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Microsoft Office 2011: Is this still Work in Progress Software?

polee

polee

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 22, 2008
707
529
I have never had problems with Office 2008 but since using Office 2011, I have had Word 2011 crashing on me several times.

Office 2011 was not installed over Office 2008, it was a fresh install on a macbook air computer which I bought last year (running on Snow Leopard). When I keep too many Word documents open in Word 2011, I suddenly get that beach ball of death that I dread and have not seen for such a long time.

And Excel 2011 does not have the add-on Statistical Analysis which comes with the windows version of Excel 2010. Am I going to have to pay again for Office 201x to get features that are up to par with the Office 2010 version in Windows?

Note: I have also installed all the latest updates for Mac OS X and Office 2011 so I am really wondering what is happening. Should I just use Pages from now on?

What gives Microsoft?
 
Office for Mac is full of bugs, workarounds etc. Just check out the MS page. I gave up on Outlook (the only damn reason I bought it) a long time ago.

Never had issues with Word although I don't use it much.
 
polee said:
I have never had problems with Office 2008 but since using Office 2011, I have had Word 2011 crashing on me several times.

Office 2011 was not installed over Office 2008, it was a fresh install on a macbook air computer which I bought last year (running on Snow Leopard). When I keep too many Word documents open in Word 2011, I suddenly get that beach ball of death that I dread and have not seen for such a long time.

And Excel 2011 does not have the add-on Statistical Analysis which comes with the windows version of Excel 2010. Am I going to have to pay again for Office 201x to get features that are up to par with the Office 2010 version in Windows?

Note: I have also installed all the latest updates for Mac OS X and Office 2011 so I am really wondering what is happening. Should I just use Pages from now on?

What gives Microsoft?
Click to expand...

I have had the same frustration for more than a year https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1117271/ and have votten no answers or satisfaction or answers from MS or Apple Please keep bugging MS until they fix this or pull the product.
 
Windowsrefugee said:
I have had the same frustration for more than a year https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1117271/ and have votten no answers or satisfaction or answers from MS or Apple Please keep bugging MS until they fix this or pull the product.
Click to expand...

Thank you for sharing this with me. I tried looking up for pervious discussions on this subject but did not come across the link which you have pointed out to me. It is so frustrating to have Word 2011 crashing halfway through when working on something important. i seriously hope that MS comes up with a solution soon!
 
polee said:
I have also installed all the latest updates for Mac OS X and Office 2011 so I am really wondering what is happening. Should I just use Pages from now on
Click to expand...

I would consider 4GB of RAM to be considerably better for LION if you are having multiple documents open and particularly doing large copy/paste operations or placing big images in the documents. I have never seen this problem on a range of computers receiving large examination and assignment scripts from different people.

Pages may work better, but it isn't that compatible with lots of users who consider Word as THE Word Processor. If you are working with long documents Mellel might be a better option.
 
ssmed said:
I would consider 4GB of RAM to be considerably better for LION if you are having multiple documents open and particularly doing large copy/paste operations or placing big images in the documents. I have never seen this problem on a range of computers receiving large examination and assignment scripts from different people.

Pages may work better, but it isn't that compatible with lots of users who consider Word as THE Word Processor. If you are working with long documents Mellel might be a better option.
Click to expand...

I am using Snow Leopard (with 2gb ram). My documents are not more than 20 pages long each but I had about 10 documents open as I was marking essays on my computer.

So this is really puzzling.
 
Windowsrefugee said:
I have had the same frustration for more than a year https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1117271/ and have votten no answers or satisfaction or answers from MS or Apple Please keep bugging MS until they fix this or pull the product.
Click to expand...

MS won't fix it, they care not for the Mac user...I have 3 licences, two of them are no even installed. The other is on my iMac, but I use Pages now anyway...I may sell / give them away..Junk.
 
polee said:
I am using Snow Leopard (with 2gb ram). My documents are not more than 20 pages long each but I had about 10 documents open as I was marking essays on my computer.

So this is really puzzling.
Click to expand...

Sorry I presumed that the Air was new last year, should have read more carefully. In that case I am surprised that you are having so many problems. It might be worth creating a new user on the system and then seeing if the problems continue and checking that you don't have a bad font as Word seems quite sensitive to that (at least in past versions). As you probably can't change the type of document you are receiving, you could convert them to PDF and then use those for marking / mark-up.
 
