Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac is the most recent version of the Microsoft Office productivity suite for Mac OS X. It supersedes Office 2004 for Mac and is the Macintosh equivalent of Office 2007, the latest version for Windows. It was developed by Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit and released on January 15, 2008.

Overview

Office 2008 for Mac was originally slated for release in the second half of 2007, however it was delayed until January 2008, citing the need to fix lingering bugs.^[1] Office 2008 is the first version of Office for Mac supplied as a Universal Binary.

Unlike Office 2007 for Windows, Office 2008 was not offered as a public beta before its scheduled release date.^[2]

Features

Office 2008 for Mac includes the same core programs currently included with Office 2004 for Mac: Entourage, Excel, PowerPoint and Word.

Mac-only features included are a publishing layout view, which offers functionality similar to Microsoft Publisher for Windows, a "Ledger Sheet mode" in Excel to ease financial tasks, and a "My Day" application offering a quick way to view the day's events.^[3]

Office 2008 supports the new Office Open XML format, and defaults to saving all files in this format. On February 21, 2008 Geoff Price revealed that the format conversion update for Office 2004 would be delayed until June 2008 in order to provide the first update to Office 2008.^[4]

Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications is not supported in this version.^[5] As a result such Excel add-ins dependent on VBA, such as Solver, have not been bundled in the current release. ^[6] In June 2008, Microsoft announced that they are exploring of bringing some of the functionality of Solver back to Excel ^[7]. In late August 2008, Microsoft announced that a new Solver for Excel 2008 was available as a free download from Frontline Systems, original developers of the Excel Solver ^{[8] [9]}. However, Excel 2008 also lacks other functionality, e.g. Pivot Chart functionality, which has long been a feature in the Windows version. In May 2008, Microsoft announced that VBA will be making a return in the next version of Microsoft Office for Mac^[10]. AppleScript and the Open Scripting Architecture is, however, supported.

Criticism

Error message in Microsoft Excel showing features that are not supported

Benchmarks suggest that the original release of Office 2008 runs slower on Macs with PowerPC processors, and does not provide a significant speed bump for Macs with Intel processors.^[13]

A data-compatibility issue has also been noted with CambridgeSoft's chemical structure drawing program, ChemDraw. Word 2008 does not retain the structural information when a chemical structure is copied from ChemDraw and pasted into a document. If a structure is recopied from a Word 2008 document, and is pasted back into ChemDraw, it appears as a non-editable image rather than a recognized chemical structure. There is no such problem in Word 2004 or X.^[14]

On May 13, 2008, Microsoft released Office 2008 Service Pack 1 as a free update. However, there have been many reports of the updater failing to install, resulting in a message saying that an updatable version of Office 2008 was not found.^[15]

Another widespread issue reported after SP1 is that Office files will no longer open in Office applications when opened (double-clicked) from the Mac OS X Finder or launched from other applications such as an email attachment. The trigger for this issue is that Microsoft in SP1 unilaterally and without warning deprecated certain older Mac OS 'Type' codes such as "WDBN" that some files may have, either because they're simply very old, or because some applications assign the older Type code when saving them to the disk. Users have seen the issue affect even relatively new Type codes, however, such as 'W6BN'. Microsoft is apparently looking into the issue, but it is unclear if they will reinstate the older Type codes, citing security concerns. http://www.microsoft.com/mac/help.mspx?target=0b9aa757-50ab-443b-8b0e-3a50ece1d5451033&clr=99-4-0

Another issue with cross-platform compatibility is that images inserted into any Office application by using either cut and paste or drag and drop result in a file that does not display the inserted graphic when viewed on a Windows machine. Instead, the Windows user is told "QuickTime and a TIFF (LZW) decompressor are needed to see this picture". A user presented one solution http://blog.pclark.net/2004/12/quicktime-and-tiff-lzw-decompressor.html as far back as December 2004.

Editions

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac is available in three editions. All three editions include Entourage, Excel, PowerPoint and Word.

• Office 2008 for Mac Home and Student Edition (without Exchange Server support or Automator Actions)
• Office 2008 for Mac Standard Edition (adds Microsoft Exchange support)
• Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition (Microsoft Exchange support and Expression Media)

History

Office 2008 for Mac is the latest in a long line of versions of Microsoft Office on the Mac OS platform. In fact, Office made its first appearance in 1989 on Mac, with a version for Windows following it in 1990.^[16]

Version history

See also

• List of office suites
• Comparison of office suites

References

External links

• Microsoft Office for Mac 2008
• MacBU interview: Office 2008 Exchange Server support
• Office 2008: lush "Escher" graphics engine
• First look: Office 2008

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