[Macworld]

Post your comments for Basic lesson: Microsoft listens to its users here

[Jarmo]

Good for MacBU!
After a big brainstorming session MS figured out pushing customers towards Open Office is indeed a bad idea, for MS if not the world.
We're Office v.X at work (with no upgrades in sight) and I've been using NeoOffice at home for a while now.
This decade saw very bad performance from MacBU, maybe next one will go better. I'm holding my breath.

[Pascal007]

Jarmo : it may be a bad idea for MS, for sure, but sure it is a good idea for the rest of the world !
Like in Vista's case, this brain dead decision shows that Microsoft strongly believed that they could impose anything they wished on to the world, only to discover that upgrade sales are not automatic anymore because we now have access to good (or better) alternatives and that switching to those alternatives is almost pain free nowadays. Open Office is not there yet in terms of interface, but the fundamentals are there and OO3 is very usable... and at least as fast as Office 2008 .
As for myself, I tried Office 2008 on a friend's computer (a recent Intel Mac) for a few days, only to run back to O2k4 (on my older-by-the-day PowerPC PowerBook G4). This 2008 version is slow, buggy, and even inefficient, design-wise. Worst, when you look at it, there is very little new useful stuff. One wonders what was took so long. One would think that reprogramming on a new base would have resulted in a faster, leaner, meaner code base. But this bloatware is all but that ! Moreover, whatever is changed is almost always for the worst. The new all-in-one window, for instance, is a programming hack that makes no sense and does not respect either the Mac or even the Windows aesthetics : give me my palettes back ! For me, 2008 is the worst Office version since Word 6...
And for the record, I am not a grumpy old man : I'm usually the first on the block to try new stuff. If I hate something new, it has to be bad. Real bad. ;-) Then again, maybe is it because MS Office represents the days gone by, and OpenOffice, the future ?

[WilfredLaurier]

Macworld said:

But Microsoft has reversed course, announcing Tuesday that Visual Basic will return to Office for Mac with the next full release of the software. It's a great move, but it's unfortunate that users will need to wait for years before they can see the fruits of this decision.

Now from reading MacBU's blog posts on this matter, I understand the technical reason behind not having VBA support in Office 2008. The previous VBA implementation was basically hand coded for the PPC architecture and Codeweaver so most of it would need to be rewritten just to bring it into XCode before even porting to Intel.

While it's great that MacBU has reversed it's decision and is bringing VBA back to Mac, I think it might actually be a waste of time. If I'm not mistaken, Microsoft is trying to encourage users to transition from VBA to VSTO as part of the .NET transition. In 2-3 years time, there will no doubt still be a lot of VBA holdouts, but likely quite a few VSTO users too. It would probably be more worth MacBU's time to be more forward thinking and devote their time to bringing a VSTO implementation to Mac. If they could do both VBA and VSTO well then that would be great, but if they could only do one, making a full featured VSTO implementation might make more sense.

[jamus]

Ok, so i have raked them over the coals for Silverlight, I guess it is only fair that I give them a big thumbs up for bringing back VBA. My fingers are crossed.

[palane]

My short reaction is YES!!!
This is great news for users. When MS decided not to include VBA, out the window went every third party product that relies on VBA. End Note? Gone. My wife's a translator; her work relied on a plug-in. Waiting a year to update Office would have been much better in my view; better late than useless.
I disagree with the Neo Office crowd. I've played with it and was planning on shifting to it if I had to. However, I doubt that one gets the same functionality. The solver appears to work differently. I also live in a mixed platform environment and all presentations must be PowerPoint.
This is good news. I'm not a PowerPoint fan, but Excel is one of the finest applications I've ever used.
BB

[Steve_S]

Macworld said:

Basic lesson: Microsoft listens to its users

Huh? What kind of spin is that? If Microsoft listened to its users, they would have taken note at the backlash they were given in 2006 when they announced they were pulling VBA support.

