Microsoft Office 2008 Update Available!

[@home]

Well It's early days yet but can I ask, Do you think this 'Essential' update has been an anti-climax?

Has it solved your personal problems?

For me No...Entourage still starts on it's own when I try to close it down or quite the application. Even when I do a restart..Entourage starts on its own. I have deleted it from Start Up Items but it still starts on it own. Can anyone solve that for me?

Best of luck with the update.

 

[Hairball]

It takes 3 to 4 minutes to load Entourage and Word 2008.
I have a MacPro Octo 2.8 with 10 gig of RAM.

My old Office 2004 would take 5 seconds or less.

Man I hate Micro **** !

I've held off on MS Office 2008 because I thought 2004 was decent for what it was needed for. All of these postings pretty much helped me make up my mind that 2008 is not needed.

 

[Virgil-TB2]

re-install ms office?? I have not had any problems at all and I am a power user.

I don't know what kind of a "power user" you are, but Office runs horrendously on my new 20" alum iMac, even with an extra gig of memory installed. I find this especially ridiculous since both the machine and the OS were available for testing for months before Office 2008 was released.

In my experience, Office 2008 behaves literally like bad beta software.

It takes forever to start one of the applications and then a further five to ten seconds for the graphics to settle down so that clicking on the tabs actually works. There are copious screen re-draw problems, and all graphics transitions pause before they fire. You can't even move an active window across the screen without getting a one second freeze in the application. It acts almost as if it's working over the network on a thin client or some such.

If there are users that *can* use Office in any reasonable way, I can only assume that MBU just didn't test it on all graphics chips or something. On my machine it performs so badly I find it hard to believe anyone that says it's useable at all.

I don't use/need it myself and am currently advising everyone at my place of work to avoid it. This even though our University has a blanket license making it free for anyone who wants a copy. How bad is a piece of software when you can't give it away?

 

[kolax]

I wouldn't say Office 2008 is a load of rubbish. It is good - but to me (and others) these are the main factors that are affecting user experience:

1. Load times are ridiculous.
2. Isn't snappy, very sluggish.
3. Office doesn't remember window sizes - I like having my documents centred in the screen and about 1000 pixels wide. Really irritates me having to resize it every time.
4. Paragraph spacing - never seems to remember that the user doesn't want a space between different paragraphs.

That's my top list of fixes I want addressed.

 

[MM07]

I have not gotten the auto update, I tried a few times.

I am downloading from Mactopia right now.

 

[DukeofAnkh]

That's actually a problem with Apple's spaces implementation and not Microsoft's suite. Every other app does the same thing. Seriously, if you don't know what you're talking about, don't talk.

No, this does work with every other app I've tried it with. And there was no need to be rude. It also doesn't work properly with Expose, which is equally irritating for me.

actually i am pretty sure I know what I am talking about and how to use spaces doing a search you will find the it documented here and on google... office 2008 has a problems with spaces and expose... even if word is set to appear in all spaces... and btw terrible haute smells like $%^&* ... thank you have a nice day

EDIT
and for a bit of proof for those that choose to flame before being productive....
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=office+2008+and+spaces&btnG=Google+Search

Add "and expose" to that search and the first three results are about compatibility issues with MS Office 08, Spaces, Expose and multiple monitors. Fun times.

I frequently have 3-5 Word documents open in one space (I'm a writer) and it would be nice to know what I'm switching to when I switch between them in Expose. It doesn't help that cmd+` doesn't work for them either. (I haven't installed the update yet since I'm not at home atm, but can anyone check if cmd+` works now?)

And is it so much to ask to be able to use Excel on my secondary screen? (I don't suppose there's any chance they fixed that one either? I didn't see it in the release notes.)

 

[donstenk]

Speed (lack of)

On my Intel MacBook with 4GB Ram Pages launches quicker then Word - about twice as fast at least. In fact I can start Word, click on Pages in the dock whilst Word is showing it's splash and Pages will still beat it for speed.

The one annoying thing is that iWorks has it's own file formats. It would have been so nice to store all files as ODF or DOC for sharing on a server. To have to export each version of a document is not ideal.

Does anyone here know of a way to send a Pages or Numbers file in a mail attachment without so many clicks? Something similar to Word's "Email document" in the file menu.

Needless to say MS Office will go again. I do not regret buying the iWork licences.

 

[rstone3]

Well stated

Microsoft applications have been unexpectedly quitting on my Macs for the past 20 years. I just see it as a friendly reminder that justifies my dislike of all things microsoft. I love it when my mircosoft apps crash! And I wouldn't count on any update from MS to actually solve the problem in my lifetime.

