Can I run two versions of Office on the same Mac?

[chapklc]

I feel at a complete loss. Ever since upgrading to 2008 Office, I feel like I have lost so much capability. I thought it would get even better and I feel I've lost years in ability. Struggling every day to do what I used to do.

All I want to do now, is run Word 2004 & 2008. Does anyone know if this is possible?

Or better yet is anyone familar with Styleease. It ran perfectly with Word in the past, both PC & Mac and now this new version of Word is saying it will not run visual basic script anymore... WHY NOT!@!!!

 

[A Friend]

I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that yes, you can run Word 2004 and Word 2008, side-by-side, on the same Mac, with no problems (just make sure you don't remove or over-write one version when installing the other). I've got both running right now - no problem.

And now for the bad news. The bad news is that there's no more support for Visual Basic in Office 2008. I'm not familiar with Styleease, but if it depends on VB (and from your description, it sounds like it does), then there's probably nothing you can do to get it to work in 2008. To get all the details, you might contact the developers of Styleease to see if they have any alternatives available (but brace yourself for more bad news).

Hope that helps (even if only half of it helps).

 

[John McGhie]

I am running Office 2004 and Office 2008 side-by-side on this Mac. They
work fine.

The only warning is that you MUST NOT run two versions of Entourage. If you
do, they will conflict and crash.

If you run the Entourage calendar, it relies on a Login Item named
"Microsoft Database Daemon". Make sure you have only the one for the
version of Entourage you are using running, or you will get strange crashes


Microsoft Office 2008 does not include a Visual Basic interpreter. We have
been shouting this from the rooftops for 12 months, so I do not know how you
missed it. A very large proportion of the "add-ins", "helpers" and "haxies"
people used to extend Office connected via VBA. So they won't work at all
with Office 2008, and there is no fix for that.

Similarly, the customisations you did in Office 2004 relied on VBA, so they
won't work in Office 2008, and there is no fix for that.

I use Office 2004 for work, and run 2008 only for giving help in here. You
are correct: Office 2008 has lost too much functionality to be much use in
business.

As to "WHY", well you can fill in your own explanation here Mine is
that software is a complex business that requires very large investments and
involves very large risks. Microsoft came to the conclusion that they would
not sell sufficient copies of Office on the Mac to make a profit if they
invested the money required to bring VBA for Mac OS X to the Intel platform.

I think the reality is that they won't sell enough copies of Office on the
Mac UNLESS they bring VBA across.

One of us is wrong

VBA on the PC is essentially a set of extensions to Windows: they can't use
the same strategy on the Mac!

Cheers