All these darned bugs in Office 2004 -- especially Entourage!

[Jay Boshara]

On a 20" 1.25 GHz iMac running OS 10.3.5 with 768 MB of RAM, Office 2004 is
full of bugs. Word and Excel run SLOWER than Office X, especially
highlighted formatting changes as simple as Bold and Italics (though
Entourage is slightly faster). Interface sounds in Word and Excel worked for
a few weeks, then suddenly stopped (though they work in Entourage).
Entourage puts most but not all messages from a certain domain into the Junk
Mail folder, even though Junk Mail Protection is OFF and the domain IS
included in the Safe Domains list (to their credit, the MS MacBU
troubleshooters have been responsive in trying to fix this, but with no
success). Sometimes Entourage new message Subject lines justify right for no
reason (must resart app to fix this). My wife's Entourage IMAP account often
doubles messages in the message list for no reason -- this is VERY annoying
and so far is impossible to fix (and she gets 10 times more download errors
than with Office X). All these problems (and more that I can't think of
right now) might be bearable if Office 2004 offered any substantial benefits
over Office X, but it doesn't (unless you work in a large enterprise
environment that makes use of Projects). Also, the 11.1.0 update does not
noticeably fix any of the bugs in 11.0. As far as I can tell, MS created
Office 2004 simply to increase their revenue stream -- NOT to give Mac users
a better Office experience. If anyone knows of fixes for these things,
please let me know.

 

[Matthew Fitzsimmons]

I have the same Entourage IMAP problem with one of my addresses.

Sorry to hear about the rest of your issues, but I must say this: the
Project feature has been HUGE for me as a home user. It doesn't require an
enterprise user to take advantage of it's features. Case in point: I'm
building a house, and it's nice having all the e-mails, tasks, contacts,
notes, events, etc. all in one place.

Matt

 

[Barry Wainwright]

On a 20" 1.25 GHz iMac running OS 10.3.5 with 768 MB of RAM, Office 2004 is
full of bugs. Word and Excel run SLOWER than Office X, especially
highlighted formatting changes as simple as Bold and Italics (though
Entourage is slightly faster).

This is a direct effect of using Apple's APIs to display the text - made
necessary by the adding of Unicode Support. The routines used to display the
text run more slowly than the non-unicode savvy routines previously used.

Interface sounds in Word and Excel worked for
a few weeks, then suddenly stopped (though they work in Entourage).

Not seen this reported as a common problem. Not sure why that would be.

Entourage puts most but not all messages from a certain domain into the Junk
Mail folder, even though Junk Mail Protection is OFF and the domain IS
included in the Safe Domains list (to their credit, the MS MacBU
troubleshooters have been responsive in trying to fix this, but with no
success).

Try disabling all rules and MLM entries. If this clears the problem there is
probably a corrupt rule. Enable them again in batches until you can pin down
which one it is.

Sometimes Entourage new message Subject lines justify right for no
reason (must resart app to fix this).

Known issue. Did the update to SR1 fix this for you?

My wife's Entourage IMAP account often
doubles messages in the message list for no reason -- this is VERY annoying
and so far is impossible to fix (and she gets 10 times more download errors
than with Office X).

That's strange. SR1 was supposed to improve account connectivity. Lost
connections can cause messages to be downloaded again. This is a failsafe in
the IMAP spec, rather than a bug in entourage.

All these problems (and more that I can't think of
right now) might be bearable if Office 2004 offered any substantial benefits
over Office X, but it doesn't (unless you work in a large enterprise
environment that makes use of Projects).

As with all things, it depends what you need. To me the major benefits in
2004 are the full unicode support and long file names. Those two on their
own almost make the upgrade worth it's cost. YMMV.

Also, the 11.1.0 update does not
noticeably fix any of the bugs in 11.0. As far as I can tell, MS created
Office 2004 simply to increase their revenue stream -- NOT to give Mac users
a better Office experience.

I would have to say that both of those reasons are true. Obviously, MS has
to keep it's revenue streams flowing - if it didn't it would die. I can also
vouch for the fact that the MBU are a great bunch of hard working,
dedicated, mac using enthusiasts. They definitely DO want to enhance the
user experience.

 

[Ed Kimball]

Have you tried fixing file permissions using Disk Utility? That sometimes
fixes "inexplicable" bugs.