Mac Office 2008: Shinier, Easier To Use

Posted by Austen Saltz on 04/3/08 in Office

Logo Microsoft released the latest version of Microsoft Office mid-January at Macworld 2008, and I have to say that after using it for a while, I am very impressed. The main change here is that this version of Office is actually Universal, meaning it runs natively on any Mac computer. All I can say about that is this: It took them long enough. Also, Mac Office 2008 is fully compatible with the new .docx file extension for documents. Beside that, the new Mac Office 2008 is a large improvement over Office 2004. For this review I’m going to focus on Word 2008, as it is the app that most users will use.

This may only be my personal opinion, but I hated the look of Office 2004. The free-floating toolbars just didn’t work for me. They weren’t a part of the main window and you couldn’t dock them. The result was a cluttered, ugly layout that was not ideal for working. Because of this I instead chose the free alternative NeoOffice for my word processing needs.

But now Microsoft has won me back over. Overall, Office 2008 just feels more polished and clean. The interface integrates well with the Mac and the toolbars are docked in the top area by default, which is how things work in most Mac applications. You can also re-arrange and edit toolbars, which, although expected, is still a great feature for people who just need to work in a certain way.

One of the features that I liked about Office 2004 was the so-called “Formatting Palette” which allowed you to access all basic word processing functions in a small little window. Microsoft has now expanded that window to include dozens of more commands and functions. You can edit formatting, alignment, and margins in the formatting tab. But then, if you move over there are drawing shapes, a citation generator, a feature called “Scrapbook”, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a compatibility checker. These features aren’t necessarily new, but putting them all in one easily accessible place was a great move on Microsoft’s part. The formating palette also replaces those pesky windows that popped up whenever you start working with pictures or tables. Instead, the palette will just tab over to the correct function and you can edit it from there.

Screenshot

Another new feature in Office 2008 is a shiny little toolbar that gives you access to tables, charts, word art, diagrams, and document designs. It’s the layout part of the new Word, and it’s effective. As with the formatting palette, it puts new and old features in an easily accessible area. Excel and Powerpoint both have similar toolbars which do similar functions for their respective apps, with a nice color scheme to match each one.

Finally, the not-so-good. Visual Basic is gone. This doesn’t affect me personally, but many people are upset about this. You can no longer record macros and automate your workflow, with Microsoft’s excuse being that it would have taken 2 years to add Visual Basic support in xcode. For many people this will be a major turn-off. However, this is a sign about the direction of Microsoft Office (at least for the Mac). The new features like the formatting palette and layout toolbar are meant to bring the powerful features of Word up front so the average consumer can take advantage of them. This unfortunately means that the power user will feel left out as Microsoft stops supporting Visual Basic in order to focus on more average, consumer-oriented features.

Having never used Visual Basic, I have found this upgrade to be fantastic. I have Word customized just how I want it and I think that Microsoft has taken a step in the right direction with Office 2008. It integrates well with OS X (typical eye candy shiny effects mostly) and is overall easy to use. To learn more about the features of Office 2008, you can visit Microsoft’s website which has some great videos exploring some of the new features.

There are 4 versions of Office 2008:
1. Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac (Standard) which goes for $400 on Apple and $325 on Amazon.
2. Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Upgrade which goes for $205 on Amazon.
3. Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition which goes for $500 on Apple.
4. Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Student and Teacher Edition which goes for $150 on Apple and $130 on Amazon.

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35 Comment(s)

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ton said on

April 3rd, 2008 at 8:48 am

I am running it on an iMac G5 but Word takes more than a minute to start.
It looks much better then before but it is way too slow.

