Using Word 2004 for Mac?

[Phillip Jones, CET]

I caught the Joke. That Why I suggested put Parallels and XP on a
separate Drive.

It was a joke Phillip, XP *is* the malware ;-)

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |MEMBER:VPEA (LIFE) ETA-I, NESDA,ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/90th_Birthday/index.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Fulcher/default.html>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Harris/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Jones/default.htm>

<http://www.vpea.org>

 

[Phillip Jones, CET]

Hi Phillip J.,
With regards to setting up my newsletter, I usually do a rough draft
first. I might go through several layouts before getting to the one I
like. Then I select the number of pages, arrange them then drag/drop
text, pictures, etc. to that setup. Once spelling errors have been
corrected I will print off a copy to see what it looks like. If
anything is amiss, I fix it. In Pages, I sent out a copy to Mail and
off it went. I know that I ran into problems at other people's expense
when I assumed that everything would go along okay.
Since joining this discussion, I have since tried printing to PDF and
sending it to my old dell pc at another email address. It opened just
like before when I was using the dell pc. So I know the 'Print to PDF'
trick works okay for those that have PDF readers.
Knowing that, could you please explain a Hard Page Insert? Thanks for
taking time with my newbie questions.

For Reasons too complicated for me to explain (but MVPs can), Office
Software (which includes Word) when inserting a Page Break/section Break
Office insert a lot of information in those characters/command. And
Office Software does not see Pages. A document is one long continuous item.

And for some reason Acrobat will choke on these commands. It will quit
the first Break. then you have to go past that break and create a PDF
again. And so on then you can within Acrobat combine the pages. Adobe is
a Smart corporation, have been for years, Their software developers just
can't get a handle on the problem and have been trying for years.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |MEMBER:VPEA (LIFE) ETA-I, NESDA,ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/90th_Birthday/index.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Fulcher/default.html>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Harris/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Jones/default.htm>

<http://www.vpea.org>

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Don't buy Microsoft Office for the Mac yet. Wait for the next version,
which will be vastly improved over the current version.

You already have Office 2000 in Parallels. That's a more feature-rich
product than Office 2004 on the Mac.

There would be no advantage in buying Mac Office 2004, and it won't run as a
native application on your Intel Mac anyway.

Wait for the next version, due in about 12 months.

Cheers

Hi Barry W.,
Yes, I was quite comfortable with the 'send to recipient' feature in
Word. Changing over to Pages hasn't been as smooth as expected. That
is the reason that I am considering getting Word for Mac. Before doing
so, however, I just want to make sure that I am trying everything
possible with Pages before changing back to MS programming. I
purchased iWork for my daughter's iMac and was so impressed with both
Keynotes and Pages that I have tried to adopt them into my monthly
eNewsletter. I believe that there may only be a handful (less than 5)
of readers that have Macs, while the majority are using Microsoft
Windows based pc's. Unfortunately, I did not take into consideration
what the differences between Pages and Word would end up as. Thank you
for all of your help thus far; I'm sure that I will have more as I try
to figure out what to do in 'the stay with Pages or move back to Word'
game that I am playing here.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[parkpointer]

Don't buy Microsoft Office for the Mac yet. Wait for the next version,
which will be vastly improved over the current version.

You already have Office 2000 in Parallels. That's a more feature-rich
product than Office 2004 on the Mac.

There would be no advantage in buying Mac Office 2004, and it won't run as a
native application on your Intel Mac anyway.

Wait for the next version, due in about 12 months.

Cheers



--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

Hi John,
Thank you for your cander. I thought that Word 2000 was a pretty good
program, by comparison to Pages. I just couldn't evaluate the trial of
Word 2004 for Mac because very few of the features were present.
Thanks again

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

I would like your input regarding what you think about: Word 2000 in
Windows XP vs Word 2004 for Mac; and Word 2000 vs the latest Word for
XP?

Word is like wine: there are good years and bad years. Word 2000 was a
particularly good year -- the best there has ever been. It is the most
stable and rugged version of Word that has ever been produced. It's the
version I specify for all the seriously large production jobs I do, because
of its greater reliability.

Word 2003 has some nice extra capabilities, that you would use only if you
get into the very technical areas of document production. It is a lot
faster than Word 2000 on very large documents. However, it also has some
serious design bugs that lead to rapid and fatal document corruption unless
you know what to turn off

Word 2004 is a cut-down of Word 2000. It's nowhere near as stable as Word
2000, and a lot slower on very large documents. It does not have many of
the features of Word 2000, or has cut-down versions of them.

Outlook 2003 has several improvements over Outlook 2000. But unless you are
connected to an Exchange Server, you won't be using them. The only
advantage of Outlook 2003 is that it can happily cope with much larger
mailboxes. On the other hand, Outlook 2003 insists on using Word as the
email editor, and Word is not a great email editor

I strongly suggest that you stick with what you have: Office 2003 will give
you more problems and no benefits over Office 2000. Office 2004 will give
you more problems and less features compared to Office 2000.

Office 2007 has been released for the PC now. See if you can TRY it
somewhere before you decide to buy it. I don't like it. Partly due to
unfamiliarity: EVERYTHING has changed in the user interface, so it takes me
a LOT longer to get anything done. But partly because it has been severely
dumbed-down compared to Word 2003.

