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WizOSX · Oct 16, 2011, 10:11 AM

If I upgrade my MacBook Pro from SL to Lion will MSOffice 2004 just refuse to run?
Are there any rumors of someone writing a virtualization program that will let older software run. Or even something like Parallels that will let older versions of OS X run under Lion.

Cold Warrior · Oct 16, 2011, 10:33 AM

You're out of luck if you want 2004 to run in Lion. But there are some ways to hack Snow Leopard into a VM, to answer your second question. This is one. and YMMV.

Mac Office 2011 is better than 2004 and 2008 IMHO and a worthwhile upgrade.

WizOSX · Oct 16, 2011, 11:06 AM

….....................

Originally Posted by Cold Warrior

Mac Office 2011 is better than 2004 and 2008 IMHO and a worthwhile upgrade.

I fully agree with you. I have both 2004 and 2011 on my SL system. But I also have hundreds of very tightly formatted files that I created before .docx appeared and often they do not format exactly the same in 2011 and certainly are not editable in 2011 without a lot of work for each document. For me it is critical that I be able to make small changes in .doc graphical elements every day and that just doesn't work well in 2011.

Big Mac · Oct 16, 2011, 01:07 PM

I bet scrapping Rosetta was one of SJ's last decisions.

That's an annoying issue you have to deal with, Wiz. If I were in your position I'd just bite the bullet and convert/reformat into docx, or else use the Windows version of Word until it gets depreciated too.

jmiddel · Oct 16, 2011, 02:28 PM

Wiz, I'm not sure how this is a problem, since you can just keep the docs in .doc format in Word 2011, In fact that what I use for everything, since not all folks have the ability to use the .docx format.

Big Mac · Oct 16, 2011, 03:11 PM

Wiz is saying that Word 2011 won't open these precisely formatted doc files exactly correctly.

Spheric Harlot · Oct 16, 2011, 03:40 PM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

Wiz is saying that Word 2011 won't open these precisely formatted doc files exactly correctly.

You can't expect Microsoft products to faithfully maintain compatibility with their own file formats! That way lies madness!

MADNESS, I SAY!

WizOSX · Oct 16, 2011, 08:12 PM

….....................

Originally Posted by Big Mac

Wiz is saying that Word 2011 won't open these precisely formatted doc files exactly correctly.

Yes, that's half of it. But the other half is that MS changed both the graphics subsystem and the equation editor. Since I teach university economics, all of my files are loaded with both equations and graphics. I've spent many hours fine tuning each file and I will typically make just one or a few small changes each year to the equations and/or graphics in a file. An equation modified in Word 2011 will now look slightly different from the others created in 2004. And if you try to make one small change to a graphic created in Word 2004 using Word 2011, the entire (painstakingly created) graphic is usually completely messed up.

Waragainstsleep · Oct 17, 2011, 04:38 AM

There really isn't another way around it unless you install a PPC machine at home and screen share into it during lectures. Which is a bit of a pain. Especially if the network goes down or gets too busy.