My thoughts exactly. I'll stick with my old Office X - without new proprietary file formats to force everyone to update. Better the devil you know.

 

[snakedoctor]

Hi,
Just FYI, I have a MacBook Pro Core2 Duo 2.4Ghz 4GB RAM, I just test loaded Word, Excel and Powerpoint:

Word 2008: 13 Seconds
Power Point 2008 12 Seconds
Excel 2008 6 seconds

I currently have 2687MB FREE Ram before running them. You might want to check to see how much free ram you have and whether the system is swapping, which may be why they tak so long too load.

Was that after you had it up already??? Was it before or after the update?

The first poster nailed it with his times. I have a macbook 2.2ghz, 4gigs of RAM and a 250 WD scorpion HD, and Word before the patch takes FOREVER to launch the first time after a boot. After its launched once or twice it comes up much faster.

I think your #'s are BS if thats first launch and with out the patch.

 

[xraydoc]

100+ megabytes of essentially nothing. Great...

My methods of off-setting the slow load times of the Office 2008 suite:

- install more RAM and never quit the apps. I leave Word and Excel loaded but sitting dormant. So when I go to open a Word or Excel document it opens right away. Though I do have 6GB on my desktop and 4GB in my laptop. Hurray for Microsoft giving us a reason to buy excess RAM.

- don't use Office 2008. I will avoid using it whenever possible. I'll write smaller documents or those requiring less sophisticated formatting in Nisus Writer Express and send off the .rtf file; Windows users don't know the difference since .rtf gets a Word Document icon. For anything that doesn't require the recipient have edit ability, I'll write in Pages and send a PDF. For big documents where the recipient must be able to edit, I'm stuck with Word.

 

[MM07]

Well, I just restarted after the install of the update.

My fan is now at 6000+ RPM, I opened Word and Excel and I got the beachball, everything just seems slower now.

It might be time for me to use my Time Machine.

 

[snakedoctor]

Same here. All my office apps starts within a matter of seconds. The only slow application I had was Aperture 2.0(trial edition), which got replaced by Expression Media...

Hmmm I need my boots, its getting deep in here.

Office 2003 on XP opens fast. Office 2007 opens slower, and Office 2008 on my Macbook 2.2ghz, 4gig of RAM is slower than both put together. Search "Office 2008 slow" on google. This a well known problem.

Then again you use a Zune and so maybe lame MS products are ok with you

 

[jakebarnes]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

Microsoft applications have been unexpectedly quitting on my Macs for the past 20 years. I just see it as a friendly reminder that justifies my dislike of all things microsoft. I love it when my mircosoft apps crash! And I wouldn't count on any update from MS to actually solve the problem in my lifetime.

I don't use MS Office (LaTeX and Keynote are so much better) so I can't comment on their stability but I do know that since I've installed Leopard:

• Experienced 5 kernel panics
• iDisk consumed my entire hard 3 times
• Could not pair Bluetooth devices until 10.5.2
• Safari 3 crashes at least once a day
• The entire UI has become unresponsive at least twice, requiring a reboot
• Waking my MBP up has resulted in a severe white tint twice, requiring a reboot

On my iPhone:

• The UI randomly becomes unresponsive, requiring a device restart
• Safari still constantly crashes
• Mail crashes about once a week
• Somehow SMS crashed once

Software is hard to develop. Office for the Mac is amazing considering its development history: Start on the classic Mac and was then ported to Windows and then ported back to the Mac and then carbonized, then switched from CodeWarrior to gcc. That's a pretty brutal lifetime for such a massive code base. The fact that Apple's apps seem to crash just as much (I once had Leopard panic because of a double free. That's pretty sad.) as Microsoft's is a testament to Microsoft's skill considering their code base is a few orders of magnitude more complex than what I listed above.

you have a very good memory regarding negative happenings. Seems like you are doing may things wrong with your time on this planet.

 

[syzdek]

Constantly crashing

After I updated office 08 crashes constantly. It seems to occur after copying and pasting and adding comments. I may actually uninstall the update.

Prior to updating though running the sync service kept leading to a crash. Now the sync works for syncing iCal and entourage. I guess I have to choose my evil. THanks for nothing microsoft. I'd abandon WORD if Pages could actually save files as a word document rather than require an export.

 

[alshead]

Cannot Install Warning- WTF?

I have a fully licensed version of Office 2008. I did a traditional install, it's in my applications folder, I've never changed any names of any thing, and I still get this when I get to the "choose a destination" screen:

"You cannot install Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.0.1 Update on this volume. A version of the software required to install this update was not found on this volume."

