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Microsoft Office 2008 Update Brings Speed Increases and New Features
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Right, I meant to say '09 also requires a serial number IF you downloaded the trial version.
So far, the product key issues that we have seen are:
1. You currently have a (ahem) borrowed product key for Office. These no longer work.
2. You previously had a borrowed product key for Office. You later uninstalled that borrowed product key and reinstalled a legitimate one (either one from volume licensing from your university or some such, or one that you purchased at retail). When you reinstalled, you didn't remove the previous .plist files, so Office was still using the old borrowed product key.
If you're in case #2 (as one of the commenters in this thread, who mailed me directly, was), remove the aforementioned .plist files. Then launch an Office app, and you're fine. If you're in case #1, obtain a legal product key (Amazon has a good back-to-school sale now, and I'm sure that there will be more in the future) and then remove the .plist files.
Regards,
Nadyne.
1. You currently have a (ahem) borrowed product key for Office. These no longer work.
2. You previously had a borrowed product key for Office. You later uninstalled that borrowed product key and reinstalled a legitimate one (either one from volume licensing from your university or some such, or one that you purchased at retail). When you reinstalled, you didn't remove the previous .plist files, so Office was still using the old borrowed product key.
If you're in case #2 (as one of the commenters in this thread, who mailed me directly, was), remove the aforementioned .plist files. Then launch an Office app, and you're fine. If you're in case #1, obtain a legal product key (Amazon has a good back-to-school sale now, and I'm sure that there will be more in the future) and then remove the .plist files.
Regards,
Nadyne.
I don't know if anyone else answered your question on this, so I will attempt to. This frequently happens if you've run something like Monolingual as it will take out files that MS Office looks for when getting ready to install an update.
This happened both on my iMac 2009 and my wife's new 17" MBP with the last Office SP from about a month or so ago.
I had run Monolingual on both boxes.
I ended up following some online tutorials about this problem which ultimately had me remove and then reinstall and it took care of the issue.
Personally I have noticed MUCH better performance with this update, Office is working quite nicely now.
Little Snitch has so far not detected an attempt by any Office 08 application to call home from my computer. Maybe the "bad" serial numbers are built in to the install?
On the working side, my install went fine and the apps open much quicker for me now.
If MS didn't require a serial for Office:Mac they'd sell exactly one copy, which would be put on the torrent sites and nobody else would pay for it. Surely an overexaggeration, but Mac users' irrational hatred of everything MS requires them to use serials.
If the above rationale makes people feel better about stealing it then so be it, but don't blame them for using serials and trying to shutdown the invalid and/or compromised keys to prevent it. The legit users who were inconvenienced are simply collateral damage in the piracy wars.
Also, for thejadedmonkey, Drexel's license expired last September (from your quote), maybe they didn't renew it? (Probably the same guy responsible for updating that website was supposed to renew the license!)
If MS didn't require a serial for Office:Mac they'd sell exactly one copy, which would be put on the torrent sites and nobody else would pay for it. Surely an overexaggeration, but Mac users' irrational hatred of everything MS requires them to use serials.
If the above rationale makes people feel better about stealing it then so be it, but don't blame them for using serials and trying to shutdown the invalid and/or compromised keys to prevent it. The legit users who were inconvenienced are simply collateral damage in the piracy wars.
Also, for thejadedmonkey, Drexel's license expired last September (from your quote), maybe they didn't renew it? (Probably the same guy responsible for updating that website was supposed to renew the license!)
You just can't say users who pay $150 or $500 are collateral damage. Go look at the torrents. You can find any copy of Office that you like. The serials are not stopping anyone. I think Apple did the right thing. Hopefully it will give the user some guilt so they won't do it again.
As for the Mac users "irrational" hatred of Microsoft, much of it is well deserved. It is something that goes beyond the Mac audience. That being said, it is hard to believe that someone would rationalize doing the wrong thing to right a wrong. It is actually stupid as well because if you really want to hurt Office you would be using an open source alternative like Neo Office.
If they're not collateral damage, what would you call them? MS was trying to stop illegal keys from working and evidently broke some legitimate user keys... that's collateral damage, they were unintended victims. Not sure what you're referencing that Apple did right... you mean that they don't use serials?
