office XP. I'm really glad there are no such 'features' as task windows and paste options for us - they just get in the way in my opinion. And there are other examples - I just can't think of any right now.

mark2 · Dec 9, 2003, 11:55 AM

I'm running 10.2.3. It took me forever to buy Office X, and I'm sorry I waited. I use it for amost everything.

Haven't had any problems and the difference between the Mac version and the Windows version is like night and day. I hate the Windows version.

uv23 · Dec 9, 2003, 12:22 PM

Running fine so far on Panther with a 200+ page document with heavy formatting and tables. The only problem I encountered was some weirdness with the document map showing stuff it shouldn't have been, requiring manual reselcting and reformatting of a lot of stuff. Tedious, especially since it reverted once, but it has not returned since. Perhaps an artifact from working on a document originally created on a PC.

clarkgoble · Dec 9, 2003, 12:31 PM

Ditto for me. I also second the "it's better than the XP version" as well. There are some features I wish were different. But overall I'm very happy with it. I'm looking forward to the new version coming out in January.

Proudest Monkey · Dec 9, 2003, 01:11 PM

works well under panther, but much slower i have found. granted, i am using an imac 600 with 768mb ram, but the windows version is much faster, even on older computers. the second frustration i have with ofice v.X is the inability to drag the toolbar all the way across the monitor, it stops as if the display were set to the 640x480 setting, not the 1024x768 - which i am using. i've found toolbar customized more difficult than in XP. a small, very small annoyance - i wish F5 would start presentations in powerpoint.

threestain · Dec 9, 2003, 01:57 PM

I found it quite slow to begin with, but with the update it runs much much much better - no problems and oh so much better than that cruddy buggy pc version

clarkgoble · Dec 9, 2003, 02:39 PM

I truly pray that MS doesn't add a task-centric approach to the new MS Office. That's the #1 aspect of the XP version that bugs me. (That side panel has got to go)

Sage · Dec 9, 2003, 05:56 PM

Been using it for a year now under Jaguar and Panther, and it's been great to me.

Orion27 · Dec 9, 2003, 07:06 PM

Never had a problem with Office X in Jaguar or Panther on my PowerMac. Just bought the AL Powerbook 15, 1.25. Word has crashed twice using the page down button on the keyboard. It was a 25page document created on a windows machine downloaded over an LAN. It happened once, then I duplicated it and then didn't use the Page down button again. So who knows. I've used Entourage daily for a year now on both the PowerMac and PowerBook without a hiccup. Excell has opened and computed formulas fine, though I'm not in Excell very much. I like Office X a lot it has treated me very well.

wataru · Dec 9, 2003, 07:42 PM

Both my girlfriend and I experience random crashes in Word, but otherwise it's ok.

I use OO.o now because I got sick of Word randomly changing what I type.

voyageur · Dec 9, 2003, 07:54 PM

In my experience, Word gets unstable and files are easily corrupted when you have large files with complex formatting. If you throw in a biblio program like EndNote, it can cause some instability too. If you're going to be generating large, complex docs, my advice is make frequent backups, turn off auto-formatting, styles and fast saves, and don't save large documents over a network.
Entourage is great, as is Excel. Haven't used PowerPoint much.

Orion27 · Dec 9, 2003, 08:20 PM

I put together a presentation for my wife for one of her graduate courses. A simple program for slide show presentation. Stable and easily grasped. Picture and text layouts with "bells and whistles", literally. Worked for me.

Person Man · Dec 10, 2003, 08:53 PM

Originally posted by wataru:
I use OO.o now because I got sick of Word randomly changing what I type.

I turned off all the AutoCorrect options in Office and now they never change anything on me. Usually when I type something I mean it that way.

justinkim · Dec 10, 2003, 10:11 PM

IMHO, Office X is a very nice piece of software. I believe that MS deserves most, if not all, of the crap that gets heaped on it because of the quality of its operating systems and enterprise software (SQL Server, IIS, etc...).

However, I've been using Mac Office, or its components, since the late 80's and have always found it to be useful and reasonably well designed. Even the much lamented first PowerMac version of office was nice and fast on my 7100.