Thanx again.

I have tons of really old documents in Word 4 and Word 5 format, even a few in Word 3. Word 2008 doesn’t open them in any easy way. I can use the Open dialog, but then I have to figure out the path to to the file I was trying to open. Grungy. Or I can open ‘em in AppleWorks via MacLinkPlus to see if the file is the right one & if so, close it, & go thru the above. Also grungy. There may be a better answer, but I’ve looked & don’t know where it is. Word 4 & 5 didn’t have macros, so I don’t see why Word 2008 requires this workaround just to open a file. (Maybe it was too embarrassing to explain to people that Word 6 w/ evil macros was the problem – I never got Word 6! – & it would look bad if Word 2008 would easily open Word 5 files but not Word 6 files.)

Word ought to open files from *all* previous versions. Ditto for Excel & PowerPoint. This should be nearly seamless. A few oddities are ok – for instance, if an ancient file uses ancient bitmapped fonts, it’s ok to warn about that when opening the file. Similarly, a Word 6 file w/ macros should be easily accessible but the macros don’t have to work – in fact, they should be OFF by default, even if you include the capability.

About VBA & scripting: I never used VBA. Glad to hear it’s coming back, not so much for my own use, as because VBA is essential to Excel/Mac’s commercial future. I have simple scripts in AppleWorks, and I do some fairly light scripting in FileMaker. Haven’t done much w/ Excel 08, but one project worked *really well*, much better than in Excel 98 which had been my previous version. Remember, I don’t use VBA. PowerPoint is similarly much better in 2008 than in 98.

I intentionally use a rather old Mac & OS 10.4 so that if I have to, I can boot into OS 9. (Yes, I’m a fossil.) On that rather old Mac (933 MHz), Word 2008 is slow to open. Grrr. Microsoft went thru that before w/ Word 6; Word 98 was much improved. But something I like about my setup: I can save in my choice of .doc or .docx & test .doc files w/ Word 98 to make sure others w/ old sw can open the files.

I tried OpenOffice. I’m glad I have it handy, just in case, but I use it only when someone sends me a file that opens in it.

I have currently my first mac (powerbook G4) running Word 2004 for Mac, and it’s functioning well. But the computer is about to croak, sadly. I will need to either purchase a new Word 2004, or wait for the new version.

Which is why I ask – when is it planned?

Much thanks!

And no one was paying me out of some corporate budget. I came to Macs late in life, but if I could, would drop the various PCs I have just because the Mac is a beautiful machine.

The arrogance of Microsoft, with its screw the customer attitude is mind-boggling. (you once tried to charge me £230 just to ask a question when I found a bug in Access which then you credited after you admitted it was your fault). This is just another brick in the Microsoft stonewall built with complete disregard of your customers and the work they put in to adapt your undoubtedly great parts of the package (Pivot Tables for instance) to good use.

A plague on your house.

Also, this situation begs the question “Why don’t you put the Office 2004 VBA into a service pack for those of us who bought 2008 and had to ‘downgrade’???

MacMasters

It was not a question of there not being a particular interface (VBA) available to me, but the fact that there was NO interface available at all. Without an SDK or a detailed interface, we had no method by which to provide the functionality required by our users.

Be it XCode, VBA or a some other method – please give us an interface that we can use to extend the functionality of Excel to meet the needs we have. My requirements are not met by off-the-shelf products, and more than likely never will be. I doubt that I am alone.

It may not have been intentional, but that’s the only way I have been able to run Excel on my Mac and maintain compatibility with Office 2007.

It’s not just the lack of VBA, it’s the crippled filtering, the lack of graduated color conditional formatting, the lack of filter by color, the lack of sort by color, all features that I became dependent on in 2007.

Microsoft is in denial about the lack of compatibility, look at this page:-

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office2008/why-office.mspx

“Compatibility is Essential
No one likes being caught off guard, especially when the pressure’s on. That’s why it’s vital that shared documents, presentations, and spreadsheets open as they were designed—regardless of the computer or operating system.”

and

“Microsoft ensures that Office 2008 for Mac is forward, backward, and cross-platform compatible.”

and

“Office 2008 for Mac is the best option for Mac users who share documents at home, work, or at school.”

The above statements are just not true.

It is my belief that the high sales rate is a result of misleading advertising.

Put it back into Office 2008 or give me a free upgrade to the next release of Office and I’ll actually believe that line.

The simplest solution is usually the best solution. If Spaces doesn’t support multiple grouped windows, don’t use multiple grouped windows!

Issue should have been better handled.

Yeah, it is actually. I would argue that the reasons are mostly self-inflicted, but it’s still a non-trivial task. If it makes you feel better, VBA support is supposed to come back in the next version (Office 2011? IDK).

http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2006/08/08/saying-goodbye-to-visual-basic/
http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2008/05/13/saying-hello-again-to-visual-basic/

What was said about performance has nothing to do with 30000 pixels or what so ever. Sometimes I feel like being near a singularity because word is so slow. Add a picture and then wait a few seconds before it is drawn. There a plenty of other situation, where the speed just sucks. And my documents are not even big. Just admit it, the codebase is a mess. The implementation is just bad! Making such an ugly hacked toolbar … Why not using a plane dumb window?

Bad rendering – texts are jumping back from the next side just to be not really there, where one can see them. You have to scroll up and down to make word redraw the entire area correctly. Clicking on the scrollbar doesn’t bring you to the corresponding area in the document, though the scrollbar grabber(how is this thing called?) gets moved to that place. For you microsoft people who don’t know that: there are two options in the system preferences! Clicking to the scrollbar can really mean to scroll to that place (like on windows) or really jumpt there!

And why the hell is there no VBA? Is it that hard? This is one of THE BIG REASONS to use MS office.

As I first used the I was totally shocked. How can such a big and powerful company like MS bring such crap to the market? Did anybody test this? Then the first updates came out (promising perfomance improvements, etc …) and I couldn’t install them, because the installer didn’t find my MS installation … Such things MUST NOT HAPPEN! Shame on you, really!

If openoffice wouldn’t bad so bad I’d use it. But unfortunately it’s slow, has bad rendering, bad usability. So why do I still use office 2008? Because I need to have compatibility to windows office 2003/2007. That’s the only reason …

Your team had plenty of time to re-implement plenty of Office over to Cocoa, and at least pure Carbon. I can’t even begin to imagine what kind of job it was to wrap PowerPlant inside Carbon so it would compile on Intel. Sadly, such a feat is extremely impressive (and extremely time-wasting). Software Engineering 101 tells us that if we need to spend 8 months porting someone else’s (Metrowerks) product so we don’t have to rewrite ours, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!

So instead of doing the responsible thing and creating a decent product, Office sucks, and people are finally starting to give it up in favor of OpenOffice and iWork.

Way to go MS!

By 2011/2012, Apple’s Numbers will mature, OO/NeoOffice will have grown on more desktops, and Microsoft will (re-)introduce VB in Office. Don’t you guys see a problem here? You’ll on the downward slide as a result of 2008. Yes, as Apple’s market share rises and moms and dads equip those school machines with Office (“because we need it”), you’ll continue to have the “cool-boss-guy” tell the world 2008 sales are phenomena. But, your customer base will actually shrink as those new Mac users file other means of producting “office” documents on the Mac.

Here’s the only way to redeem yourself in 2011/2012. Have all those Product IDs of paid 2008 customers entire them to a completely free version of 2011/2012. Then we’ll see how sincere the Mac BU/Microsoft is about it’s Mac base. You’ll definitely re-ignite some level of true loyalty from the Mac community. Charge $129 or $349 for an upgrade and it will be Adios for good!