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Microsoft Office Update, and Visual Basic for Applications to Return

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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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Microsoft announced today record sales of Mac Office 2008 which was launched at Macworld San Francisco:
"The response has been amazing; since we launched in January, the velocity of sales for Office 2008 is nearly three times what we saw after the launch of Office 2004," said Craig Eisler, general manager of the Mac BU at Microsoft. "As we set our course for future versions, we are working closely with customers and will also expand our staff to ensure that Office for Mac remains the most powerful and compatible productivity suite for Mac customers."
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Microsoft also released the first Service Pack (SP1) for Mac Office 2008 which provides stability, security and performance enhancements. The update will be available at at Microsoft.com or via your Office software update. A list of fixes are provided in the press release.

Also notable is that Microsoft has announced that they will be bringing back Visual Basic for Applications in the next version of Mac Office:
...the team recognizes that VBA-language support is important to a select group of customers who rely on sharing macros across platforms. The Mac BU is always working to meet customers' needs and already is hard at work on the next version of Office for Mac.
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Article Link
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2008/05/13/microsoft-office-update-and-visual-basic-for-applications-to-return/
iPhone 2

Keep the updates coming - Office 2008 ought to be more optimized for Leopard than it is.
Would like to see snappier performance overall.
 
I think Office 2008 is a pretty decent product (for coming from microsoft :) ), but I'm glad that they're releasing somewhat frequent updates, AND are listening to users about what features to add in and work on. They're not ALL evil...
 
I dont get it, both MR and Macworld are reporting that the SP1 update is now available via MS's site or SU but i've been checking both mediums for the last 5 hrs and still cant find the update.

Where is it? :confused:
 
daneoni said:
I dont get it, both MR and Macworld are reporting that the SP1 update is now available via MS's site or SU but i've been checking both mediums for the last 5 hrs and still cant find the update.
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I noticed that also. Someone needs to get their facts straight.
 
Putting visual basic back in is a very good move. I never could figure out why they removed it. There are many businesses and people who have extensive amounts of macros that they use on a day-to-day basis and suddenly dropping this feature was a really bad move IMHO. Too bad they aren't adding it back in a service pack. Instead we have to wait until Office 2012 :rolleyes:
 
Microsoft should be congratulated for doing the write thing with regards to VBA scripting, which was a massive error. I wish that the fix will come soon and not in Office 2012 though.
 
So this probably means that VBA will stay in future versions of Office on the Windows platform. Microsoft realizes that VBA isn't just for developing viruses.
 
I like their business plan.

1) Remove critical feature as if it's never coming back
2) Get people to upgrade for some other feature
3) Announce that users can get critical feature back in a year or two for only $200 (or whatever)!
4) ???
5) profit?
6) repeat
 
Good news. I was about to buy a copy before I saw the terrible, terrible reviews. I'd be curious to hear if this helps the overall performance/stability.
 
I'm using Office 2008 with Leopard and there's a bug in Word that intermittently displays the cursor one line above or one line below where it "actually" is. It's unbelievably annoying, and that one thing makes the program almost unusable. I really hope this update fixes it.
 
I wonder to what extent the Office 2008 launch numbers are "juiced" by the great deals they had going. They had a $100 rebate on Office 2004, and a "free" upgrade from 2004 to 2008 (pay only $6.99 shipping), which made my effective cost for Office 2008 only $32 (plus two stamps), which is less than half the cost of iWork.
 
Dumb question....

Can I install both Office 2004 & Office 2008 on my Mac or must I uninstall one in order to install/run the other? If I can have & use both concurrently, is anybody doing this? Have you experienced any interoperability problems?
 
Achiever said:
Can I install both Office 2004 & Office 2008 on my Mac or must I uninstall one in order to install/run the other? If I can have & use both concurrently, is anybody doing this? Have you experienced any interoperability problems?
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You can have both installed at once no problems. I have been running that way ever since I got Office 2008 although to be honest I have been using 2004 90% of the time as 2008 is a nightmare.
 
glad vba is coming back. didn't want to port all of my financial macros to applescript because i have so much. I guess when the next version of office for mac comes out, I could also stop using vmware. I only use vmware to work on excel ... that's it!
 
I think I read somewhere that the SP1 update will be available at 12pm... PST, EST, WTF, I'm not sure. It would be nice if it didn't take longer than Photoshop CS3 to open cold, that's for sure.
 
@ ejbenjamin. I thought I was going crazy. Everyone I asked running office 2008 hadn't had that happen to them and when I looked online a while a go I couldn't find any other reports of the same problem, although I haven't seen it reoccur for a few weeks now.
 
Well, I guess it's great that they're bring it back, but I have to wonder... why are they realizing this now?
 
When they say 'next version of Office' do they mean Office 2009 or 2010 (or 2012), or do they mean a revision number of 2008?
 
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