I use Pages and also Word (in the latest Office for Mac suite). My reasoning for doing so was that most people who submitted work to me used Word on PCs. I generally don't like using Word so I figured a Pages/Word combo, editing raw text in Pages, then copying and pasting into Word for return to the PC users would be a simple and reliable enough way to work.

Unfortunately, sometimes when I past the text from a duly edited Pages file back into a Word document it develops a format glitch that sees seemingly random, multiple spaces appear between words and/or punctuation – most inappropriate. It's bizarre looking. The only cure is to quit Word and launch it again. The copy/paste process then does what it is supposed to do.

Sometimes I can be using Word and its Spell and Grammar check facility simply disappears from the menu. It will reappear upon relaunch.

And when I get text from PCs in Word docs with some text that should have been in upper case, having corrected this in Pages, when it is copied (in corrected upper case format) and then pasted into Word on my Mac, it reverts to the erroneous lower case again! What's that about?

Needless to say, I am unimpressed.
 
Kind of makes you wish for the good old days of Word 5.1, doesn't it? That was, personally, the best last Word before things got..sucky.
 
kylera said:
Kind of makes you wish for the good old days of Word 5.1, doesn't it? That was, personally, the best last Word before things got..sucky.
Click to expand...

If you want to be reminiscent - Framemaker for Mac was the WP to die for. It was stable, had styles that just worked and had very robust numbering schemes. Regarding Word I still have 5.1a on a very old computer, its OK, but doesn't wow.

It is difficult to understand why people have such very different experiences with MS Office. I far prefer 2011 to 2008 and 2004 and have had far less trouble, but then I would always break a big book, thesis-type document up into smaller chucks to edit. Endnote (bibliography software) works very much better with Word than Pages for me. In addition, Powerpoint 2011 has been good and Excel has not given me any trouble, although I don't use that in a taxing fashion.
 
kylera said:
Kind of makes you wish for the good old days of Word 5.1, doesn't it? That was, personally, the best last Word before things got..sucky.
Click to expand...


Yeah, I liked it too, but I lost the 5 1/4" floppy discs for it in the back of my Corvair.

:p:p:p:p
 
I have not had any of the Office 2011 Apps crash since it was purchased on the day it was first released. It has been rock solid on Snow Leopard and Lion for me. My Wife uses Word 2011 every day as well and she has no issues.
 
polee said:
I have never had problems with Office 2008 but since using Office 2011, I have had Word 2011 crashing on me several times.

Office 2011 was not installed over Office 2008, it was a fresh install on a macbook air computer which I bought last year (running on Snow Leopard). When I keep too many Word documents open in Word 2011, I suddenly get that beach ball of death that I dread and have not seen for such a long time.

And Excel 2011 does not have the add-on Statistical Analysis which comes with the windows version of Excel 2010. Am I going to have to pay again for Office 201x to get features that are up to par with the Office 2010 version in Windows?

Note: I have also installed all the latest updates for Mac OS X and Office 2011 so I am really wondering what is happening. Should I just use Pages from now on?

What gives Microsoft?
Click to expand...

I use word 2011 every day and I have to be honest. It's very hit and miss.

Having great success with thinkfree office as an alternative. http://office.thinkfree.com/en/index.html
 
I have to use Microsoft Outlook because categories, flags, etc. What's your experience using Microsoft Outlook? is it stable? bugs?
 
i have used it since it came out and have only had a handful of problems. a few freezes here and there but back when i was on PC word did that too

i absolutely hate pages
 
I use Word, Excel, and Powerpoint 2011 on my macs and have surprisingly had no issues at al. My biggest beef was with the parasitic program Endnote. Now that seems to have stabilized too. In my opinion, 2008 was much more buggy. It could be a problem with your instal.
 
It was so-so on SL. On Lion it's garbage. Slow, buggy, and just plain crap. I have a 2010 MBP 13.3" w/ SSD and 8GB of RAM. Still slow and laggy.

I use iWork more/more. For the needs I have in a Spreadsheet it works better than Excel, and can handle the formulas I throw at it fine.

I've had to Force Quit Office more often than not. A fresh install does nothing...

I'm pretty much "Non-Microsoft" across the board now. It actually feels liberating...
 
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