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MS Office Unstable?

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paxtonandrew

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 10, 2004
323
0
I Come From A Land Down Under
I am still using MS Office X, and am looking at upgrading to 2004, but, i won't be doing that if the program is as unstable as Office X. Can anybody recommend anything other than Office and Apple Works :mad:? The Price doesn't matter.

What do you think of Open Office? I have never tried it, but may be willing to.

Thanks for your help.
 
Office is a bit unstable, but I'm sure we'll see an update for it soon

I would just continue using the old Office until they come out with an update for this newer one
 
have you upgraded to 10.1.5 version of office v.X already? that is much better than any previous versions, and hardly ever crashes.
 
If you need a word-processor you could try Mellel, (better interface, slightly limited, compared to word, www.redlers.com) or Nisus writer (a bit limited, www.nisus.com), these are both very cheap.
If you need a whole suit, try Ragtime (very cool all-in-one program, DTP relatively good, www.ragtime-online.com), free for non-commercial use.

Open office is good but it looks a bit crude. It's a X11 program, not Aqua/Quartz, so the interface looks out of place.

All programs are not perfect is importing/exporting word program, screwing up more complex lay outs.
 
HasanDaddy said:
Office is a bit unstable, but I'm sure we'll see an update for it soon
Click to expand...
Yeah, Microsoft always patches thier software as soon as they realize it's the slightest bit unstable. Should be any day now... While you're waiting perhaps you'd like to...oh, I don't know...grow old?

Word, when I used it, was the crashiest thing on my Mac. The system goes out a couple times a year, Safari every week or so, Word at least daily.

Do you do anything special? 90% of Office's features go unused by 90% of the people that own it. TextEdit is a very capable word processor. AppleWorks (get over how it looks, it works just fine) is good for the rest. If you're patient I'm sure we'll get an OS X native OpenOffice.

Unless you need the features of Microsoft Office I'd urge you to avoid it. Buy something with features you'll actually use and for less money. You have choices and don't automatically have to buy MS Office.

Some people have no choice but to use MS Office though--but if you're not one of them you should celebrate.
 
Horrortaxi said:
Yeah, Microsoft always patches thier software as soon as they realize it's the slightest bit unstable. Should be any day now... While you're waiting perhaps you'd like to...oh, I don't know...grow old?

Word, when I used it, was the crashiest thing on my Mac. The system goes out a couple times a year, Safari every week or so, Word at least daily.

Do you do anything special? 90% of Office's features go unused by 90% of the people that own it. TextEdit is a very capable word processor. AppleWorks (get over how it looks, it works just fine) is good for the rest. If you're patient I'm sure we'll get an OS X native OpenOffice.

Unless you need the features of Microsoft Office I'd urge you to avoid it. Buy something with features you'll actually use and for less money. You have choices and don't automatically have to buy MS Office.

Some people have no choice but to use MS Office though--but if you're not one of them you should celebrate.
Click to expand...

I'm not locked into anything, its just ever since i started using Macs, i had MS office, which was way back in 1990, and have been a loyal user ever since. I do use the features in Office, some more so than others, but I will give Text Edit a try. I take it that this is just a text only client, but i may be wrong.

Thanks to all who responded, and i may look into some other options, as updating office looks less and less likely now! :eek:
 
I checked checked my version of office 2004, its 11.0. I have been using office for months now and it has not crashed once. I got the student/teacher edition witch i like much more since it has a Compatibility Report system telling you if there is any problenms with the docement. I think you should go with office 2004, I have not had any problems with it.
 
Do they have the test drive up for the new version yet? You can try d/l'ing that when it's available and see how good it is or if it's even worth upgrading. It's like a 30 day trial version.
 
Office v. X was a bit of a nightmare in terms of crashing for me, it may have had something to do with the number of equations in my documents though. Word 2004 seems much better so far, but I haven't really thrown anything too hard at it yet. Sure mac office could do with the amount of optimisation the windows version gets but I generally find it a reasonably good product, especially compared to the competition or to the operating systems M$ puts out.
 
Word v.X is actually faster than Word 2004.

http://www.barefeats.com/quick.html

Look for the May 20, 2004 Test between Word v.X and Word 2004. Pretty amazing. I've also talked to a lot of people who really prefer v.X to 2004 simply because it is faster, unless you really want the new features in 2004 that you'll never use.
 
Office v.X is not unstable at all. I can leave Word and Excel open for days on end without any problem... I blame that instability you speak of either on Permissions trouble or a need to run Disk Utility and repair your HD.
 
Horrortaxi said:
Word, when I used it, was the crashiest thing on my Mac. The system goes out a couple times a year, Safari every week or so, Word at least daily.

Do you do anything special? 90% of Office's features go unused by 90% of the people that own it. TextEdit is a very capable word processor. AppleWorks (get over how it looks, it works just fine) is good for the rest. If you're patient I'm sure we'll get an OS X native OpenOffice.

Unless you need the features of Microsoft Office I'd urge you to avoid it. Buy something with features you'll actually use and for less money. You have choices and don't automatically have to buy MS Office.

Some people have no choice but to use MS Office though--but if you're not one of them you should celebrate.
Click to expand...

Wow. Are you serious?! TextEdit is an incapable load of bovine excrement when it comes to word processing. You must be joking...

Why should people avoid MS Office? Is it because of some hatred you have for Microsoft? It is not to be counted as offense that they make the best office suite.
 
I have been using Word and Excel v.X for a year and a half. I have yet to experience a crash in either program.
 
office v.X stable?

Hi, I'm kind of a recent switcher (from december), and actually the only application that has given me problems is Word v.X.

The app is unstable, even when doing the most irrelevant stuff (like creating a new folder when saving a document). Also, I had trouble reading graphics from a word file that look good in a PC (actually with one fo the images, word v.X crashed when try to show the page, it was very annoying, I could onluy edit the document to the page before the one the image was, try to pass it very quickly, and then continue editing in the next page).

I upgraded to v.X.1.5, but, even though is more stable, it is not completely reliable.

Would I have the same issues with Office 2004. I'm a lawyer, so word it's the most important app for work.
 
FelixDerKater said:
Wow. Are you serious?! TextEdit is an incapable load of bovine excrement when it comes to word processing. You must be joking...

Why should people avoid MS Office? Is it because of some hatred you have for Microsoft? It is not to be counted as offense that they make the best office suite.
Click to expand...
I'm absolutely serious. If you need to write a letter or any text document (reports for school, whatever) then TextEdit is perfectly capable. It doesn't have bells and whistles--just good old fashioned text editing. It's like a typewriter for your computer, which is what a word processor should be. Most people don't do much more than write letters and book reports anyway.

I'm all for using the right tool for the job. If MS Office is that tool for you, then use it. MS Office is probably the best office suite money can buy--but how many competing products do you see? That's where my Microsoft hatred comes from. There's no reason that everyone should need MS Office to write a letter to grandma, yet that's what almost everyone does and it's not by their own conscious choice. They were manipulated or bought outright. Microsoft doesn't play fair.

If you need the features of Office, use Office--you have no choice. If you don't need the features of Office, you do have a choice.
 
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