Martin said on

April 3rd, 2008 at 9:31 am

It runs great on a Macbook Pro; I’m really impressed with it - my only gripe so far is how it works (or doesn’t work) with Spaces - it’s infuriating trying to work on one document, whilst checking another document. Pages jump around all over the shop, and don’t react how you’d expect in terms of shifting focus - it even affects the Window menu if you select a window behind the one you’re currently focussed on, it might move to the front, or it might not. It might open in another Space, but if it does, if you click anywhere on it it’ll jump back into the original Space you were in, and go back behind the other document. It’s had me banging my head against the desk here for the last couple of weeks. Hopefully another update will fix this.

Apart from that though, it’s such an improvement over 2004 I can hardly believe it’s a Microsoft product.

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-8

Pakk99 said on

April 3rd, 2008 at 9:32 am

We installed Office 2008 (and the update) on our brand-spanking new Mac Pro’s (each one sporting 8G of memory and two 500G hard drives), and we’re not impressed. Not only is Office 2008 slow loading, but everytime we switch between programs, it can take up to a minute for the new program to load. And there is often significant lag between when we perform an action (i.e. moving the window, opening a menu, etc), and when it actually happens. Microsoft tried to blame the problem on the Adobe Font Folio that we have installed. However, iWork, Final Cut Studio, and Adobe CS3 all seem to have no trouble whatsoever handling the “load”. According to one anonymous person at Adobe, the problem is that Microsoft uses its own rendering library, which requires a separate font cache, and doesn’t place as nicely with many video cards, unlike Aqua. And its too bad too, Microsoft put some nice features into Office 2008. We’re tossing our copies. This program was a waste of time.

+12

Scott H said on

April 3rd, 2008 at 9:40 am

Just a small correction: The cheap, realistically priced version of Office for Mac is the “Home and Student” edition, and is available to everyone, not just students and teachers. So if you don’t need all the stuff in the expensive versions, don’t waste your money. Also, losing Visual Basic programming is really more of a disadvantage in Excel, not Word. Some places have hundreds of spreadsheets built with Excel macros in Windows, and before, those ran fine on the Mac. Now, they’re all useless.

Peter said on

April 3rd, 2008 at 9:59 am

I’m not impressed with Office 2008.
First off, let me state that I have never used macros, and therefore their loss is not my loss.

While the interface looks shinier and slightly more pleasing to the eyes, I get the impression that MacBU hasn’t really done a thorough job.
The opening times of these applications is the same (if not slower? it seems long anyway) than Office 2004, and I’m on a Core2Duo MacBook.
Office still doesn’t support custom keyboards correctly, which means shortcuts are still messed up half the time on my computer (I use a modified version of the Dvorak keyboard layout).
Probably my biggest gripe with Office 2008 is that it doesn’t support older Office Windows & Mac formats well. Really. I made a presentation that looked fine in PowerPoint (in their “compatibility” mode), and then the layout turned out to be completely messed up on PowerPoint 2003 for Windows. Not fun. And some Word documents (in “compatibility” mode too) don’t open correctly for some people I know. What’s with that, Microsoft?

Now, I wish I could turn off some of the elements on their toolbar, such as the elements gallery. I don’t need the gallery, so why should it use up half a centimetre vertically on my small 13.3′ screen?

I’ve had a love affair with iWork ‘08 since it came out, and I’m very happy with it. Office 2008 is like a bad smelling neighbour you have to put up with but wish you could get rid of.

me said on

April 3rd, 2008 at 10:46 am

Its slow opening and pauses/locks up sometimes. By biggest gripe is that is Word crashed constantly even will the latest patches. Not worth the money..use Open or Neo Office.

+10

Bruce A said on

April 3rd, 2008 at 11:15 am

“Mac Office 2008: Shinier, Easier To Use”

…Slower Than Molasses Running Uphill In January.

There. I fixed your headline for you.

+13

Kim said on

April 3rd, 2008 at 11:16 am

Regarding the Visual Basic issue: I think most people don’t realize that third party products for Word may rely on VBA. For example, my EndNote bibliography management program no longer works, nor does my medical dictionary spell-checker, because both used VBA in Word. My point is that you don’t have to be a user of macros that you’ve written yourself to possibly be affected by this loss of functionality. I’m now having to find replacements for these two utilities, which will of course cost me more money.

