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nickw311 · Dec 28, 2007, 03:16 PM

It has been released to manufacturer and appears as if there will be a lot of information on it at the MacWorld in January.

Mac Mojo

Hope it isn't full of bugs. I plan on getting it asap, I'm tired of Office 2004.

Cold Warrior · Dec 28, 2007, 03:37 PM

My fingers are crossed. I'll also buy it within a week or two of its release.

TheoCryst · Dec 28, 2007, 04:29 PM

I still can't make up my mind if I want it or not. On one hand, I'm perfectly content with iWork for all of my personal files. On the other hand, I do (on rare occasion) find myself in need of swapping documents with people, and it's a hassle to do without Office.

I guess I'll wait till it comes out, read a few reviews, and make my decision then.

nickw311 · Dec 28, 2007, 04:40 PM

I am a student and get a discount through my school. Office 2004 Student Edition is about $65, hopefully Office 2008 will be in that ballpark.

pcryan5 · Dec 28, 2007, 07:42 PM

<>Hope it isn't full of bugs.

I've been using it since July in various beta releases. It's solid. Much more so then any of their Windows apps ever are in beta.

philm · Dec 28, 2007, 08:14 PM

No Visual Basic. Dealbreaker for me.

Cadaver · Dec 30, 2007, 12:08 PM

Originally Posted by TheoCryst

On the other hand, I do (on rare occasion) find myself in need of swapping documents with people, and it's a hassle to do without Office.

Don't forget, you can export Pages files as PDF or RTF if you need to send files to non-iWork users. Keynote will also load/save PPT format. Likewise, Pages will do XLS. File translation isn't perfect, but for basic files without gobs of advanced formatting, it does the trick. And you can also give NeoOffice a whirl, too. Its free and the author(s) are very actively updating.

TheoCryst · Dec 30, 2007, 09:53 PM

Originally Posted by Cadaver

Don't forget, you can export Pages files as PDF or RTF if you need to send files to non-iWork users. Keynote will also load/save PPT format. Likewise, Pages will do XLS. File translation isn't perfect, but for basic files without gobs of advanced formatting, it does the trick. And you can also give NeoOffice a whirl, too. Its free and the author(s) are very actively updating.

Oh I know, and that's usually plenty good enough for me. But there are still occasions where it's not quite good enough, and a copy of Office would (at the very least) allow me to debug my documents. A big example: my job has us fill out our timesheets using an Excel spreadsheet. Numbers reads it alright, but a lot ends up being lost in export, forcing me to use NeoOffice.

frdmfghtr · Dec 31, 2007, 12:10 AM

I ordered mine as part of the Suite Deal/BFD offer...buy Office 2004 on Black Friday, get $100 rebate; qualifies for upgrading to Office 2008 for something like $7. I got mine (student/teacher edition) and sold it on eBay; between the rebate, eBay sale, and the upgrade offer, I get Office 2008 and made about $20 on the deal. I can live with that.

MacosNerd · Dec 31, 2007, 10:51 AM

I'm on the fence

I like iWork but its sooo different to what I'm used too, I may go back to office. Of course I'm running office 2007 withing vmware so I question the need to even buy it for the mac.

64stang06 · Dec 31, 2007, 12:50 PM

Nope. With almost everyone I know wanting a pdf of my files, iWork does the job just fine.

Tom C · Dec 31, 2007, 08:30 PM

Maybe someone who has the beta can answer a few questions?

1. Word 2004 doesn't work right with OpenType and Windows TrueType fonts even though Mac OS X supports them. Specifically, all fonts in a family are displayed in the font menu (Times bold, Times italic, Times bold italic, etc.) instead of just the family name; furthermore, kerning doesn't work. Has this been fixed in Word 2008?

2. What fonts come with Office 2008?

3. Are any OpenType features supported?

Cold Warrior · Dec 31, 2007, 09:43 PM

There was this thread that had some good info:
http://forums.macnn.com/82/applicati...8-beta-leaked/

Unfortunately I don't know anything about fonts.

eggman · Jan 1, 2008, 12:37 AM

Well, the new Entourage looks like a total bust.

It's still not a fully featured Exchange client.

They're still using a "Big Honking Entourage Database" file for their email store and prefs, which means that if you use Time Machine and have a large email archive (mine's about 3GB) whenever you get a new email (or even spam) that'd be another 3GB chunk of your Time Machine disk. Every. Freakin'. Hour.

I love this:

Compatibility with Apple’s Time Machine backup feature in Leopard is a database area that has received a lot of attention recently. Because Entourage uses a single file database, over time it can become large (sometimes really large). In those cases, Entourage data will not work optimally with Time Machine. Our recommendation is to exclude your Entourage Identity folder(s) in the Time Machine preferences and use alternative backup methods. We are committed to integrating with key Apple technologies and are weighing our options here for future releases.

With Microsoft, Nirvana is always right over the hill in some future release. Even when this release isn't even out. Give me a break.

They should have gotten their first clue when Apple came out with Spotlight and it couldn't index their Big Honking Database schema... so they diligently worked with Apple to create a mechanism to index within the BIg Honking Entourage Database... instead of choosing the sensible path of having individual stores for each message. Whew, crisis averted.

So now their Big Honking Database is a liability with Time Machine... but they're spending precious developer resources on better and more robust support (and repair!) of the Big Honking Database.

That's why when I got Leopard... I chucked Entourage.... and now I know that's not going to change with Office 2008. Mail and iCal work just fine. Time Machine is of much, much more value to me than the small incremental features that Entourage offers that Mail doesn't have. And I'm a guy who had been using Deja Vu to back up my system to a spare disk every night for years.

I don't miss Entourage much... the only thing I miss is that I do wish Mail had rules for filing or otherwise processing outgoing as well as incoming messages. But, then again, I never have to spend time watching Entourage trying to repair or compress my Big Honking Entourage Database when I really need to be getting work done.

I've seen complaints about Exchange support and the Big Honking Entourage Database on Mac Office websites for years. Since Entourage ran under OS 9! I've seen dozens and dozens of valid and cogent complaints about these things on Microsoft corporate sites and blogs. They can't be unaware that people are vastly unhappy about these things... but rather than fixing what's broken, they add frills.

It's just so... so... so... Microsoft.

Cold Warrior · Jan 1, 2008, 01:27 AM

There seems to be a bug in the way Excel 2008 handles CSV imports. As an example, export your private messages to CSV and try to import it into Excel 08. It won't format it correctly: it sees commas even inside the text identifiers ("") and treats them as delimiters. Telling Excel this doesn't have any effect.

Do the same thing in Excel 2003 on Windows, and it works perfectly. No need to import either, as Excel 2003 claims .csv files as its own, and opens them neatly.

eggman · Jan 1, 2008, 11:01 AM

Originally Posted by Cold Warrior

There seems to be a bug in the way Excel 2008 handles CSV imports. As an example, export your private messages to CSV and try to import it into Excel 08. It won't format it correctly: it sees commas even inside the text identifiers ("") and treats them as delimiters. Telling Excel this doesn't have any effect.

That'd be an extraordinarily bad bug, and it's hard to imagine that they could go Golden Master with something like that in Excel. If they released it with such a bug, Excel would be rendered virtually useless to me, given the amount of CSV data I need to import.

ooninay · Jan 1, 2008, 08:42 PM

I love your thematic use of "Big Honking Database"... nice literary style.

rickey939 · Jan 2, 2008, 01:12 AM

Entourage....haha....what a joke.

Brien · Jan 2, 2008, 03:40 AM

Has been. And 08 looks worthwhile only so I can read .docx files.

workerbee · Jan 2, 2008, 06:35 AM

Originally Posted by eggman

That'd be an extraordinarily bad bug, and it's hard to imagine that they could go Golden Master with something like that in Excel. If they released it with such a bug, Excel would be rendered virtually useless to me, given the amount of CSV data I need to import.

Same here... basically the only reason I may get Office 08 is for CSV imports into Excel. Also some Word files I get from clients are not quite the same when opened in Pages... and my clients really love Office/Windows: they even send every stupid Screenshot inside a Word document

pendragon · Jan 2, 2008, 10:19 AM

Just curious...

Will Office 2008 live in harmony with Office 2004 when installed on the same volume? Or, is this just asking for problems?

Cold Warrior · Jan 2, 2008, 10:30 AM

The Identities folders are kept separate (Office 2004 Identities, Office 2008 Identities), and the app folders as well (Office 2004, Office 2008). However, the plist files appear to carry the same names, and — IIRC — the caches seem to be in the path with the same names. Sharing those things across very different versions seems to me like a recipe for issues.

Separately — can anyone with the beta confirm or deny the CSV bug, using the same set of data (their private messages).

pcryan5 · Jan 2, 2008, 04:33 PM

I'm using Excel 2008 Ver 12 Build 071101 and it imports CSV fine.

Cold Warrior · Jan 2, 2008, 04:39 PM

Originally Posted by pcryan5

I'm using Excel 2008 Ver 12 Build 071101 and it imports CSV fine.

Originally Posted by Cold Warrior

There seems to be a bug in the way Excel 2008 handles CSV imports. As an example, export your private messages to CSV and try to import it into Excel 08. It won't format it correctly: it sees commas even inside the text identifiers ("") and treats them as delimiters. Telling Excel this doesn't have any effect.

Even with additional commas inside text delimiters? That's an important distinction.

Schwieb · Jan 3, 2008, 01:11 AM

Originally Posted by Cold Warrior

The Identities folders are kept separate (Office 2004 Identities, Office 2008 Identities), and the app folders as well (Office 2004, Office 2008). However, the plist files appear to carry the same names, and — IIRC — the caches seem to be in the path with the same names. Sharing those things across very different versions seems to me like a recipe for issues.

Separately — can anyone with the beta confirm or deny the CSV bug, using the same set of data (their private messages).

The prefs are stored in different plists (different folders, even), and the cache filenames are different as well. 2004 and 2008 should run side-by-side.

As for the CSV problem, can you send me a sample file? (The data can be totally contrived; i just need a known repro case).

Thanks,
Schwieb
MacBU Dev Lead

JKT · Jan 3, 2008, 12:29 PM

Does it still pollute your Documents folder instead of putting support files and preferences in their correct locations in the ~/Library folder?

JKT · Jan 3, 2008, 12:31 PM

Originally Posted by Brien

Has been. And 08 looks worthwhile only so I can read .docx files.

You won't need 2008 to read .docx files. You might need it to (more successfully) manipulate them and send them out again. NeoOffice reads them now and, unless MS pull a fast one, they should release final versions of their importers for 2004.

TETENAL · Jan 3, 2008, 12:35 PM

Pages also reads .docx files and so does TextEdit (althout the latter does so rather badly).

Cold Warrior · Jan 3, 2008, 04:42 PM

Originally Posted by Schwieb

The prefs are stored in different plists (different folders, even), and the cache filenames are different as well. 2004 and 2008 should run side-by-side.

As for the CSV problem, can you send me a sample file? (The data can be totally contrived; i just need a known repro case).

Thanks,
Schwieb
MacBU Dev Lead

I'm working on it, but I've been away from the computer all day and have to step out again soon. I'll let you know when I have a sample csv. Probably later tonight.

Thanks for your interest!

k2director · Jan 5, 2008, 02:04 AM

I have to say, I'm really sick of Word's spinning beachball delay when saving documents to my iDisk folder. If that's still the case in Office 2008, then I'm switching to Pages...

driven · Jan 21, 2008, 12:25 PM

Originally Posted by ooninay

I love your thematic use of "Big Honking Database"... nice literary style.

You know ... Outlook has a "Big Honkin' Outlook Database" similar to Entourage. They call it a .pst file.

Cold Warrior · Jan 21, 2008, 12:51 PM

I'm going to close this thread in favor of the one here:
Microsoft Office 2008 - MacNN

That way we don't split our commentary or troubleshooting efforts.