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Microsoft Office 2008 Update Available!
- Thread starter kevo0822
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Thank God. I only purchased my 20" iMac last month and was experiencing sudden quits of Excel in the middle of working on a spreadsheet. Luckily, Apple saved my files and I recovered it but only up until my last Save so I was continually saving my files as I was working on them hoping the program wouldn't quit. Hopefully, now with this update it won't suddenly quit on me again. I will keep you posted if it does though!
I am on a fresh install of Leopard 10.5.2 with a SR MBP 2.4 with 4GB ram and a 7200rpm HD as well. After the update and after a fresh boot, my times are almost double that. Maybe you count too slowly without realizing it. It's not "One one thousand, two one thousand, ..." lol
Worse for me, ran OFFICE update on all apps and I get no Office update at this time so the updater is lying to me with a straight face. Checked and all are still 12.0 and no, I didn't run the OS update by mistake.
That would be fantastic news, just restarted here because the problem was not solved 5 min ago (before restart). Try to crash the thing now by maximizing windows.
Back in a minute or two
Back to report : freeze issue definately NOT solved. Just crashed my mac on maximizing excel window.
I had no luck with the update, still horrible lags. Word is loading in about 40 secs. (macbook late2006, 2GB Ram).
(macbook late2006, 2GB Ram).
12.0.1 update, ...
oh crap!
AutoUpdate doesn't find it.
D/L'ed file doesn't install.
Reminds me why I use a mac, all I can say without getting nasty.
oh crap!
AutoUpdate doesn't find it.
D/L'ed file doesn't install.
Reminds me why I use a mac, all I can say without getting nasty.
Make sure you've applied the Auto Updater update first, then do the 12.0.1 update. Leave it to Microsoft...
get a decent machine. word loads here in 8 sec. powerpoint in 4, excel in 3.I had no luck with the update, still horrible lags. Word is loading in about 40 secs.
I don't know man - I have a 2.33 C2D MBP with 3gb RAM - it takes around 40 seconds to load, which drives me nuts if I need it for a few seconds. In Office 2007, it will boot up in seconds.
I don't like the Mac version as much as the Windows version, if I can say that on this forum without getting beaten to a pulp. I'm a hardcore Mac guy, but if there is one thing I like about MS, it's Office 2007.
Feel free to start ripping me!
I checked on two machines and the Office program update checker does not see an update available. I will check the microsoft site directly.
Update: Yes, they are legit copies, thanks for asking. I had to manually download update from microsoft. Installed on one machine but not the other. I really enjoy these little reminders of why I left my Windows box for a Mac last year.
Are they both legitimate copies? Not accusing you of anything just maybe this could be a new anti piracy measure like the windows version
I have the same issue. Installed fine on iMac, won't install on Macbook. Both legit, fully licensed versions. I don't know what is up.
Similar load times for me on the MBP in my sig, except subsequent load times aren't nearly as quick as for you... I've tried everything short of a clean re-install of Leopard, which I refuse to do just to install Office. I'm not the only one to say this, but Office '04 through Rosetta loaded much faster for me on this MBP...
The dissapointing thing to me is that I really really really was expecting to have fast load times after the upgrade. I mean this is the long awaited Intel native version. ALL of my other Intel native apps launch quickly and run well on my MBP.
Frank
Office on a Powerbook G4
I thought I'd jump in and share my experiences with Office, both the 2004 and 2008 versions.
Been running 2004 on various Macs since...well gee...2004. During that time I wrote proposals and other short to medium length documents (~25 pages). Word was always a pleasure to use. It seldom crashed, was fairly "snappy", and loaded quickly, usually in under 4 seconds on my Powerbook G4. I also use Excel extensively and it too has largely performed well. I recently returned to school to pursue a teaching career in mathematics and during that program, created extensive Powerpoint presentations, some close to 200 Mb in size (400 slides, lots of graphics, audio, etc.). It too performed quite well and was largely stable, even with those large files.
Enter Office 2008. I'm sorry to say, but it was a disappointment for me. I've experienced all the issues you other good folks have cited here, and more (I need VBA capability for writing and editing math equations). In addition, I made the unfortunate error of attempting to migrate from Apple Mail and iCal to Entourage. After two weeks of struggles with everything in Office 2008, I've ditched it and gone back to 2004. It is there I shall stay, probably for quite some time, until and unless Microsoft sorts all these issues out.