Tom said on

April 3rd, 2008 at 11:33 am

Build on teh worst features of Office 2004. Slow launch, change for change sake, not well documented, not too friendly to my old animated power point lectures. Take me back to Office X.

Jake said on

April 3rd, 2008 at 11:40 am

Can MS 2008 do turabian better then the older versions of MS office?

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Tris Orendorff said on

April 3rd, 2008 at 1:06 pm

Regarding the Visual Basic issue: I think most people don’t realize that VB was a major vector for spreading viruses, worms and other nasties on Windows 98.

Regarding the slowness of this version: Is it as slow as OpenOffice 2 on the Mac or Office 2008 on Vista?

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-1

Martin said on

April 3rd, 2008 at 1:16 pm

For those complaining about slowness, I’ve just timed Word opening - 4.5 seconds here, from clicking the logo to the document opening and being ready to use. That seems fine to me. Do you all take amphetamines in your coffee or something?

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-7

Shiraz said on

April 3rd, 2008 at 1:56 pm

Word opens a doc in about 5 seconds for me, but I can’t actually do anything to that doc for another minute. It’s gotten to the point where I actually cringe if I accidentally open something with Word. Plus it crashes often. I’ve switched to Pages. I only go back to Word now for grammar checking since Pages’s grammar checker sucks whereas Word’s spell checker sucks. Using both programs (and wasting more time than I should) I can actually get stuff done!

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Pakk99 said on

April 3rd, 2008 at 1:59 pm

I just timed Word 2008 on my 2×2.66 Dual-Core Mac Pro with 8 GB of memory, and Word took 24 seconds to load, and 43 seconds before I could access a menu. And, switching from PowerPoint to Word took 17 seconds, and 81 seconds before I could access a menu. These results vary slightly each time we open Office 2008, but they are fairly consistent on each of our 4 Mac Pro’s.

DChu said on

April 3rd, 2008 at 2:06 pm

Why you have to pay for MS Office? Try OpenOffice. It has all the major functions for doc and spreadsheet, good enough for most people and businesses.

Martin said on

April 3rd, 2008 at 2:11 pm

I must be the lucky one, then. As soon as a document’s open it’s ready to use; no crashes or anything yet, just the annoying Spaces glitches.

Anyway, I got Office (along with my Macbook Pro) free because I work in the IT dept of a college, so I can’t really complain… I’m testing it for deployment across the college, and as much as I don’t think it’s quite ready for the students to use yet (at least another 2 updates I reckon), it’s certainly running better for me than 2004. I’ve never used Pages, mind, so maybe that would completely shift my perspective.

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-1

Fraser Drew said on

April 3rd, 2008 at 2:19 pm

I have stuck with Pages… except for a recent report, in which I had to do lots of windows people collaboration, I had to use Word, exporting in Pages does not work when u have a complicated, 20+ Page document with images, the formatting gets screwed.
However, having said that, Pages is awesome, Word is a big piece of excruciatingly slow, poor at formatting, waste of space - junk. MS NEED to start from the ground up, and have something of comparable speed and ease of use.

Bob said on

April 3rd, 2008 at 7:11 pm

I agree that all around 2008 is much better. However, I was quite suprised, or should I have been, that 2008 doesn’t support right-to-left scripting!

-1

Duncan said on

April 3rd, 2008 at 7:34 pm

Installing Office 2008 on my MacBook Pro was a terrible decision. The only thing I was really looking forward to was the speed bump I assumed I would see as a result of the programs finally being UB. Instead, they are all just as slow.

I’m not really a fan of the new layout either, though I will admit that it does look nice. The formatting palette is still there, rather than integrated with the menus at the top of the document. I don’t know about anyone else, but I like to be able to see many different windows from different programs at the same time, and the formatting palette gets in the way of that.

The most important problem with Office (for me, anyway) is the loss of VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) support. All the Add-Ins you could previously add through the Add-In menu option now no longer work. This is a problem for me, because the only reason I would ever use Office was for Excel’s Data Analysis tool pack. With that gone, I need to use computers in my school’s library to analyze lab data for lab reports.

I can’t see why anyone would want to pay $400 (or I suppose $130) for Office when OpenOffice is free, and iWork is better.

Austen Saltz said on

April 3rd, 2008 at 11:08 pm

@Duncan: Simply because it’s the industry standard. That’s why office over iwork, especially if someone wants to use their mac for work, compatibility is a huge issue. Also, openoffice and neooffice aren’t as fully matured and are not as polished, and do not have all of the features of office 2008.

And IMHO, office 2008 is a very good application.

-7

Brad said on

April 4th, 2008 at 2:11 am

While Word has improved some things, I’ve never installed software that was so long in coming and so disappointing.

Oh and by the way, it opens slower (I wonder if that 4.5 second opening time mentioned above was a first time open on a freshly booted machine, or if it had been opened, closed, and reopened).

Oh, and I run Office 2007 in Parallels, and every component opens more quickly than the Mac 2008 counterpart.

Martin said on

April 4th, 2008 at 6:29 am

Fair point Brad - I had Word open already and when I opened it again it took 4.5 seconds. On a fresh boot it takes 8. I still wouldn’t call 8 seconds a long time.

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-2

Austen Saltz said on

April 4th, 2008 at 7:24 am

I think that people have come to expect for Word to be a powerhouse. It’s not the application you open to do a quick read-through. It’s for serious writing and work, and it’s got a load of features to help with that.

-9

Martin said on

April 4th, 2008 at 8:56 am

Well, I’ve literally finished my first full project using nothing but Office 2008, the paper is still warm in my hands, and it looks bloody fantastic if I do say so myself. The images and tables presets have just given it that edge over any written work I’ve done before (not that I do that much, being an IT technician), and it took basically no extra effort on my part.

Judging by the comments on here though, I think I’ll be taking a look at Pages very soon to compare…

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Martin said on

April 4th, 2008 at 8:57 am

That was meant to say “literally just finished my first full project”. Kind of lost a bit of the impact there…

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dex said on

April 4th, 2008 at 11:18 am

I was waiting for its release - I wanted to buy Office. Then I got a new MBP with Leopard, tried iWork and was very satisfied with it, more then with NeoOffice. Then MS Office came out - I tried it - I don’t want it anymore. It’s not worth it. Only (and I really mean it) thing that it’s good for is compatibility with Windows Word. But other than that… No way.

Jake said on

April 4th, 2008 at 11:31 am

No one know is you can do turbian style papers with 2008? I need to know before I can make a purchase.

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jim said on

April 4th, 2008 at 12:18 pm

I really do not understand why anyone would pay for MS office when you could use neo office for free. It basically gives you the functionality of office 97.

dex said on

April 4th, 2008 at 2:32 pm

Jim, this is usually case of most of the new software versions. But it isn’t only functionality that counts. What about ease of use, stability, speed and interface, eg.? Unfortunately, Office:mac 2008 is not really a good example for improvement (although it certainly is much better than the old ‘97 ).

Bruce A said on

April 4th, 2008 at 4:17 pm

Martin, what kind of Mac are you running? I’ve got a MacBook (original 1.83ghz Core Duo) with 2gb of RAM. From launch to ready to type is thirty seconds. I can have Mellel or TextWrangler open in about five seconds. It could certainly be a lot worse but it’s still pretty darned slow.

fridge said on

April 10th, 2008 at 10:19 am

There are better word processors then Word. There are better presentation applications then Power Point, but… Excel is (was) Excel and there is no real competition. The downside is that the new Excel does not support Macros? So from an Excel point of view, our new shiny Office has become semi-cross platform (the only app in the Office suite that does not have a viable mac alternative is no longer cross platform… coincidence?, I don’t think so). I feel pretty screwed by MS that they can not get their act together and support macros, independent of platforms. But hey, don’t we mac users love being punished by MS? Paying and upgrading year after year… and then, oops, sorry… by the way… no support in our new shiny Office suite for all the hundreds and hundreds of documents and spreadsheets you have previously created with Macro functionality! Is there any other reputable software company one feel less secure with buying software from then MS? In my opinion, the best thing one can do is to get as far away and as little dependent as possible as one can from MS, or next update they pull the plug on both Word and Excel and leave us with PowerPoint.

jonathan said on

April 15th, 2008 at 9:54 am

There may be better products out there, I’m not really qualified to judge. Having said that, I don’t understand why so many of you are having so many troubles with Office for Mac ‘08. I use Windows Office 2003 (obviously government! lol) at work and Office for Mac ‘08 at home. Granted, I may not be operating on the same level as many of you, but I haven’t encountered many of the basic problems you complain of. I haven’t had ANY compatability problems with Windows Office 2003. Neither do I see my programs loading slowly. There is no ‘lag’ between loading and accessing programs. I like the fancy visual presentation of it and find the menus easily accessible and not in my way. I have no experience with Visual Basic and cannot comment on that, though it seems to be a major downfall for many users. All in all, it seems to be a good program to me.

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Johan Forssblad said on

April 28th, 2008 at 3:18 am

Hi,
I must say I was disappointed when I upgraded (?) from Microsoft Office v.X (since 2004) to Microsoft Office 2008 for Macintosh.
Excel is the worst. Things which worked before are now not working and need rework to show up properly. It is very slow with all these buttons that are displayed in film like sequences instead of popping up immediately. Fun the first time, but after a while you only want speed and no fance gimmics. (It really feels like it is time to buy a new computer again but I have it running on a 2.66 Mac Pro Quad core with 6 GB of RAM.)
Word 2008 has crashed or had to be shut down about five times a day.
Yesterday it said I couldn’t save my 4.7 MB document because the disk was full. There was 50 GB free. No other disks helped. Nothing but to shoot it down and restart Office. Then there was enought space for Word to save when I had retyped my changes …
There seems not to be many new good things I had wished for or expected after four years of development. Mostly more fancy and CPU consuming GUI.
I’m more or less forced to use Office because some of our customers and clients require us to sent our diagrams and documents in a compatible format which they can edit and send back and forth without screwing up graphics, layout etc.
I wish I could get our money back! Don’t buy it yet! It is far from a finished product in my honest opinion despite I have the latest autoupdate installed.

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Tom Shannen said on

May 9th, 2008 at 11:31 pm

Mac Pro went back to Apple - without macros in excel you have a children’s homework spreadsheet. Spreadsheets can not be setup to run extensive “what if scenarios” by changing a parameter and seeing what happens to the results. This is an important feature for business. In excel 2008 your choice is the deadly XXXX instead of a calculation or going through every calculation of the spreadsheet and changing that parameter. Maybe Microsoft did this to keep marketshare in the business world - Paranoid?

amin said on

June 25th, 2008 at 1:37 pm

Specs: macbook, 2.4ghz core 2 duo, 2gb ram

Why does anybody even care about Word? there are many programs that people can use as replacement (abiword being a great choice). Same with powerpoint…i mean these two programs do not have features that are that original.

Excel on the other hand is different. Knowing excel pretty well, I have to say this was the only concern I had switching over to mac…as I have heard many bad things about ms office for mac (2004 floating toolbars was LAME). I havent even tried 2008 because of all the bad reviews.

I am trying NeoOffice which I understand is pretty darn compatible with office. The spreadshee program is pretty decent. Havent got to the point of using lookup tables, or filtering data or anything (where my concerns are- support for complex formulas as well). But overall its not bad at all. My second choice would be iwork…although i hear Numbers (iworks equiv. to excel) sucks!