Any ideas? I'm on a Macbook Core 2 Duo, running 10.5.2...

 

[adisor19]

Greetings and Salutations

I have seen an equal number of folks reporting the apps being upgraded or not being upgraded.

All four applications should be updated to 12.0.1. If you are not seeing that, could you please try a couple of things.

1) restart your machine. We did find in testing that sometimes the Finder's Desktop database did not refresh and reflect the new version.

2) launch the application and check the About box. See if the version number is correct there.

If the version number is not correct, please email me back (from the link on the left) with the name of the application (exactly as it appears on your machine) and the installer log.



Thanks

David Pelton
Microsoft MacBU

Hi David,

Just to let you know, once i had initially applied the update and noticed that Entourage was still at 12.0.0, i rebooted my MBP. IT actually gave me a hard time to reboot with a bunch of apps not wanting to quit. I found it very strange since i never have that kind of problems. In the end, i was had to hold the power button for 4s in order to shut it down. Once it had rebooted, i checked out Entourage and it was still at 12.0.0. At this point, i removed Office 2008 using the Uninstaller and i reinstalled it from scratch. I then replied the update and it worked like a charm.

Adi

 

[mediaholic]

Well, I just restarted after the install of the update.

My fan is now at 6000+ RPM, I opened Word and Excel and I got the beachball, everything just seems slower now.

It might be time for me to use my Time Machine.

The same thing happened to me. Your CPU is probably stuck around 200% usage. I traced the the issue to the spotlight indexing processes. Just let it finish, and the computer will return back to normal.

 

[incoherent1]

The fact that it took them this long to fix these things is obscene. And the fact that they didn't fix a lot of things (still can't open password protected .pptx files) is just a slap in the face. It's paying for an upgrade that does nothing except open *.*x files, which Apple cracked in fall.

Sadly, Office Mac is like the necessary evil. I hate it, but I can't get away from it. iWork is amazing, but it simply doesn't do everything I need (ie. an equation editor or properly loading highly formatted .doc files such a full draft copies of 195 page journals). If anyone at Apple is reading this - please fix these things so I can get rid of Office forever .

 

[khunsanook]

Office 2004 was horribly laggy on my MB 2.0 Core Duo With 2 Gigs Ram. 2008 is a dramatic improvement. I've had zero probs with 2008 and I use it every day. I'd actually prefer to use Apple Pages but in my world where formatting standards are essential, and documents are being emailed back and forth and MS Word is the norm, Apple Pages still introduces too many formatting issues. Bummer.

 

[digitalfx]

I had to uninstall Office and reinstall, then reapply the update to get Entourage at 12.0.1

what a pain!!

 

[adisor19]

I had to uninstall Office and reinstall, then reapply the update to get Entourage at 12.0.1

what a pain!!

Join the club. I would advise the MBU, to delay releasing this patch on AutoUpdate for the time being. It looks like there is a 50% chance of messing up a valid installation of Office 2008.

Adi

 

[encro]

Does anyone here know of a way to send a Pages or Numbers file in a mail attachment without so many clicks? Something similar to Word's "Email document" in the file menu.

Drag the proxy icon from the titlebar of the document onto the Mail.app icon in the dock.

Pages Documents are essentially just XML wrapped in a bundle with some additional info such as color profile and a quicklook preview thumbnail.

 

[Towhead]

Guess I'm one of the lucky ones...all of the apps (including Word) are pretty quick on my machine.

And my Entourage says 12.0.1...

Me too. I have a 7K200 drive installed, and fresh after the update, with a freshly booted MB SR 2.2 (white) with 4GB RAM, here's what it takes.

WORD: 5s exactly (blank page)
Excel: 2.2s (blank sheet)
Powerpoint: 4.8s (blank sheet)
Entourage: 6.4s (no accounts set up)

That's plenty fast for me. So, let's see about all of them at once???

Just a bit over 13s. I clicked the icons on the dock order WXPE and they spend most of their time showing that splash screen -- probably'd come up even faster.

I think if you're having problems, you ought to try and clear things out and reinstall.

 

[Arkbargle]

Not buying it until it gets OpenDocument support, either officially or through a third-party plugin. I don't want to have to constantly switch between O and MS Office.

 

[Towhead]

Well It's early days yet but can I ask, Do you think this 'Essential' update has been an anti-climax?

Has it solved your personal problems?

For me No...Entourage still starts on it's own when I try to close it down or quite the application. Even when I do a restart..Entourage starts on its own. I have deleted it from Start Up Items but it still starts on it own. Can anyone solve that for me?

Best of luck with the update.

Try control-click on the dock icon and uncheck Start at Login