[Kiminao]

mdawson mentioned the Converter from MS to allow Office 2004 to open .docx files. Yes, indeed, such a converter exists--it takes up nearly 200MB and, on my new Macbook Pro, can require up to 30 seconds to open a three-page Word 2008 file.
30 seconds to convert a word processing file.
Let me say that once more--30 seconds.
When Word 6 was released, with a new file format, MS released a converter so Word 5.1a users could open the new format. That converter was about a megabyte, and it, too, took about 30 seconds to open the new format--on my PowerBook 140. Those files were typically in the area of 100-300 KB for 50-100 pages.
What's wrong with this picture?

[afriedma]

My recollection was that the default in Office 2004 was to open a new document when any application was opened, but it was easy to turn off. I too am maddened by the same issue in 2008, and I can't seem to figure out how to turn it off.

[afriedma]

Of course Word 2008 is slow, what did you expect? Anyone who has worked much with MS software knows that the first iteration of anything they do is too slow. Don't worry, by the time they get to version 12.3, a year or two from now, it will be faster and more stable. B-)

[donlfrank1]

I use both versions of Office. I far prefer the older, more powerful Office 2004, but it is not completely compatible with Leopard, with keyboard and mouse intermittently "freezing," until you click once on another application. This problem (confirmed by Microsoft to be a Rosetta bug) is so annoying that when I don't need power I use the new, dumbed down version of Excel.

[DVA_Airwolf]

Best advice I could add to the MS Office 2008 Survival Guide...
Don't install it and stick with MS Office 2004 for at least another year, after enjoying how much MS messed everything up with the latest .12 updater as the basis for my advice.
Joy.

[macavenger]

jamus said:

... I often hide Excel rather than Quit. If it is hidden with no windows open (app still open mind you, just no windows), and then I click the Excel dock icon, it wants to "help" me by making a new document. What is odd though is that if you "apple + tab" to go through apps and select Excel, it will not make a new document.


I am guessing it is a checkbox somewhere to disable this "help", but I have not found it yet. And as another poster pointed out, Word also does this. I have not tried it with PowerPoint, though I am guessing it is common to Office 2008. Any luck finding the off switch?

Umm... Unless I am missing something here, this is standard and expected behavior for ANY mac application that uses document style windows. Try this:

1. Open Safari. Safari opens to a new default home page window
2. Close the default window
3. Click the Safari icon in the dock. Safari opens a new default home page window.

Or try it with TextEdit. Or Mail. Or, as I said, just about any other application. Exact same behavior as you are describing with office. There are exceptions of course - Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator (perhaps the entire creative suite?) and, of course, as mentioned Office 2004 don't display this behavior - but from what I can tell, this is just an example of Office doing exactly what it is supposed to, for a change. Actually, I seem to recall this being the recommended behavior as per Apple's human interface guidelines, although it has been a while since I read through those. I HIGLY doubt there is a switch to turn this behavior off, anymore than there is in Safari, or TextEdit, or Mail.

[wgallagher]

The space-after fix is great when you're in Word (I hear you about it being 'better' to allow automatic spacing but it makes lists look awful). However, the same problem remains when you copy and paste out of Word.
Specifically, I will write in Word 2008 with this annoying space-after switched off yet if I copy and paste into Mail, I get double blank lines between every paragraph.
Yes, I do "Paste and Match Style" but it doesn't make a difference.
And, especially aggravating, if you examine the gap between the paragraphs you see it isn't only return characters: it's return, space, return. Why did Word ignore my spacing, put its own in and decide to throw in a space for free?
Today I saved the Word doc as RTF, opened it in TextEdit and copied and pasted from there, just to get rid of thing thing.
Fortunately I do write most emails in Mail itself, but longer pieces and certain parts of my job are done better in Word so this is a daily annoyance that Help doesn't appear to help.
If you know a way to fix, even if it's that you can see I'm being stupid, please tell me.
Thanks,
William

[dcrowley]

Why does "spell check" not work in MS Word 2008?

[wgallagher]

I forgot one: another impossible to understand bug.
Write some text, select a portion of it and choose Word Count from the Tools menu. That works fine, you get the familiar panel with the count in it. But create yourself a Word keystroke for Word Count, do exactly the same except press the keys instead of choosing the menu and you get the same panel - just with different numbers.
Significantly different. And wrong. It was causing me problems at work because a content production system was expecting a very specific character count and I was over-writing by two or three words each time.
William

[mdawson]

Quote

kirkmc wrote:

>

Quote

Re AppleScript: I never said it would replace VBA, I said "limited support".

Not to nitpick, Kirk, but stating that, ?Office 2008 provides limited support for AppleScript and Automator? implies something very different from stating that Applescript and Automator are limited replacements for VBA. You indeed did not state that Applescript would replace VBA, but your statement could easily be interpreted to imply that Applescript could do so yet Microsoft chose to support that capability in a limited capacity. While it was not your intent the statement is misleading.

Quote

kirkmc wrote:

>

Quote

As for the converter, this article was actually written a couple of months ago (writing for print means a long lead-time), and the final version of that convertor was not available at the time, nor was the Office 2004 upgrade.

Understood. But as you are now posting on Macworld.com and it has been several months since it was composed, there should probably be a disclaimer stating that some things may have changed. At the very least, a note could have been added to the end of the section on compatibility indicating that the latest upgrades for Office 2004 include support for files created in Office 2007/2008. Others have done as much with articles where new information surfaces within a few hours.

Quote

kirkmc wrote:

>
In any case, it's much easier to not have to deal with a standalone convertor.

The beta was a solely standalone converter. Version 1.0 is not embedded in Office 2004, but it is automatically evoked when you attempt to open an OOXML file; it can also be used as standalone converter if the user wished to do so. The option to save your document as an Office 2008 document is added to the format drop down menu in the Save As? dialog of Office 2004 applications if the converter is installed on your Mac.

[djdto]

Hey There - This happens in Word, PowerPoint and in Excel. Unfortunately, I don't know the answer, but if anyone knows, please share!

[mdawson]

What converter did you download? The image file for version 1.0 (current) is 44.6 MB and installed the actual utility is 19 MB.

[joekewe]

I've been fighting the same "new document window" problem in Office 08. I haven't found a setting to stop this behavior. This particular human doesn't agree with this Apple Human-Interface guideline. One extra window to close when I just want to switch to Word and open an existing file.
In addition to the two reasons Kirk cites for "No Double-Clicking" to open documents (related to bad type or creator), Office 2008 also had a problem opening some existing Excel files (not sure about Word/PPT) that it claimed had font problems. It affected several of my old spreadsheets. Fortunately, this bug was fixed in the most recent 12.1.2 update.
That said, Office 2008 has been reasonable stable and quick -- or maybe it's the new 2.5GHz MBP!?

[Kiminao]

Ah, those would be nearly 200 Canadian megabytes, which, at the current conversion rate, are 19 US ones...



Hmm.



But nonetheless the time to open the (small) file I mentioned is correct and ridiculously slow, on new, fast hardware.