As for the serials not stopping anybody, I'll point you to the people in this very thread whose installations stopped working. My point regarding the MS hating in the Apple community was to emphasize that most of those haters wouldn't give MS a penny if they could easily download a copy & install it without a serial. Yes, you can d/l a torrent with a serial included that may or may not work today, and may or may not work after the next update. The serials are still a nuisance and makes the user aware that what they're doing isn't right. Without the serials people wouldn't think twice about it, and yes that includes those outside the Apple community that you referenced (hence the need for serials on all their products, not just MacBU software). You can't honestly argue that MS should rely upon the honor system with their software... at least not with a straight face.
I'm saying to simply pass them off as some necessary collateral damage is wrong. People pay a lot of money for this product to just work. Appple did the right thing in not requiring a serial if you bought the iWork disc. No serials needed. That being said I am an office user.
The serials only inconvenienced them. I guarantee you within a few hours new serials were back up. This isn't stopping anyone if they want to steal. I think they're quite well aware of what they're doing and won't affect them if they reminded once in a while. This is probably not the only app they've stolen. I get the feeling that for the most part these happen to be kids.
And yes I do believe that MS and the like should get rid of the DRM. Apple for the most part has. You don't jump through hoops to install OSX. If you wanted to you don't have to buy the Leopard Family pack. You can use a single license install disk on as many machines as you'd like. Apple uses the honor system. Also there is the music industry. Even the RIAA, of all groups, admitted that DRM caused problems for only the honest people.
I can even go a step foward and say that in a few situations piracy has actually helped MS. If every person in China & third world countries could not use Windows if they didn't pay for it, Windows would have virtually no marketshare and Linux would be a serious emerging force. I would rather have it that way, btw. And because the average person is so resistant to change, Microsoft has an increasing user base in an emerging country. Right now Microsoft is selling Windows over there dirt cheap so they can make a small profit.
I hope that That people play it honestly, because that means lower prices and MS would be less dominant.
If MS didn't require a serial for Office:Mac they'd sell exactly one copy, which would be put on the torrent sites and nobody else would pay for it. Surely an overexaggeration, but Mac users' irrational hatred of everything MS requires them to use serials.
If the above rationale makes people feel better about stealing it then so be it, but don't blame them for using serials and trying to shutdown the invalid and/or compromised keys to prevent it. The legit users who were inconvenienced are simply collateral damage in the piracy wars.
Also, for thejadedmonkey, Drexel's license expired last September (from your quote), maybe they didn't renew it? (Probably the same guy responsible for updating that website was supposed to renew the license!)
You seem to not trust in the ability of the average user to do the right thing. My post was meant simply to give reasons why people steal MS Office, not to justify it. It is just that, stealing. Those that do it are thieves, plain and simple. It is up to the individual to judge if they are OK with that.
Yes, I would expect MS to fight the serial war. It is the way they do business. They must consider thought that there is the possibility of collateral damage, and they need to evaluate how OK they are with that as it does nothing but breed further animosity.
I would be very interested to see the piracy rates and the profit seen from Apple on iWork 09, etc, i.e. ones w/o serial.
And one last thing to those saying that we should use Open Source: my whole point is that MS kind of has a captive audience when even open source and Apple's offerings are not for sure going to open the file perfectly. Those who depend on Office for money or grades often do not want to chance their thesis or something to Open Office. Sorry. So thus, people are stuck with MS since their's WILL open and SHOULD properly format things. It is unfortunate that their software though for the mac side is so horribly expensive compared to what you get...
The reason why MS will open those files is because it is their format. Because of that the audience is will always pay attention to Office. I think that Office is the best app out there for documents (even though the UI seems to get worse with each release) but that is not the point. I would rather have the situation of everyone using open source file formats and let whoever makes the best office application wins. Also for that application to have feature parity and availability across all platforms.
Essentially the pirates and governments enable Microsoft by using these formats . If the pirates would play by the rules Office would not be as dominant.
Hi all, question from what I read from Wikipedia:
"Another widespread problem reported after SP1 is that Office files will no longer open in Office applications when opened (double-clicked) from the Mac OS X Finder or launched from other applications such as an email attachment."
Is this still a problem?
"Another widespread problem reported after SP1 is that Office files will no longer open in Office applications when opened (double-clicked) from the Mac OS X Finder or launched from other applications such as an email attachment."
