Incompatibility

[MichaelBrashier]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

This is more of a comment than a question, but I am hoping that someone from Microsoft reads this. I am totally dismayed by the lack of backward compatibility this version has with 2004. I have gradesheets in Excel in particular, but other spreadsheets as well dealing with acid/base balance, etc from Excel that have VBA macros built in that are no longer useful. I can no longer use any of it. I use the eInstruction CPS clicker system in my Powerpoint lectures for pop quizzes and just to keep the class alert that I can no longer use. My medical spell checker is useless. I am so disappointed that I spent the money for this. I did it because the students are coming with MS Office 2008 on their computers and I wanted to keep compatible. I can hardly expect them to buy old software to be compatible with me. But all of my work now has to be done all over again, if I can even figure out how to. Unless some of the software and hardware I use in class updates to become compatible, I will either have to abandon use of the clicker system in lecture, or be forced to switch to a Windows based system. Right now I am looking at removing MS Office 2008 and reinstalling MS Office 2004, or switching platforms. Again, this is so disappointing. I may drop MS Office altogether and give Ma iWorks a try.

 

[Michel Bintener]

Hi Michael,

I'm sorry to hear about the problems you are experiencing with Office 2008.
However, I should tell you that Microsoft employees rarely ever venture into
these newsgroups, so you'd better use the Send Feedback menu in any of the
Office applications' Help menu to make sure your message is actually read by
the people that matter.

You might find it interesting to know that you can actually keep both Office
2004 and 2008 on one and the same machine, as long as you don't run both
versions of Entourage at the same time. That way, you can have the best of
both worlds, i.e. compatibility with the new file format and new
technologies as well as technologies that are no longer included in Office
2008, such as VBA. I agree this is no perfect solution, and you would
actually expect a newer version to have more features than an older one, but
there are actually plenty of valid reasons why Office 2008 is not as
full-featured as Office 2004 (or Office 2007, for that matter).