[Macworld]

Post your comments for Microsoft Word 2008 here

[lpaulson]

The loss of VBA is a travesty of what?
I think you mean a tragedy.

[MCJ]

Travesty is a gross distortion or farce, which I think is used correctly in this context.

[kranbollin]

I've modified my installation of Word2004 to include a bunch of macros on the toolbar for inserting various technical terms and some Greek symbols. So I assume that in Word2008, with no VBA, this would be impossible, or at least radically different to implement. The Publishing Layout looks nice, though.

[MrMe]

As reviews go, this was somewhere near the bottom. Whether you agree with the decision to remove VBA or not, you have an obligation to your audience to explain why. However, the test of any word processor are the quality of the documents that it produces and how easy is it to produce those documents. The fact is that I have created "complex, graphics-rich documents" using word-processors since 1989. Whatever their features, word processors back then had straight-forward interfaces which made their functions easy to find and easy to use. To call the Word 2008 interface "streamlined" is to turn the term on its head. Multiple modes? Two menu bars? I suppose a dandelion is also "streamlined."

[chavonuevo]

I only want to know one thing: Will it allow fonts to be organized by families?? The fact that previous versions haven't supported this, leaving me to scroll down an enormously long font list every time I want to select a new font, has been my biggest annoyance. Please tell me that they fixed it.

[Jason Snell]

Though I accept your point that we could've delved into the whys of removing VBA a bit more, I don't think it's at all essential for a review. The reason is simple: A developer can have any number of reasons and/or excuses for why they do what they do. But at the end of the day, it's what in the product that matters. People won't choose to upgrade or not based on the amount of Xcode work done by Microsoft to make Word Intel native. They will choose based on Word's features, including any speed boosts received from that background work.

To put it another way, I once knocked an excellent Mac product for a paid upgrade that had very few new features. The developer, who I like quite a bit, was very disappointed in me because he had done massive work behind the scenes that would pay dividends in future product releases. But the point was, his massive work wasn't a direct benefit to the users who were paying for that version. Users care about features and functionality (or removal of same), and while understanding the hows and whys of a product's creation can add nuance and depth of a review, I'm not convinced they are necessary. If a product has a feature that's great or terrible, I don't need to know why they came up with it or how much more work it would have been to make it good -- as a user, I just care if it's great or terrible.

[MiniMoe]

Office 2007/2008 strongly signal that it's time for governments to mandate the use of OpenOffice.Org in their agencies, as well as by those who do business with them in the form of government contracts.
Some say a document standard rather than mandated application should be used. However, as we've seen many times over, Microsoft can't be trusted to stick to any standard without bastardizing it so that it's data has at least some incompatibilities with non-Microsoft software.
The .docx format and elimination of VB script in Office 2008 is further evidence of Microsoft misusing its majority position to try to eliminate competition. I find it more than a coincident the castration of Office 2008 Excel comes at a time when Apple market share has been increasing.

[Graphos]

All I can say from a professional pre-press stand point is that with this version it seems like Microsoft has brought the terrible abomination of Publisher in to the Mac fold. A word processor should be a word processor not a page layout tool. For your church flyers, yes, it's great, but unfortunately people think you can use this crap for real publishing needs, and this is simply not true. Particularly with spot color jobs.

[GulfCoast]

Jason:

I don't know much about VBA and such, but with all due respect this feels like a shallow, inadequate review. Word is probably the most used program on the Mac and you give the reviewer maybe two pages? I feel like Macworld has decided to forego any substantive reviewing on software (I think you do a great job on hardware reviews). I expect a review of this length and depth for a niche program, not for Word.

Please consider that lots of Mac users are new to the Mac these days, so don't assume every reader has been using Mac Word for years. They haven't. I really hope you will follow this up with more substantive articles on how to get the most out of the new Office suite and how to deal with problems related to the format changes.

[Rugby]

...first time I am NOT upgrading and will seriously look at alternatives. It (Office) used to be OK but for that upgrade price I would expect more.
Feels like a relief really, no MS upgrade...my 2004 copy and others (open source) + possibly iWorks for the first time. Ahhhh

[caduceus]

Thank goodness I took advantage of the amazon.com "black Friday" deal. I got MS Office 2004 with free upgrade to 2008 for $25.
It sounds like that's about what it's worth.
For word processing I use Pages. My wife is still "corporate" so requests we have Office on our iMac. I could live without it... but it was a no-brainer at the above price.
Microsoft counts on companies buying this. Hardly anybody spending their own money can justify the cost. We needed another internet appliance around the house and I got a new Windows Vista laptop and use OpenOffice on that... it's not perfect, but it works. The laptop and additional RAM was only about $350 and OpenOffice is FREE! I'd recommend anybody check that out (for Windows or Mac OS) before you spend big bucks on MS Office.
If all you need is a word processor, use TextEdit.

[IndyJeff]

It seems like there should be two ratings for this upgrade, if you cite the big disadvantage to be the lack of VBA and Automator functions. One rating for those who use VBA/Automator, and a different rating for everyone else.
I can only remember a few times when I've ever received a document with VBA in it, and I've never used Automator or Applescript for anything. I don't know any Mac users who have, either. I suspect "we" are in the majority... :)

[grammyputer]

Any early adopters out there know if it is practical to run both Word 2004 and 2008? It sounds like I need to keep an older copy for backwards compatibility. I don't see a hurry to upgrade the Macs I'm responsible for, so if backward compatibility is an problem, I won't upgrade any.