[sharpy]

Hey there, I'm just about to buy a brand new MacBook and will need to buy an office suite very soon to use for uni. Even though pages is much much cheaper I don't really want the hassle of compatibility issues; my uni doesn't even officially accept Office 2007 format yet. PDFs will be my workaround :)

But anyway, I have been using Office 2007 for 6 months or so now and I really love it, especially the auto citations and bibliographies in Word (I'm so glad I don't have to resort to a style guide to figure out what APA formatting is) and the new slide styles in PP.

I've read a bit about Office 2008 especially and I'm worried that the interface will be waay different to 2007; I'm just wondering for anyone out there who's used both, will be be able to do the same things in 2008? My big thing has been using the auto stylesin Word 2007 to make my documents pretty, and the templates thing in 2008 doesn't seem anywhere near as powerful. Any suggestions?

Excuse my rambling:p

Sharpy

[jpp_zoso]

i'm using ms office 2003 (win/vm), ms office 2007 (win/vm), and ms office 2008 (mac) all on the same macbook pro at work and don't have any troubles w/ the varying gui's. use ms office 2004 (mac) at home, so that's a 4th gui i use regularly w/ no problems. i never use the default/canned formatting features, in fact i spend quite a bit of time trying to turn all that stuff off and/or correcting the stuff i can't turn off when ms office decides it constantly wants to think for me and apparently feels it knows better than i do what i'm doing or not doing...so i can't really speak to the autoformatting options you mention. never had to use a bibliography feature either. of the 3 flavors of office, i think the office 2008 gui is going to be my favorite...sorta blends office 2003 and office 2007 gui's together w/ the standard mac twist...haven't used it quite enough yet to know for absolute sure. my office 2003 toolbars are heavily customized and have had pretty much the same setup since office 97. even matched those toolbars as best i could in office 2004. i use office 2007 only when i have too, usually to help someone else at work finger out how to do something.

[MacosNerd]

I found working with the different interfaces of office to be troubling. For me its office 2003 and office 2007 (pc versions). I've gotten used to how things operate and exist with the older versions of office. It slows me down to shift gears and locate them on that foolish ribbon.

I also found using older versions of office for the mac to be a little sluggish compared to its windoze brethren. Finally also consider VBA, if you use it at all. Office Mac does not support VBA any longer so if you rely that you need to be consider that issue.

On my MBP, I use iWork for some light work, but mostly I use office 2007 (my office uses office 2003)

[sharpy]

Hey thanks for your help mate, much appreciated. I have read about that whole VBA thing and I'm really not too flustered about it, considering that I've never used it before! And I understand those concerns about the new interface, but fortunately I never really did get used to the old interface (being pretty young and not having a clue about the hidden features), so I've found the new ribbon interface really great to use.

I suppose my main concern is how different from the ribbon the Office 2008 interface will be. But it seems that I'll still be able to do some things to make my documents look good, so I'm not too fussed.

Thanks again for your help! Anyone else know the differences between Word 2007 and 2008 first hand?

[smax013]

sharpy said:

Hey thanks for your help mate, much appreciated. I have read about that whole VBA thing and I'm really not too flustered about it, considering that I've never used it before! And I understand those concerns about the new interface, but fortunately I never really did get used to the old interface (being pretty young and not having a clue about the hidden features), so I've found the new ribbon interface really great to use.

I suppose my main concern is how different from the ribbon the Office 2008 interface will be. But it seems that I'll still be able to do some things to make my documents look good, so I'm not too fussed.


Thanks again for your help! Anyone else know the differences between Word 2007 and 2008 first hand?

Keep in mind that the old interface is HIGHLY customizeable. With the old interface (i.e. menus and toolbars), you can turn on different toolbars and add additional buttons to those toolbars or create your own. While I have not tried, I am guessing that you can "recreate" a lot of the ribbon configuration with toolbars in the old interface (there will be some things that you cannot do, however). OTOH, the ribbon interface is decidedly uncustomizeable from my limited experience (I am like the other poster...I takes me a while to find stuff in the 2007 interface and it drives me freakin' nuts).

[MacosNerd]

sharpy said:

Hey thanks for your help mate, much appreciated.

No Problem, glad my $.02 helped :)

Quote

Thanks again for your help! Anyone else know the differences between Word 2007 and 2008 first hand?

One more issue that has come to mind since I last used office for the Mac vs. windows flavors. Performance. I found at times excel and word to be much more sluggish on the Mac then the PC. I cannot say if that was an issue for older versions of Office and 2008 is fine but I can say to consider it when deciding.

[sharpy]

I know what you mean about the sluggishness thing; I've talked to a few people who have said the same thing, and they tend to prefer how iWork runs. Unfortunately though, I've had to rule out iWork because of the compatibility problems I've heard about. Not only has my Uni still not switched to 2007, if I were to use iWork I think it would make things much more difficult!

Although on second thoughts maybe I shouldn't rule out iWork, I can always just hand in PDFs can't I? (And it's soooo much cheaper!) I'll definitely be making good use of the 30-day trial.

And again on sluggishness, I don't think it would be a problem, because I've never had a computer as capable as my Mac will be! Sluggish on the Mac is still probably going to be faster than Office on the other computers in my house :p

[smax013]

sharpy said:

I know what you mean about the sluggishness thing; I've talked to a few people who have said the same thing, and they tend to prefer how iWork runs. Unfortunately though, I've had to rule out iWork because of the compatibility problems I've heard about. Not only has my Uni still not switched to 2007, if I were to use iWork I think it would make things much more difficult!

Although on second thoughts maybe I shouldn't rule out iWork, I can always just hand in PDFs can't I? (And it's soooo much cheaper!) I'll definitely be making good use of the 30-day trial.


And again on sluggishness, I don't think it would be a problem, because I've never had a computer as capable as my Mac will be! Sluggish on the Mac is still probably going to be faster than Office on the other computers in my house :p

I have not found the sluggishness of the Mac versions of Office (that has existed since leaving Word 5.1 behind) to not be a burden. Do I notice that my Windoze PeeCee versions of Office is more "snappy" than the Mac versions? You bet. Is it enough of an issue that it bothers me and causes me day to day "issues" when I use the Mac version...nope. I mainly notice it when starting up an Office 2004 app...seems like the little freakin' icon sits there gleefully bounce in the Dock FOREVER (kind does make you want to smash the little icon with a baseball bat). :)

[shades]

Another disadvantage of the Mac versions (although also an advantage in terms of virus holes). The Mac versions do not support ActiveX. That is significant if you develop Userforms - I have been involved in trying to make a project cross platform, and it involves considerable work arounds.

I used Office Pro 2003 for the past five years (specifically Excel and Access), and really did not like going back to Office 2004 on the Mac. Word was OK, because I never used Word on the Windows side, yet used it regularly on the Mac side.

Now that I am no longer in corporate work (as of 2 weeks ago), I have moved almost exclusively to non-Microsoft solutions on the Mac.