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Office 2008 REALLY BAD compared to 2007

A

Amronrun

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 7, 2008
5
0
I was told Office 2008 for my new Macbook would be "just the same" as Office 2007 on my old PC. Anyone else having problems with this? I find the menus on 2008 not nearly as sophisticated or organized as what I had on my PC. Also, certain things seem to be more primitive. For example, when I go to use spell check in Spanish, I am given one option, "Spanish". In the 2007 version on my PC I had about 20 options -- for versions of Spanish spoken in all different countries.

Also, when I use "borders and shading" to make the grid of a table disappear in my printed version, they also disappear in the version I'm working on on the screen -- making it impossible to see where to put information in the table. They don't just grey out to allow you to keep working like they did in 2007.

Also, what happened to that beautifully arranged set of icons as the menu bar? I feel like I've returned to primitive times with the drop-down menus on the Mac version (2008). Yikes! I was so excited to have a Mac, but I am SOOOOOO disappointed with the version of word I got. I've tried to reconstruct the menu bar on the 2008 version to match what I had in 2007, but it's not possible.

Anyone else crying big, dissapointed tears over this? Makes me sick that I spent all that money on a Mac only to move back several years in my word program.
 
Are you talking about the Ribbon? They intentionally left it out because it was counter-intuitive to have it, as Mac relies on the Inspector

Anyway, I find it really good. Primarily only use Word and that's been great.

Why don't you try running Office 2007 through something like VMWare Fusion. or Boot Camp?
 
PyrOsphere,

Thanks for responding. I have been told that I could "partition" my Macbook so I could run windows and have my old Word 2007. Is that what you are talking about with vmware fusion or bootcamp? My problem with that is that I've also been told that I would have to decide whether I'm using a windows computer or a Mac as I start up each time, which means if I'm typing a story (I'm a writer) in Word 2007, there would be no way to import photos or anything else I had stored on the "Mac side" of the partition...

Any thoughts?

Also, out of curiosity, what version of Word were you using when you made the switch to 2008? The ribbon DID seem counter-intuitive to me at first, but honestly, I got used to it in about a split second, and within about a week I was addicted to it.

One more question (sorry, my learning curve is pretty steep right now) -- what do you mean by "the inspector"? Could be that I'm just so new to the Mac world that I'm missing stuff I should be using...
 
Bootcamp requires you to boot into Windows versus OS X. VMWare Fusion enables you to run Windows programs while inside OS X (ie at the same time as other Mac applications)

I've used pretty much every version of Office and before I got my Macbook, was using Office 2007 exclusively on my Windows desktop

The Inspector is where most options and things are found. I can't find it through the menu bar, but it should be in the toolbar by default. The icon sort of looks like a a Mac window with a blue "i" on the front of it

picture1iv3.png

Full-Screen in Spaces

picture2rm7.png

On the same space =O
 
Thanks so much for responding! I really appreciate your time. I had missed the inspector. (Have only had 2008 on my computer for a few hours.) I've been reading a thread about the 2007 to 2008 transition on another website, too, and it sounds like I'm not the only one having trouble with the change.

Did you end up putting 2007 on your Mac? And if so, which approach did you use, (bootcamp or fusion) and are you happy with it? I have about two days to decide whether to just "suck it up" and adjust to 2008, or drag the windows world along with me into my shiny new Apple world. Any advice?

If you decided NOT to put 2007 on your mac, how long did it take you to adjust to 2008? Nobody sounds very reassuring about that.
 
Did you not see the two screenshots in my last post? That is Word 2007 running in VMware Fusion. I assume you have Leopard so you must know what Spaces is. I have one shot of Word 2008 in Space 1 and Word 2007 in Space 4. In my other screenie, I have them together in one space

So far, I've only needed to use Word and Office 2008 has been great for that. When it comes time for me to use Excel (in business program) I might have to use Excel 2007 since 2008 doesn't support VBA which I might need
 
pyr0sphere said:
Did you not see the two screenshots in my last post? That is Word 2007 running in VMware Fusion. I assume you have Leopard so you must know what Spaces is. I have one shot of Word 2008 in Space 1 and Word 2007 in Space 4. In my other screenie, I have them together in one space

So far, I've only needed to use Word and Office 2008 has been great for that. When it comes time for me to use Excel (in business program) I might have to use Excel 2007 since 2008 doesn't support VBA which I might need
Click to expand...

Office 2008 is useless for business students that need Goal Seek, Anova, etc.

I use my Mac for everything, but while I was finishing my degree I had to use a PC for the Office stuff since Office 2004/2008 is so bad.

As I have a G4 Mini, I couldn't do the VM thing. If Apple ever updates the Mini again I'll buy that model and be able to run 2007 again.

I'll try 2008 again when I get a more powerful Mac, but right now it's slow AND doesn't do what I need.
 
Amronrun said:
Anyone else crying big, dissapointed tears over this?
Click to expand...

Nope, I use Pages '08... I could hardly stand Word '08, and would use '04 instead if it were UB... But then comes Pages to save the day :D thanks :apple: for the great software ;)

If you do go for the '07 + Virtualization route, go for VMWare Fusion... use the search on MR Forums to see others opinions on VMWare vs. Paralels...

30 day trial: http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/
 
The only reason I bought office 2008 was for excel. iwork was not rending some advanced features in my existing excel spreadsheets properly. Entourage was absolutely terrible and still is even after SP1. They need to do some serious fixing of bugs in entourage before i'd attempt to use it again. Since I bought my mac pro, only one program has ever crashed, and that program is Microsoft Entourage.
 
Use VMWare and use the Unity feature or Parallels to allow your Office 2007 programs to run like Mac applications including appearing on the Dock. Create shared folders to your Mac home to access your documents (I found this more intuitive with Parallels). Configure your Office 2007 to use this shared folder by default. I liked VMWare's Unity implementation better for running programs from your Start Menu compared to Parallels.

You can drag and drop files across environments, copy and paste text and graphics.
 
reclusivemonkey said:
Who on earth told you that!? The day Office is exactly the same on a Mac as it is on Windows, its game over for Windows ;-)
Click to expand...

I think a few years ago, a rumor was suggesting both the Windows and Mac versions of the next Office would be identical. You are right about Microsoft, they need to cripple the Mac version. The last good version of Office that was comparable to Windows that I can remember for the Mac was the OS 9 classic version called Office 2001.

Perhaps Office 2012 will increase startup times to 3 minutes and the macro support will not be compatible with anything and it will lockup if you type over 30 words per minute. Microsoft needs to make it more obvious to people that they are not serious about developing software for the Mac.
 
pyrOsphere,
Thanks for elaborating on the screenshots. I see what you've done now. When you posted that, I was on my teeny tiny old Vista (ak!) computer, so I didn't see what you were trying to show me. I'm encouraged to think I might be able to use 2008 and spaces! I'm off to the Apple store to meet with the guys at the "genius bar" today.

Thanks to everyone else who's participating in this thread, too. As a writer, I just can't leave 2008 behind, and you are giving me some great ideas about how to manage this problem.

As for "2008 will be just like 2007" it was the salesperson at the Apple store who told me that! They like their stuff, but I think they assume a lot about the PC, and don't realize there IS some good stuff going on there. They certainly had no clue what 2007 was all about.
 
Has anyone discovered a way to upgrade the language/spellcheck function in Word 2008? My dictionary and spellcheck in 2007 allowed for Spanish versions from 20 different countries -- and now I only have one, and it's substandard. I ran a test last night and it was only catching about half the mistakes I set up for it on text I was writing in Spanish.
 
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