Is this still a problem?
I like MS Office:Mac. I've never had any trouble with it, and I like having it around for .docx compatibility. Although, yeah, with the PC vs. Mac Wars more bloody and gory now than they've ever been, it's uh-mazing that there's a Mac version at all.
The rabidly anti-MS Mac users need to realize that as much as MS's operating systems suck, they need MS to stick around and continue being most evil so that Apple can remain a niche company. I'm pretty sure that if OS X had a 96% global market share, it would suck considerably more (not to mention that owning a Mac wouldn't be as fun, unique or interesting.)
But hey, if you think anti-MS Office Mac users are fun, try the Linux die-hards who prefer OpenOffice.
That's always funny to see...Yup, agreed. Except that NeoOffice sucks, but I get your point.
We'll have to agree to disagree on the necessity of the serials. The last point I'll make is that comparing Apple to MS on the serials is an apples to oranges comparison -- everyone who needs iWork or Leopard has already purchased Apple hardware at a considerable premium, and the majority of their user base has a man crush on Steve Jobs and would buy two copies of the software if Stevie asked nicely. Not the case with MS on either front -- they don't get a penny of the hardware profit and people generally hate them. And as someone pointed out Apple does require serials on their professional ($$$) apps... they're not so trusting there, apparently.
We're in agreement on the morality questions -- yes, if everyone played by the rules we'd all be better off, and the serials wouldn't be necessary. But they don't, so they are.
Exactly. If the average user would have done the right thing all along, the serial number paradigm would have never come to be. Are you suggesting that human nature has changed since 15-20 years ago? And that MS should trust the future of their company and all of their employees jobs to the basic honesty of people?
No serial numbers, post full versions of their products on their website for download and evaluation, and include a menu option to pay for it if you find it useful. But it will never expire if you don't pay, because they trust you "to do the right thing."
Really?
edit - just to clarify, I know you're not proposing that and that you're pointing out they need to balance the serial war versus the collateral damage. I'm just making the point that removing the serials would essentially leave it up to each individual's own character and morality as to whether they'd pay or not, and that situation is what resulted in the serial numbers to begin with.
Just FYI. Neither of these happened to me. I had a problem with my license on a pretty much fresh install of a completely legal copy. I did not encounter any problems with the last update (or perhaps several updates?). I'd be happy to send you a log. Could it be an issue with volume licenses?
Regards
After uninstalling and reinstalling due to the CD key error, I used the same volume license ISO to install office, once again I was never asked for a CD key, but this time it worked.
So if you have trouble, and you do have a legit install, you're not alone.
On the bright side, it launches ridiculously fast now.
So if you have trouble, and you do have a legit install, you're not alone.
On the bright side, it launches ridiculously fast now.
To add to this, my issue came when I used the installer I downloaded from MS.com/mac
On my iMac, I used the auto-update, which threw up an error, but otherwise worked fine.
They've replaced this with an even bigger problem - now Office 2008 won't even open some office files at all!
I had a problem opening an Excel file and the program helpfully took me to this page on Microsoft's site which gives basically useless options such as removing office and re-installing without SP2. I hope they get a fix for this out soon, because it's incredibly annoying
Send me the two plist files that I referenced above. PM me for my email address.
Phil A. said:
We have had a handful of reports from users who can't open .pptx or .xlsx files. If it were widespread, this thread wouldn't be a philosophical debate about product keys right now.
We're actively investigating the issue now. If you can send me your affected file(s), as well as sending along as much data as you can about the creation of the file (what version of Excel was used to edit the file, any versions of Excel that were used to create the file, whether you had previously saved it as an .xls and changed it to an .xlsx, etc), that would be hugely helpful in our investigation efforts. PM me for my email address.
Regards,
Nadyne.
I can't find the message about the specific plist files you are referring to, but if they are the plist files that needed to be removed to fix this problem as outlined in the instructions on your website, then I'm afraid they have been permanently deleted.
Office Alteratives
Is there any free alternative to office that will allow me to edit and view Microsoft office files? After the office SP 2 update it gives me a serial error and wants me to re-register my copy of office. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated...
Is there any free alternative to office that will allow me to edit and view Microsoft office files? After the office SP 2 update it gives me a serial error and wants me to re-register my copy of office. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated...