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need new product key after update.

Be prepared that you may lose Office if you do not have the correct product key with this update.
:mad:
 
Whoa, this has been a great update for me. Before installing it, I counted 12 bounces before Word opened. Now it only takes one bounce!
 
You're right, we knew that VBA was going to be an issue quite awhile ago. That's why we announced that it wouldn't be a part of Office 2008 back at WWDC 2006, and one of our senior developers wrote a blog post about the technical challenges in getting the VBA code ported from PPC to Intel: saying goodbye to Visual Basic. It's also why we improved our AppleScript support in Office 2008, and worked with MacTech magazine to publish a VBA to AppleScript transition guide for those users who would be able to move their VBA scripts into AppleScript (and we knew that not all users would be able to do that, since they're using those scripts cross-platform). And finally, it's why we announced a year ago that it will be back in the next version of Office, and that senior developer wrote a new blog post about bringing it back: saying hello (again) to Visual Basic. It's pretty rare to announce a feature for an application that doesn't have a name or ship date, but we did it because we know how important it is to some of our users.

VBA is powerful stuff. Getting that code working right on the Mac is a huge chunk of work. This isn't the kind of thing that we can do overnight, and we're making sure that what the VBA support we deliver in the next release is rock-solid.

Regards,
Nadyne.
Funny though how you took almost an entire year to get the XML converter working on Mac, meanwhile making docx & etc. the default format on all Windows PCs shipping with Office 2007 - knowing full well that this was essentially forcing Office 2008 on Mac users.

And since you don't have even a remote idea for a ship date on the new version of Office, what then now that VBA has essentially been split across marginal support in Office 2004, and no support in Office 2008? I'm sorry, but Microsoft's answer is always "we're working on it."

It all sounds glib when you write it up - like Microsoft *really cares* about Mac user experiences with Office, but the MBU lives in a bubble. Major foundations in the nonprofit sector use Macros all the time with their reporting and financial documents - do you think they're going to convert to Applescript or for that matter that the everyday user is going to understand enough about Office to convert themselves? Researchers that do anything more than the most basic functions with Excel use Macros all the time. Applescript is not and has never been an acceptable solution in these circumstances.

It nauseates me how everyone at Microsoft seems so eager to add all kinds of bells and whistles to Office 2008, which out the door even Microsoft admits was a pretty shoddy product, without actually focusing on what is a major support issue -- especially given that Mac and Windows Office versions are on entirely different development cycles. Meanwhile, support for Office 2004 is ending, and the next version of Office that has "full VBA support" is still vaporware -- which means I've got VBA users with an almost 6 year old version of Office (that in itself only has so-so support for Macros) left hanging.

Stop trying to convince me that this is all a Good Thing - if anyone at Microsoft even read half the responses to the announcement in 2006 that Macros would not be appearing in Office 2008, they'd know it's not a small number of users, it's a lot of users who interface with research, government, political, and philanthropic systems that have incorporated Macros into required documents and reporting.
 
NO WORD ON MAC MESSENGER?

Their blog hasn't changed in nearly 3 months. The Mac BU is an absolute joke when it comes to mac messenger, they could atleast give us a hint as to its progress! It's the only reason why i don't like using a mac!

Meanwhile i am very glad of Sp2 i love mac office it's excellent!!

I think you have to dislike M$ rather your mac!! They do it on purpose...!:mad:

Try adium for mac os x is very good!
 
Hmm. I can't get it installed. After examining "additional volumes" my bot drive isn't installable (stop sign with exclamation mark). The message displayed is:

You cannot install Office 2008 12.1.9 Update on this volume. A version of the software required to install this update was not found on this volume.

Strangely enough, I was able to update to the last 11.x.x from last month with no problem. Any ideas?

You need to download and install 12.1 Service pack 1. Then you can go right to downloading and installing Service pack 2. I forgot to install #1 the first time around so I got the same message. Much faster opening Word now.

I went to Mactopia to find the downloads.
 
Noticeable performance boost. Apps start in one bounce now. I dont use the Mac alternatives so i have nothing to compare it to, but MSFT is making tremendous strides

Nadyne is very patient and responsive considering the tone many take with her and MSFT as whole - some deserved and some completely childish
 
Spaces..?

It is just me or wasn't the Spaces issue fixed with 10.5.7? Unless I'm mistaken as to what the issue is... I thought it's the craziness with the Formatting palette when you switch spaces (the contents would follow the switching between spaces and then get stuck in the wrong space). That used to drive me nuts, but it's been fine since 10.5.7. :confused:
 
It is just me or wasn't the Spaces issue fixed with 10.5.7? Unless I'm mistaken as to what the issue is... I thought it's the craziness with the Formatting palette when you switch spaces (the contents would follow the switching between spaces and then get stuck in the wrong space). That used to drive me nuts, but it's been fine since 10.5.7. :confused:

Spaces has been refined and tuned over several 10.5.x updates, 10.5.7 according to MacBU fixed all the remaining issues.
 
I look at these charges for incremental service packs as donations to the church of $t£v£ Job$. It's a worthy cause. M$ is evil, Apple is not. End of story.

I actually wish Apple would add a donate section on their website where I can send them a percentage of my earnings each month. Just for those months when they have no new products or services to sell me.

Should I Laugh or cry? :p
 
After the update the Excel 2008 is unable to open certain .xlsx files that were saved with Office 2007.

Some files still open, but others don't. Very frustrating. I now have to open those files with non-updated Excel 2008 from my home computer, which is much slower.
 
Going from 10 bounces to 1 on my mini when starting word is great!

Microsoft has it's purpose, Apple has it's purpose, now let's all just move on with life.
 
Spaces has been refined and tuned over several 10.5.x updates, 10.5.7 according to MacBU fixed all the remaining issues.

I thought so, thanks. Some of the earlier comments in this thread were still talking like the issues is current. :rolleyes:
 
Hmm. I can't get it installed. After examining "additional volumes" my bot drive isn't installable (stop sign with exclamation mark). The message displayed is:

You cannot install Office 2008 12.1.9 Update on this volume. A version of the software required to install this update was not found on this volume.

Strangely enough, I was able to update to the last 11.x.x from last month with no problem. Any ideas?

I tried updating from 12.0.0 directly to 12.2.0. I experienced the same issue. Then I did it one by one. from 12.0.0 -> 12.1.0 -> 12.1.9 -> 12.2.0 and it worked :D
 
It'd be great if it'd display documents in Word 2007 with that contain equations written using using Word 2007's built-in equation editor.
 
Noticeable performance boost. Apps start in one bounce now. I dont use the Mac alternatives so i have nothing to compare it to, but MSFT is making tremendous strides

Nadyne is very patient and responsive considering the tone many take with her and MSFT as whole - some deserved and some completely childish

I think people are harder on the MacBU than they should be. They do work hard and are sort of outcasts to both Microsoft and the Mac community.

That being said, Microsoft deserves every negative word said about them. Anything they do has to be proprietary so they can keep the world under their thumb. Contrary to what people may say, Apple is not nearly as proprietary as people may them out to be.

Right now I'm in limbo between iWork and Office. iWork is still "feels" better to use and Word has the edge on compatibility.
 
I tried updating from 12.0.0 directly to 12.2.0. I experienced the same issue. Then I did it one by one. from 12.0.0 -> 12.1.0 -> 12.1.9 -> 12.2.0 and it worked :D
I *think* you can go from 12.0.0 -> 12.1.0 ->12.2.0 without the stopover at 12.1.9. Unfortunately, I'm already running 12.1.9 on every system available to test this on, but it looks like from Mactopia that 12.2.0 is an actual "combo" updater for any 12.1.x version of office. Anyone tested this? It would be nice not to have to carry more than 500+ MB of office updates around on my USB drive if this is true.
 
