Office 2004 Annoyances: is 2008 any better?

[myawn]

There are a couple of things that annoy the hell out of me with Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac. I'm curious whether these are fixed in 2008.

- Office documents sometimes do not show up in the Recent Items list, even when they have been edited more recently than items that do show up. I haven't quite figured out the pattern as to why items are there sometimes, and other times not.
- If I put in the name of a spreadsheet in Spotlight, Excel will open whatever spreadsheet it wants. (I believe it's probably the last spreadsheet opened). The one I requested is opened also, but may not even be the top-most one.
- If I'm working attached to an external monitor, have a spreadsheet on that monitor, and then disconnect, the window for the spreadsheet doesn't return to the laptop display. It requires a series of non-obvious steps to 'recover' the window.
- Sometimes the spreadsheet window just ignores the resize corner, generally stuck in more-or-less full screen.
- When opening a spreadsheet, it doesn't restore to the size it was when it closed.

Remind me again why this sells for something like 4x the cost of iWork?
(Yeah, I know, I should just redo my files for Numbers and drop this garbage, and probably will do that eventually.)

 

[MacDawg]

I don't know if any of these are fixed in 2008, but I do know 2008 has its own issues. I would stay with 2004 or try the new Open Office. 2008 is not worth the upgrade price IMHO.

PS. You will lose VBA as well

Woof, Woof - Dawg

 

[GimmeSlack12]

Dude, '08 is no improvement. If anything its a step backwards if you count the new ribbon interface which, personally, I do not like.
I used '04 quite a lot and it had some issues but I just dealt with it. If anything OpenOffice 3.0 just came out and has a new native interface so you don't have to use XCode when launching it. I've downloaded it but haven't really explored it much.

 

[Wireless Buddy]

NeoOffice

I use NeoOffice and I couldn't be happier. iWork is total crap that I wouldn't use ever, and I didn't want to pay for Microsoft Office, so I tried NeoOffice and I loved it! I don't know if it has or doesn't have those issues you mentioned, but I'd give it a try.


www.neooffice.org

EDIT: Also, it is free.

 

[nadyne]

There are a couple of things that annoy the hell out of me with Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac. I'm curious whether these are fixed in 2008.

- Office documents sometimes do not show up in the Recent Items list, even when they have been edited more recently than items that do show up. I haven't quite figured out the pattern as to why items are there sometimes, and other times not.
- If I put in the name of a spreadsheet in Spotlight, Excel will open whatever spreadsheet it wants. (I believe it's probably the last spreadsheet opened). The one I requested is opened also, but may not even be the top-most one.
- If I'm working attached to an external monitor, have a spreadsheet on that monitor, and then disconnect, the window for the spreadsheet doesn't return to the laptop display. It requires a series of non-obvious steps to 'recover' the window.
- Sometimes the spreadsheet window just ignores the resize corner, generally stuck in more-or-less full screen.
- When opening a spreadsheet, it doesn't restore to the size it was when it closed.

Fixed. 🙂

If you want to check for certain, you can always go into your friendly local Apple Store -- they've got Office 2008 loaded on all of their machines.

Regards,
Nadyne.

 

[illegallydead]

You should probably stay with '04.

'08 is either no improvement, or quite possibly worse, especially with Leopard.

iWork isn't great (so far... I just started using it because MS Office '08 annoyed me one too many times)

Honestly, Open Office 3.0 is likely your best bet. I have used it on windows in the past, it is more or less the same as MS Office, includes ALL the software, and they don't rape you for ~$150 for the lump of **** that is Office '08