do you know what i like about excel for mac?

[matiao]

Nothing.

it's like using thumb screws, without the pleasure of knowing that you are not doing it to yourself.

seriously, i need to make some easy easy graphs for my uni work; its not hard to do, i manage on vista, i was above average with office 97 to whatever.

but this? this takes the cake.

i am trying to make five graphs, and every time i select my data it comes out with a different result.

for gods sake it is graphing my categoricals as variables; its even tried to graph my freakin data labels.
The best part is that i can use the same method twice and get different results.
it would be laughable if i didn't actually need this today.

this, along with the lack of macros, really makes me not ever want to buy a mac again.

i have two already, but... still.

 

[miles01110]

i am trying to make five graphs, and every time i select my data it comes out with a different result.

Sounds like an 80/20 problem to me, honestly. Creating graphs in Excel isn't that hard.

The best part is that i can use the same method twice and get different results.

That's not really how things work. You must be doing something different.

this, along with the lack of macros, really makes me not ever want to buy a mac again.

That kind of logic will get you far in life.

 

[matiao]

Sounds like an 80/20 problem to me, honestly. Creating graphs in Excel isn't that hard.



That's not really how things work. You must be doing something different.



That kind of logic will get you far in life.

i don't deny that i don't know how to use it properly. but thats the thing, it should be no different to excel in vista, which i demonstrably know how to use.

and, no, i do things the same every time. every. damn. time.

i just went to change the x-axis on one of the graphs. my bar graph is in percentages, it picked that up on four graphs, but this last one has the labels without the percent symbol.

i changed it to read as percent, and the whole axis went from 0-100 to 0%-1000%.
How? my numbers add up to 100!
what? i just dont get it.

 

[MrCheeto]

iWork.

Say goodbye to all headaches.

I was never able to piece together a spreadsheet, not to mention functions, before I started using the iWork apps. Also, you can mix tables and charts and spreadsheets or whatever, across all the apps.

It doesn't get any better.

You could drag and drop all of this right into a Pages document! (Pages≥Word)

As for compatibility, it couldn't be simpler. PowerPoint files open in Keynote, .doc files open in Pages, and .exl or whatever Excel files are, open in Numbers.

 

[igucl]

To Matiao:

I hear ya. It really isn't an exaggeration to represent the experience as slow torture. For anyone accustomed to the windows version of excel, that's exactly what trying to use the mac version feels like. Well put.

My need for Office is really the only reason I maintain my bootcamp partition. It causes me to cringe just to think about trying to do anything in the mac version.

 

[MrCheeto]

Why use Office at all? iWork integrates perfectly in my Office-dominated work environments. One of my bosses actually hates me because my Mac works so seamlessly in his office. Why? I'll never know. XD

 

[matiao]

Why use Office at all? iWork integrates perfectly in my Office-dominated work environments. One of my bosses actually hates me because my Mac works so seamlessly in his office. Why? I'll never know. XD

why? because every single one of the 40000 computers that my university uses has office.

i'm not going to go and learn a new platform so i can write my thesis.

it should work. it doesn't.

boot camp here i come. at least i can get a student license for windoze cheap through uni.

 

[MrCheeto]

Well, at the very least you should know that it's Microsoft's coding and design, not Apple's.

 

[matiao]

okay, so i've decided that i'm not using 2008 ever again. it took me forty seconds to graph in 04, and even better, i got to choose my x axis labels, it wasn't arbitrarily chosen for me.

thanks, to the useless -deleted- who wrote the software. you are a bunch of monkeys who couldn't organise a root in a brothel. well done, you've successfully wasted half my day and made me want to maim kittens.

well done you.

oh wow.

this is just. wow.

now it wont let me put a graph from 2004 into word 2008 properly.

it changes the formatting!

yarg! stand still while i practice my stabbin'!

 

[Gregg2]

Could all these problems be due to the fact that MS dropped VBA support in Office 2008? That is a major difference between 2004 and 2008, and it's supposed to be back in Office 2011.

 

[GGJstudios]

i don't deny that i don't know how to use it properly.

Funny how Apple and Microsoft are being blamed for what is, quite obviously, inexperience on the part of the user. Graphing in Excel 2008 works very well, for those of us who have taken the time to learn how to use it.

Could all these problems be due to the fact that MS dropped VBA support in Office 2008? That is a major difference between 2004 and 2008, and it's supposed to be back in Office 2011.