I can appreciate the effort the MS put into the programs, and I would have enjoyed some of the new features, but I don't have time to fight with software bugs, and instabilities. I have work that needs to get done (it's the big reason I like Mac so much). I have no doubt that MS will improve the user experience. I can remember when they first published Office for the Mac (OK, I'm dating myself) and it too was buggy and somewhat unstable. Over time, it became the great tool known as Office 2004.
I'll probably revisit a migration in a year or so...but I admit I was hoping for better
I thought I'd jump in and share my experiences with Office, both the 2004 and 2008 versions.
Been running 2004 on various Macs since...well gee...2004.
During that time I wrote proposals and other short to medium length documents (~25 pages). Word was always a pleasure to use. It seldom crashed, was fairly "snappy", and loaded quickly, usually in under 4 seconds on my Powerbook G4. I also use Excel extensively and it too has largely performed well. I recently returned to school to pursue a teaching career in mathematics and during that program, created extensive Powerpoint presentations, some close to 200 Mb in size (400 slides, lots of graphics, audio, etc.). It too performed quite well and was largely stable, even with those large files.Enter Office 2008. I'm sorry to say, but it was a disappointment for me. I've experienced all the issues you other good folks have cited here, and more (I need VBA capability for writing and editing math equations). In addition, I made the unfortunate error of attempting to migrate from Apple Mail and iCal to Entourage. After two weeks of struggles with everything in Office 2008, I've ditched it and gone back to 2004. It is there I shall stay, probably for quite some time, until and unless Microsoft sorts all these issues out.
I can appreciate the effort the MS put into the programs, and I would have enjoyed some of the new features, but I don't have time to fight with software bugs, and instabilities. I have work that needs to get done (it's the big reason I like Mac so much). I have no doubt that MS will improve the user experience. I can remember when they first published Office for the Mac (OK, I'm dating myself) and it too was buggy and somewhat unstable. Over time, it became the great tool known as Office 2004.
I'll probably revisit a migration in a year or so...but I admit I was hoping for better
What type of equations are you creating? Have you tried LaTeX? It is capable of producing pretty much any equation you can think of and there is a great Mac application that will let you create equations and then drag an image of those equations into any document (Word, PowerPoint, etc.). Let me know if you need more info. I think it would benefit a Math teacher a great deal.
Frank
Equations in Word
I'm using MathType to create everything from simple polynomials to expressions involving integrals. Being able to double click on the equation in Word and open it for further editing in MathType is tremendously functional for me. Do you know of something else that has such capability? I want to stay away from having to work with LaTeX syntax...much prefer the WYSIWYG of Math Type.
I'm using MathType to create everything from simple polynomials to expressions involving integrals. Being able to double click on the equation in Word and open it for further editing in MathType is tremendously functional for me. Do you know of something else that has such capability? I want to stay away from having to work with LaTeX syntax...much prefer the WYSIWYG of Math Type.
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?
Power User - I create power point slides (With all kinds of crazy effects, cool looking pie charts with transitions etc etc.
Word docs - Like an RFP (Heavily templated stuff).
and many dynamically generated word/excel docs. And Office 2008 is not really a bad software. For a $149.99 software, it is pretty good.
Off the top of my head I do not know of something better suited for what you are doing. What I will say is that typographically you won't get a more beautiful equation than you will with LaTeX.
This is the equation editor software:
http://evolve.lse.ac.uk/software/EquationEditor/
This is the LaTeX editor I use:
http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop/texshop.html
Keep in mind that one click of a button converts whatever you are working on into a pdf so you can immediately see the results.
This is another app I saw but haven't tried yet.
http://wiki.lyx.org/Mac/Mac
And finally this appears to be an equation editor that allows for creating equations in an GUI environment:
http://homepage.mac.com/marco_coisson/TeXFoG/index.html
Frank
Really? I don't think it is anywhere near as stable and well coded as iWork which sells for half the price. Let's be realistic here. I don't care how much money you have, $149 is not a small amount to drop so I think the software should at least be stable and coded in a way that allows it to work efficiently. The comments we have seen here thus far are emblematic of beta software. The problem is that this was not quite finished baking but they released it anyway. Too many software companies (and Apple is not exempt from this) are getting into the habit of releasing unfinished software just to get it out the door. It is a sad state for my industry and something that will hopefully change soon.
Frank