MS Office 2008 from Tiger to Mojave

[bobesch]

I still like to stay with MS Office 2008 on my early-2008 MBP with Mojave(Patch).
Today I noticed an odd behavior of the ribbon-bar ("Elements-Gallery"), that offers selection of document-styles, tables, diagrams, smart-art, word-art etc ...)
Normally left-click onto one of the labels does expand/collapse the ribbon/"Gallery" or switches to the selected topic.
On Mojave I left-click will only highlight the labels when being clicked, but does not expand/collapse/select anything.
Anyone here having the same problem or any workaround?

 

[bobesch]

MS Office is still my link between old and new Macs and Windows-machines (real and virtual) with Office 2008 as the version covering the widest range of Macs from Tiger/PPC to Mojave/intel.
Today I've spent some time to give the funny behavior of the "Elements-Gallery" on Mojave a second look.
The Gallery does offer important editing tools, so it's important to have it back working ...
Since the Gallery-bar doesn't respond to left-clicks (except from highlighting the selection-boxes), I searched for a way how to get access to the "Elements-Gallery"-Ribbon through menus and symbol-bar.
Actually unfolding/collapsing the "Gallery"-ribbon is easy done by clicking onto the "Elements-Gallery" ("Gallery") icon.
These are the "Elements-Galleries":
Word: Document Parts / QuickTables / Charts / SmartArt / WordArt
Excel: Sheets / Charts / WordArt / SmartArt
PPT: Slide Themes / Slide Layouts / Transitions / TableStyles / Charts / SmartArt / WordArt
Switching the Gallery-topic can be achieved by using menu-commands, but localising the (sub)menus is sometimes a bit awkward, since the submenues are not located in one place
Unfortunately there's no way to switch to the SmartArt-Gallery on Excel, but SmartArt-Graphic can be created within Word and after that it can be copied from Word to Excel by drag and paste. After that, the SmartArt-Graphic can be edited within Excel - only the layout cannot be modified, since the SmartArt-Gallery-ribbon isn't available.
The Elements-Gallery is kind of mission-critical, when working on PPT-charts and it's good to know, each Gallery-topic can be activated through the menu and is fully working.

The Toolbox also shows some funny behaviour: within the Object-category only the first row of the listed objects and symbols can be selected. By choosing a sub-topic within the Objects- or Symbol-section, the amount of items can be reduced to a single line - especially when the icon-size is reduced to the minimum.
As a workaround, there's an icon for Objects, that can be placed within the symbol-bar. It will pop up the very same lists of categories/objects as the Toolbox does.
Trying to select the "camera"-symbol in the Objects-category unsuccessfully tries to display pictures from a local iPhoto-Library, despite it's presence.

There is still some more quirky behavior of Office'08 on Mojave:
- Equation Editor does only work on Works and PPT, not on Excel.
- MS Organigram App doesn't work at all
- MS Graph does work somehow, but is pretty outdated in comparison to the rest of the Office'08-suite
- The WordArt-Symbol on Word opens the old WordArt-Gallery-Window. The WordArt-Symbol on PPT switches the Topic of the Gallery to WordArt.

Well, I'm quite happy, there's a workaround for nearly every relevant problem I had faced so far, and it only requires one or two extra-clicks ...

Another reason to stay with Mojave and 32bit support.

You can find Updates of MS Office 2008 here (there's no more official MS support for download of updates available)

 

[rampancy]

From what I recall reading years ago Office 2008 does work on Mojave, but is prone to varying degrees of UI glitches and instability. In my general experience, Office 2011 works much better, but the problem with Office 2011 is that it required online activation to function, and Microsoft took down the activation servers years ago. (IIRC, Office 2008 was the last version that could be activated with an offline product key.)

 

[TheShortTimer]

From what I recall reading years ago Office 2008 does work on Mojave, but is prone to varying degrees of UI glitches and instability. In my general experience, Office 2011 works much better, but the problem with Office 2011 is that it required online activation to function, and Microsoft took down the activation servers years ago. (IIRC, Office 2008 was the last version that could be activated with an offline product key.)

I agree with you about Office 2011. Despite a few niggling issues, Word 2011 remains my preferred word processor (with Pages coming a close second) on my daily driver Mac running High Sierra but I'll just throw it out there that the online activation issue has never been a problem for me - and shouldn't be for others if they know where to look...