Custom Installation for Office Mac 2004

[jcstormy]

I'm new to Mac and just purchased a new iMac and ordered Office 2004
Student Edition. Does anyone know if I can just install Excel? That
is all I really need. From reading these boards, it sound like since
I use Office 2007 at work and Office XP at home any files on the Mac
are not yet compatible with my pc versions?

Also, I ordered my iMac with 2gb of RAM. Will this run Excel
smoothly? I have no intention of installing boot camp or parallels.
I didn't even want the Office, but I need excel.

Thanks in advance.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I'm new to Mac and just purchased a new iMac and ordered Office 2004
Student Edition. Does anyone know if I can just install Excel?

That may be possible, but I wouldn't do it - Office apps are built on
the Office platform, so most of Office will be installed anyway, and the
footprint of the individual apps is relatively tiny (about .04GB for
Word, Entourage and PPT). With Word, I'd say absolutely no, because
there's so much interaction with Entourage.

That is all I really need. From reading these boards, it sound like
since I use Office 2007 at work and Office XP at home any files on
the Mac are not yet compatible with my pc versions?

Not yet, but the converters are expected RSN ("real soon now"). In the
mean time, you can save the files as .xls.

Also, I ordered my iMac with 2gb of RAM. Will this run Excel
smoothly? I have no intention of installing boot camp or parallels.

2GB will certainly run XL just fine with room to spare.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi,

You can do a custom install of office for the Mac. When you pop the CD in
you'll be offered two ways to install: using the assistant or drag and drop.

You should use the Assistant. You can choose just Excel, but look through
the options to make sure you don't leave out something you might want later
on. For example, if you use equations make sure you take the equation
editor. Take VBA options if you use VBA.

Excel for Mac will run smoothly with your hardware.

The xls file format is supported by Office 2004, Office 2003, and Office
2007. The only problem you'll have if is if you try to use the new format
that's the default (which you can change) in Excel 2007. The Mac converters
have not been shipped yet.

Enjoy your new Mac!

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

I'm new to Mac and just purchased a new iMac and ordered Office 2004
Student Edition. Does anyone know if I can just install Excel? That
is all I really need. From reading these boards, it sound like since
I use Office 2007 at work and Office XP at home any files on the Mac
are not yet compatible with my pc versions?

Also, I ordered my iMac with 2gb of RAM. Will this run Excel
smoothly? I have no intention of installing boot camp or parallels.
I didn't even want the Office, but I need excel.

Thanks in advance.

--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

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