Nadyne, I have an unrelated question. Is there a chance of Office coming to the iPhone? Since the iPhone is based on OSX I'd figure the MacBU would have some serious input. BTW good job on the update.

I've got nothing to share about that just yet. You should submit feedback to tell us why you want it and what you're looking to do with it. Be verbose -- saying "I want Word on my iPhone" isn't very interesting. Give as much detail as you can manage. For example, if you're an Excel guru and you want to be able to not only view but also edit your Excel spreadsheets, tell us what features you think you should be able to have on your iPhone and which ones you can wait until you're back in the office to get.

FoxyKaye said:
Stop trying to convince me that this is all a Good Thing - if anyone at Microsoft even read half the responses to the announcement in 2006 that Macros would not be appearing in Office 2008, they'd know it's not a small number of users, it's a lot of users who interface with research, government, political, and philanthropic systems that have incorporated Macros into required documents and reporting.

We knew that there were users who were going to be very unhappy about it. We were stuck in a bad situation, and had to make a tough decision. Updating VBA to run on Intel is a huge chunk of pretty intensive work. Developers aren't interchangeable -- we couldn't just hire some kid out of college, throw him at it, and expect it all to work out in the end. We needed highly-experienced developers to work on that. We also needed those highly-experienced developers to work on some of the other major features of Excel 2008, such as the new file format or the Big Grid (a million rows, 16K columns). Waiting until VBA was ready would have delayed the release of Office 2008 further. We were already releasing it later than we wanted to, and the cries to update it were getting louder and louder. We couldn't make users who had already updated to Intel wait any longer for Office.

I'm very sorry that you're one of the users affected by this. I know that this decision had, and continues to have, a bad impact on some people. And I know that my answer isn't the one you want. My only goal here is to explain what happened on our end and what we're doing to fix it. I apologise for sounding glib in my earlier response to you, that definitely was not my intent.

Regards,
Nadyne.
 
I *think* you can go from 12.0.0 -> 12.1.0 ->12.2.0 without the stopover at 12.1.9. Unfortunately, I'm already running 12.1.9 on every system available to test this on, but it looks like from Mactopia that 12.2.0 is an actual "combo" updater for any 12.1.x version of office. Anyone tested this? It would be nice not to have to carry more than 500+ MB of office updates around on my USB drive if this is true.

You don't need to install 12.1.9 before installing 12.2.0. It's got all of the 12.1.x included.

Regards,
Nadyne.
 
Ran this update. Haven't worked with it extensively, but it definitely smokes out of the starting blocks. It looks like Pages 09 might be putting a bit of a fire under MS's butt, which is a good thing. I was a long time PC user, but abandoned the platform after Vista and the sea of PC junk out there: it's been a long race to the bottom. I am an advanced Word user. I haven't used 08 Word extensively, but from a user point of view it's better than the latest PC version. There's no ribbon, and you can customize everything including shortcut menus, and you can even to Wordperfect colors still! Pages 09 looks like a great program for the casual user, and Numbers too. But it's far too limiting for power users. The outline view, for instance, doesn't even support shortcut keys for moving stuff around. Also, out of the box .pages is the only default file type; Pages actually prompts you every time you want to save a file in any other format. There is a hack to get around this, but that's pretty annoying. Full screen is nice, but you can get the same effect with Isolator or using spaces and clearing your desktop completely and making it dark. I think most Mac users simply don't know how to use Word or Excel for that matter. Hence you get these fanboyz who post rants about what junk Word is. Meanwhile they haven't got a clue how to use styles or any of the other powerful features. Personally, I turn all of the ribbons off and hide the panel. I just work with a clean window, shortcut keys and the menus; you can't do that in the PC version. I even hide the mac menu, which I hate, using presentyourapp , which works brilliantly with Office 08. Great update! It's about time. Development on 08 has been pretty sloppy to date in my opinion. Maybe with SP2 we'll finally have a state of the art suite on a state of the art computer/os. Time will tell.
 
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