I understand the technical challenge they were faced with. But, let's be honest here. Microsoft knew they couldn't deliver VBA for Intel Macs in 2008. They probably also knew that strategically, VBA on Macs is something they need to do. I don't believe any of this is a surprise to Microsoft and that they are just now reacting to this. This spin about how "Microsoft listens to its users" just isn't believable. Microsoft couldn't deliver. Period. They are now playing the nice guy by letting us know how they're listening. BS! If Microsoft really wants to do the right thing, they will retrofit Office 2008 with VBA, even if they have to deliver a 400MB service pack in the process.

I suspect Microsoft's "listening" has more to do with sales and lack of institutional upgrades due to compatibility related issues. I also suspect more and more Mac users are driven to OpenOffice based solutions as a result of Microsoft dropping the ball.

I've spent some time with Office 2008 and would agree that it's a reasonable upgrade, particularly the Pages like layout features in Word. That said, I primarily used Office on the Mac for the compatibility of my PC based work files. Now, I have to use NeoOffice for that. I'm finding iWork to be more and more a viable solution for my Mac based day to day office productivity needs. If iWork continues to evolve as it is, I'm not sure I'll much care what MS does in 2011.

[Achiever]

Griffman,
I'm confused....I was under the impression that as a function of installing any newer version of Office for Mac, I had to delete the old version from my system for the new one to function. Was I mistaken? Can I have Office 2004 & 2008 on my computer simultaneously and use each as needed? Any problematic backlash from doing that? Thanks.

[MorrisTheCat]

While certainly a welcome development, I wonder if this will be a case of 'too little, too late' for many Mac Office users. Let's be honest, Microsoft's product dev cycle seems to be measured in geologic ages these days. We're looking at a loooong wait, only to get what might be a buggy implementation of VBA, and having to pay full price again.
I don't know. Seems like a good time to be looking at alternative products, or like Rob says, just stick with Office 2004 for now.
FWIW, I recently got a copy of Office 2008 for Mac for only $25 through my company's Home Use agreement they have with MS. I figured for 25 bucks, why not pick it up? Well, I'm disappointed in how much of a slug the new apps are on my iMac G5. It runs much slower than Office 2004. Haven't had the chance to install the SP1 yet, but I'm hoping it improves performance, because right now the new office feels almost unusable. I still have 2004 installed and will continue to use that if they don't find a way to improve it.

[MorrisTheCat]

Achiever said:

Griffman,

I'm confused....I was under the impression that as a function of installing any newer version of Office for Mac, I had to delete the old version from my system for the new one to function. Was I mistaken? Can I have Office 2004 & 2008 on my computer simultaneously and use each as needed? Any problematic backlash from doing that? Thanks.

You totally can have both versions. The new Office 2008 installer will offer to uninstall the older versions, but you can just uncheck the box when it finds your old version, and it will leave it alone. That's what I did, because I had a sneaking suspicion that I would still want to have 2004 around for a while.

[Schwieb]

Very nice of Rob to link to my old post. Here's a followup: http://www.schwieb.c...o-visual-basic/

[Martian]

bq. ARTICLE QUOTE: “Finally, if you’re using an Intel Mac, and you simply must have VBA support now and need 100-percent file format compatibility, you could invest in Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion, Windows XP or Vista, and Office 2007 for Windows. Of course, this would be a costly solution, but it would give you full VBA support and file format compatibility.”
My guess is that most people who must have full compatibility with Office 2007, also have other Windows compatibility needs and therefore already have or should have Windows running on their Macintels. If that is the case, following the quoted workaround only entails one additional purchase…Office 2007 itself.
Now if we can only prevail on Microsoft to offer an even exchange on Office 2007 for the useless Office 2008 purchases already made.

[griffman]

I would've linked to the new one, but it didn't exist at the time I wrote this piece :). Thanks for the follow-up blog, and the info it contains. As you may have read in a couple of replies here, the closer you can get us to 100% Windows VBA parity in the next Office release, the happier we'll all be!

-rob.

[maclia]

Macworld wrote:
But what if you’re receiving files in the newer “docx” or “pptx” file format? You can ask those creating such files to save them in older formats, or use Microsoft’s file format converter to convert them to an older format—but unfortunately, you can’t use the converter on Excel (xlsx) files.
I have had no problems renaming these files to "doc" or "ppt" or "xls" (ie. just dropping the "x" from the extension) and then opening them in OS X.4, X.5 and windows xp.