I do long document publishing as a profession. I need all the power
features. They are difficult to find, access, and use in Office 2007.

That said: it is faster than Office 2003 and its limits are a lot higher.
Once I find a way to customise Office 2007 to make the professional-level
tools properly available it will be an improvement on Office 2003: a huge
improvement. By then, the first Service Pack will be available for it,
which will fix some of the more irritating bugs.

Right now, it's unwieldy to use, it's more of a kiddies' toy than a
professional application, and it crashes a lot.

By the time they bring that version to the Mac, they will have got the bugs
out. Hopefully, they will also have gotten over their fascination with
Generation Y and it's attention deficit disorder working style, and knowing
the Mac Business Unit division of Microsoft, they will produce a version
that is much more suitable to professional document production.

So I have very high hopes that the next version of Office on the Mac will be
the killer application for the documentation professional. All the power
and stability of XML in a user interface designed to serve the skilled
professional.

I can't wait (although, like you, I'll have to...)

Cheers

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Michel Bintener]

Hi Michael,
Could you please explain how to find that last option point you made
about Mail>Preferences, General Tab? I tried to locate it on my iMac
in Mail and did not see it. I must have been in the wrong area. Thank
you for everything thus far!

Open Apple Mail, click on "Mail" in the menu bar and then select
Preferences. The preferences window will show up, and you should see several
icons just below the title bar, one of which looks like a light switch and
which reads General.* Click on it, if it's not open already, then click on
the dropdown bar next to "Default Email Reader". This will give you a list
of common e-mail programs, and you have to pick the one you'd like to use.
If your preferred e-mail client is not listed there, click on "Select" and
browse to the application using the Finder dialogue window.

* If that icon row is not visible, click on the small pill-shaped grey
button in the upper right corner of the title bar to make it appear.

--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:Mac (Entourage & Word)

***Always reply to the newsgroup.***

 

[parkpointer]

Word is like wine: there are good years and bad years. Word 2000 was a
particularly good year -- the best there has ever been. It is the most
stable and rugged version of Word that has ever been produced. It's the
version I specify for all the seriously large production jobs I do, because
of its greater reliability.

Word 2003 has some nice extra capabilities, that you would use only if you
get into the very technical areas of document production. It is a lot
faster than Word 2000 on very large documents. However, it also has some
serious design bugs that lead to rapid and fatal document corruption unless
you know what to turn off

Word 2004 is a cut-down of Word 2000. It's nowhere near as stable as Word
2000, and a lot slower on very large documents. It does not have many of
the features of Word 2000, or has cut-down versions of them.

Outlook 2003 has several improvements over Outlook 2000. But unless you are
connected to an Exchange Server, you won't be using them. The only
advantage of Outlook 2003 is that it can happily cope with much larger
mailboxes. On the other hand, Outlook 2003 insists on using Word as the
email editor, and Word is not a great email editor

I strongly suggest that you stick with what you have: Office 2003 will give
you more problems and no benefits over Office 2000. Office 2004 will give
you more problems and less features compared to Office 2000.

Office 2007 has been released for the PC now. See if you can TRY it
somewhere before you decide to buy it. I don't like it. Partly due to
unfamiliarity: EVERYTHING has changed in the user interface, so it takes me
a LOT longer to get anything done. But partly because it has been severely
dumbed-down compared to Word 2003.

I do long document publishing as a profession. I need all the power
features. They are difficult to find, access, and use in Office 2007.

That said: it is faster than Office 2003 and its limits are a lot higher.
Once I find a way to customise Office 2007 to make the professional-level
tools properly available it will be an improvement on Office 2003: a huge
improvement. By then, the first Service Pack will be available for it,
which will fix some of the more irritating bugs.

Right now, it's unwieldy to use, it's more of a kiddies' toy than a
professional application, and it crashes a lot.

By the time they bring that version to the Mac, they will have got the bugs
out. Hopefully, they will also have gotten over their fascination with
Generation Y and it's attention deficit disorder working style, and knowing
the Mac Business Unit division of Microsoft, they will produce a version
that is much more suitable to professional document production.

So I have very high hopes that the next version of Office on the Mac will be
the killer application for the documentation professional. All the power
and stability of XML in a user interface designed to serve the skilled
professional.

I can't wait (although, like you, I'll have to...)

Cheers

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

Hi John McG.,
Thank you for the reply. Although I have the '06 version of iWork with
an improved Pages over previous models on the iMac, Office 2000's
version of Word still outshines it. Feature rich to be able to make as
many adjustments and text edit as I would ever want to do. MS also
adds tons of clipart and add-ons to make it nearly as good as
Publisher. But I do like the way that Word & Publisher can co-mingle
on my eNewsletters.
I thank you for the insight on decision making. Wait till the people
at MS come up with a better version for the Mac on Office and Word, and
wait still to see what the new iWork looks like as well.
I can tell you that installing Parallels on the iMac, Windows xp home,
and finally Office 2000 has been great for making the change over from
a Windows based pc to the iMac. It lets me keep my newsletters looking
the same while I can experiment with the Mac software. Actually my
last newsletter went out via email as a Word doc & a Pages doc to
various recipients, just to see who liked which model. Actually as an
editor/publisher of newsletters go, very little response has come back.
It could be a good thing. In any case I'll be waiting until something
better comes down the road. Thank You Very Much!