So... Is 2008 really ready for an Office Environment?

[JohnKGibson]

I ask this because we have been dreading the switch.

For presentations we now use Keynote almost exclusively. The reason
is that we don't have the corruption issues, or the media issues that
we run into with Office.

However I am not sure if we can completely go with Numbers or with
Pages as a replacement for Excel and Word.

We have looked into Open Office, but it seems that it is so dang slow,
same with NeoOffice.

Any thoughts on this?

John

 

[Diane Ross]

I ask this because we have been dreading the switch.

What version are you using now? Do you use VBA?

Are you aware there is a public beta for Entourage 2008 coming this month
for Exchange accounts? How many people using Macs?

<http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

I ask this because we have been dreading the switch.

For presentations we now use Keynote almost exclusively. The reason
is that we don't have the corruption issues, or the media issues that
we run into with Office.

However I am not sure if we can completely go with Numbers or with
Pages as a replacement for Excel and Word.

We have looked into Open Office, but it seems that it is so dang slow,
same with NeoOffice.

Any thoughts on this?

John

Hi John,

There's no fast and easy answer to your question. OpenOffice is pretty
bad at opening existing files and keeping things looking the way they
did. Right off the bat it doesn't ship with the same fonts, so you're
looking at font substitution problems on most documents. OpenOffice VBA
is lame, so if you are using any VBA or add-ins expect those to not work
at all. You'll have to go through a lot of hoops to get them to work,
and only in Calc, at that.

I've not experienced any corruption issues with Office 2004, but Office
2008 seems fragile to me. I've been satisfied with the Open XML
converter that handles the new XML format documents. Fewer than half of
our Windows correspondents have switched to Office 2007 and with the
money being tight they probably won't, so we don't get too many of the
new XML format documents. Office 2007 on the Windows side made a big
mistake by coming out too close to the launch of Vista. IT departments
tend to wait until they roll out Vista along with Office 2007, so that's
causing most PC users to keep their 2003 and earlier Windows Office. But
if your Windows correspondents have made the switch and you're dealing
with a lot of XML format then 2008 gets a big boost, unless those
documents have macros.

Numbers and Pages are good for Mac-only shops, but not if you're doing
stuff with Microsoft Office. For the same reason that OpenOffice doesn't
cut it - lack of the proper fonts and everything has to go through
translators and interpretors in and out causing changes to the documents.

For the computers under my care I've kept them on Office 2004. When
there was no Open XML converter I installed NeoOffice, and then
OpenOffice version 3. But now I am sticking with Office 2004 with Open
XML converter and have removed both OpenOffice and NeoOffice.

The next version of Mac Office looks very promising. VBA returns (it's a
show-stopper for us not to have it) and I'm sure a lot of very good
innovations are in the works. This time MacBU seems to be on the right
track, so I'm staying with Office 2004 until the next version becomes
available.

-Jim

 

[John McGhie]

My thought is "Wait for Office 2010".

Since you will be doing a large roll-out of multiple copies, you are better
off to wait.

Office 2008 running in XML (.docx) has very few of the corruption issues
that were experienced in the old (.doc) formats.

However, it is missing some of the functionality that is important to
business users.

Cheers

I ask this because we have been dreading the switch.

For presentations we now use Keynote almost exclusively. The reason
is that we don't have the corruption issues, or the media issues that
we run into with Office.

However I am not sure if we can completely go with Numbers or with
Pages as a replacement for Excel and Word.

We have looked into Open Office, but it seems that it is so dang slow,
same with NeoOffice.

Any thoughts on this?

John

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[Tim Murray]

Right off the bat it doesn't ship with the same fonts, so you're
looking at font substitution problems on most documents.

What are you getting at? Fonts should be installed at the OS level, not at
the application level, so it would not be a problem.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

What are you getting at? Fonts should be installed at the OS level, not at
the application level, so it would not be a problem.

Huh?

Jim's saying that Office07 and Office08 ship with new default MS fonts
that the *vast* majority of WinWord users will use.

If you don't install Office08, you won't get the new default MS fonts
(unless you get them from somewhere else).

So if you're sent Word07/08 docs that call for the new fonts, Word04
will have to make a font substitution.

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Tim -

Jim's point in response to the OP's query means that if the choice is made
to use Pages or Open Office rather than upgrading to Office 2008 the MS
Office fonts won't be included. Therefore, substitutions will be made in
those docs s/he receives from users of 2007/2008 where the MS Ofice supplied
fonts *have* been used.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac