Is it just me, or is Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac really, really terrible? Here is a list of my grievances, please add to it:
1. The menus have completely changed in the past few versions. Coming from a slightly older version, I have no idea where everything is.
2. The UI is ugly as sin, and many of the charts/graphics/autoshapes are hideous bubbles, rounded, shaded, highlighted, overly complex and distracting to the eye.
3. Excel has a terrible date bug. It uses two different epochs (two different dates are used as zero). These epochs are 4 years and a day apart, it seems. I can't tell when it chooses to use each epoch, but I am having a hell of a time copying data from Excel 97 .xls spreadsheets to Excel 2008 .xlsx spreadsheets.
4. When I open an older PowerPoint presentation from my Windows machine on the new Mac, the PowerPoint file itself is immediately modified and the new version is saved, replacing the original version. Don't change my files without asking! I never clicked save or save as! If you need to convert it to a newer format, create a copy! What exactly are the changes, you ask? Why, of course the font colors are all changed, the fonts and text sizes are changed, and the arrows are made shorter and given smaller heads. Not only does the new version look idiotically stupid, but the original version is gone forever, and it never even asked if I wanted to replace it.
5. Excel really doesn't work with Spaces and multiple instances. Often, when I click "OK" to an Excel dialog box, it automatically pushes me into the adjacent Spaces screen. I have to Control-arrow myself back into the proper space. Another problem I had: When I had two instances/windows of Excel open at once containing two different files, file A would always be in focus and on top, and file B would NEVER be in focus on top. I would click on file B, and it just wouldn't come to the top. I finally closed file A, then file B worked. I reopened file A and again, file B was made totally inaccessible. Doing Expose and then clicking on file B simply brought file A to the foreground.
There are three improvements in Office 2008 for Mac, though. These improvements are relative to an older version of Office which was not necessarily the most recent predecessor:
1. The insert > name > define dialog box is much better in Excel. I do a lot of working with arrays, and you define arrays in this dialog box. It works so much better now than in the past, because it doesn't autoclose itself all the damn time.
2. You can export PowerPoints as a series of images really easily, which was simply impossible before.
3. When typing a formula in Excel, it can now autocomplete the function name and it tells you the syntax of the function.
1. The menus have completely changed in the past few versions. Coming from a slightly older version, I have no idea where everything is.
2. The UI is ugly as sin, and many of the charts/graphics/autoshapes are hideous bubbles, rounded, shaded, highlighted, overly complex and distracting to the eye.
3. Excel has a terrible date bug. It uses two different epochs (two different dates are used as zero). These epochs are 4 years and a day apart, it seems. I can't tell when it chooses to use each epoch, but I am having a hell of a time copying data from Excel 97 .xls spreadsheets to Excel 2008 .xlsx spreadsheets.
4. When I open an older PowerPoint presentation from my Windows machine on the new Mac, the PowerPoint file itself is immediately modified and the new version is saved, replacing the original version. Don't change my files without asking! I never clicked save or save as! If you need to convert it to a newer format, create a copy! What exactly are the changes, you ask? Why, of course the font colors are all changed, the fonts and text sizes are changed, and the arrows are made shorter and given smaller heads. Not only does the new version look idiotically stupid, but the original version is gone forever, and it never even asked if I wanted to replace it.
5. Excel really doesn't work with Spaces and multiple instances. Often, when I click "OK" to an Excel dialog box, it automatically pushes me into the adjacent Spaces screen. I have to Control-arrow myself back into the proper space. Another problem I had: When I had two instances/windows of Excel open at once containing two different files, file A would always be in focus and on top, and file B would NEVER be in focus on top. I would click on file B, and it just wouldn't come to the top. I finally closed file A, then file B worked. I reopened file A and again, file B was made totally inaccessible. Doing Expose and then clicking on file B simply brought file A to the foreground.
There are three improvements in Office 2008 for Mac, though. These improvements are relative to an older version of Office which was not necessarily the most recent predecessor:
1. The insert > name > define dialog box is much better in Excel. I do a lot of working with arrays, and you define arrays in this dialog box. It works so much better now than in the past, because it doesn't autoclose itself all the damn time.
2. You can export PowerPoints as a series of images really easily, which was simply impossible before.
3. When typing a formula in Excel, it can now autocomplete the function name and it tells you the syntax of the function.
