[MacNZ]

Hi, just a late user view (bitch) on these new versions of office that I upgraded to at home and at the office... If I am missing something on general useability then please inform me because soon I`ll no longer have any hair left to pull out. I don`t know if other people have the same gripes, or whether I should just hurry up and adapt to what is a new, but in my mind a bad system. Note that this doesn`t get down into specifics at all, its more about the philosophy of useable systems for ones work.

Let me start out by noting what i am using Office for-- academic writing, presentations to both companies and university groups, and constant e-mail usage across Exchange and general POP mail.

So lets get started:

- Academic/professional writing in Word. To keep it short, Office 2008 is a step back from Office 2004, whilst Office 2007 (PC) is just plain unuseable. Microsoft has essentially taken what was a nicely laid out and powerful professional writing program and turned it into an inconvenient half word processor- half layout jumble. With earlier office versions the powerful features that one needed were right there...either in the toolbars or in easily recognisable places in the menus. With Office 2008 you can still find them in the menus, but the toolbar replacement is just plain unweildy. The formatting palette that you can bring up is a help, but on a small screen it is a pain in the butt. With Office 2007 I despair altogether.

- New file formats: The old story with upgrading the office, which is more acute as EVERYONE uses office. The new format is kind of nice as it seems to fix some of the problems of image usage in documents etc etc. It is a bit of a nuisance when it comes to sending attachments, transferring to other computers with older versions etc though. I don`t tend to complain with other programs because their installed base is much smaller, but with the number of people using office the problem multiplies...just takes time if I actually want to use the benefits of the new format but then end up having to pass on files.

- Entourage: Flashy, but not really worth the added fluff. Ok, so they added small new features to Entourage, but there is nothing earth shattering in the new version. I actually find it annoying that they have flashed up the app`s theme for the sake of making it slower (on my older macs) and sometimes less intuitive. An example of annoying features that are non-features are the address book that by default searches your entire system for contact info- maybe there`s a way to turn this off but it is just plain annoying. I put ALL of my complete contacts in Entourage for a reason- so I don`t have to go searching around the rest of my system. All it means is that I`m sitting there twiddling my thumbs waiting for it to search, when Entourage 2004 would have eaten it for lunch.

Powerpoint: Again, it just adds flash, but nothing new. It also seems to hog more system resources as a result. It is still not as graphically pleasing as Keynote, and I have found it stumbles a bit on the media side too (Quicktime files and pictures).

So...where to? Well, to Keynote for presentations, and possibly mail and address book...as for Word stuff, I can`t do what I want in Pages either, so maybe back to Word 2004. Any advice or other options?

[EuropeBetterThanAmerica]

Go back to office 2004, it must be very snappy on your 12” and avoid 2008 futile features.

Eva.

[analogika]

Make sure to TURN OFF live grammar check on either, though.

But yeah - back to 2004. If you need better compatibility with those newfangled 2007 files, you might want to look into www.neooffice.org . It's free, and a decent Office clone.

[Cold Warrior]

I think Office 2007 is pretty decent once you minimize the ribbon and customize the shortcut bar. Outlook 2007 is a solid upgrade to 2003, especially in terms of UI refresh (calendar appearance, text rendering for everything, etc.).

If WINE worked with Outlook 2007 IMAP accounts, I'd probably buy Office 2007 as an Office '08 replacement.

[MacNZ]

Yeah, that was one of the frustrating things...I was trying to upgrade so to standardise on Office 2007 at work and Office 2008 at home...plus eventually getting a faster iMac for home...and WINE with Office 2007 was sounding good until I got hands on with these new versions. I'm one of those people who sits down and writes a referenced, professional article in one go, so not having the toolbars and other tools intuitively arranged really got to me and wasted my time....now reinstalling Word 2004. Still a bit cautious about jumping on the OpenOffice bandwagon, but could be tempted. I don't care for flashy UI, just need usability.

[TETENAL]

If it was Word that turned all your apostrophes into grave accents, that would be another thing to add to the list of reasons why it sucks.

[sdennie]

As computers get faster and faster, each new version of MS Word gets slower. I'm not sure how Microsoft accomplishes this feat. I do like the look and many of the features in 2008. But they aren't worth the slowdown.

All things considered, I'd love to go back to Word 5.1, the best word processor ever. It was followed by Word 6, an absolutely bloated dud, as they tried to turn it into a page layout program. And it's never been the same.

I'm running a Mac Pro G5 (not intel) tower, a powerful machine. But when I copy text from a Word document, my machine stops while it devotes all its energy to this extravagant task. Even if it's just a few paragraphs. I'll need to wait maybe 15 seconds until I can go paste the text. I've not seen this issue mentioned by anyone else.

[Arkham_c]

I've got Office 2008 with the latest updates running on my Mac Pro (original one, 2x2.66). I haven't noticed any of the problems people have mentioned here. I don't do a ton of word processing as a programmer, but I have had no problems opening, editing, and saving documents so far. Could it be that this is a PowerPC issue, or is my machine just fast enough that I don't encounter the problem?

I got Office from a program Microsoft has for people whose offices have site licenses or something -- it cost me like $12 or something to get it shipped to my house, and it's the full version with Exchange server access. It seems like a good program for people who have access to it.

[chabig]

New file formats: Go into the preferences for each app and make set the default to .doc .xls and .ppt

Entourage: I don't even install it. It's Mail and iCal for me.