No, you don't need VBA to create graphs.

Also, you can mix tables and charts and spreadsheets or whatever, across all the apps.
You could drag and drop all of this right into a Pages document! (Pages≥Word)

I can do the same with Office. I can drag a spreadsheet from Excel into Word, put a Word document in Powerpoint, etc. It's nothing new.

 

[robrobin10]

Could all these problems be due to the fact that MS dropped VBA support in Office 2008? That is a major difference between 2004 and 2008, and it's supposed to be back in Office 2011.[/QU
Who knows may be that could be the reason ............or it can be some other way arround

 

[CaptMurdock]

I tried Office 2008. Couldn't go back to 2004 fast enough. It was as if they took everything familiar and easy to use out of Office in a deliberate attempt to make it difficult to use. I had unpleasant flashbacks to Word 6.0

I have tried iWork. It's not bad, but right now I need to economize and Office '04, I already have a license for.

 

[duky]

Do you happen to have a Windows license you can get through your University? Sounds like you could save yourself a lot of headaches by just installing Windows via Fusion/Boot Camp and using Excel 2007/2010 there. I find Excel to be fine (though its Windows counterpart is way better) but sounds like you are having real difficulty getting along with it so I would recommend just using Windows for your more sophisticated document needs, which is what setup for my girlfriend who found her Word templates from work (Windows made) really messing up in Word on the Mac.

 

[matiao]

Funny how Apple and Microsoft are being blamed for what is, quite obviously, inexperience on the part of the user. Graphing in Excel 2008 works very well, for those of us who have taken the time to learn how to use it.

I find it funny that i'm being called inexperienced.
that is only so due to the fact that i am experienced in using office on a pc. Even office 2004 for mac bears some resemblance to the windoze version.

my major complaint is that if i want to do something, it is either counter-intuitive, or just impossible.

i was showing my partner last night the funky graphs it was producing, it was once again plotting everything as one column, not as a data series.
so i changed the table by transposing it, and, hey it works.
just to amuse myself, i went back to the untransposed data and it make the same graph as the transposed data

it beggars belief that the same process can give different results.

furthermore, if i want to change the names of the x-axis columns, there is no such feature in the edit data section.

there used to be. in 2004.

where has it gone? i don't know.

No, you don't need VBA to create graphs.

i do in fact need VBA for graphing.
There is a very handy tool called gradistat that is used by scientists all over the world, written, unsurprisingly, in VBA.

it is good in this respect as you are able to compare one chart out put to another.

such as here
http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&s...PK9eUv&usg=AFQjCNEFOVgnxxBJV4tlGSiCL3nPopT6PA

my graphs are composites of sieved sand and a laser granulometer data. I want to know the Folk and Ward Mean particle size, but hey, i have to use another computer other than the $1500 macbook i bought.

feeling ripped off? you betcha.

So, i have to buy windows, to run on OSX, so i can run VBA in office.
I'll do that, because, you know, uni students are renowned for having piles of cash just lying around.

See my problem?

 

[GGJstudios]

I find it funny that i'm being called inexperienced.
that is only so due to the fact that i am experienced in using office on a pc.

No one is questioning your experience in general, or in Windows. By your own admission:

i don't deny that i don't know how to use it properly.

i do in fact need VBA for graphing.
There is a very handy tool called gradistat that is used by scientists all over the world, written, unsurprisingly, in VBA.

You don't need VBA to create graphs in Excel 2008. You may prefer it, so you can use 3rd party tools, or ad advanced functionality, but it's not required to make graphs.

It's well known and publicly stated that Office 2008 doesn't support VBA. Anyone buying the suite should know that in advance of buying it. If you want to talk about counter-intuitive and not bearing resemblance to something already known, try finding commands on the new ribbon toolbar in Office for Windows, compared to all previous versions!

 

[matiao]

No one is questioning your experience in general, or in Windows. By your own admission:

context, kthx

 

[Fa7mac]

I have a great respect for MS Ofice for Windows OS
but if you switched to a Mac you better get start using iWork: it does a pretty good job on working on your docs projectS (Pages, Keynote, Numbers are all great and easy to learn). Office for Mac is 99.9% of guaranteed Frustation, mainly cause you are custommed to it the way it works on Windows and it just doesn't on the Mac.