Apr 16, 2018 Describes an issue that occurs when you double-click or drag a file from an earlier version of Word for Mac onto a Word 2008 for Mac program icon. In this scenario, the file doesn't open. Occurs after you install Office 2008 SP1. Oct 17, 2015 Office for Mac 2008 I realize that Microsoft no longer supports the 2008 version of Office, I am still hoping for a solution to my problem. My Office Suite is missing some files. I can't get help topics, there are no templates, and some other problems. I have a product ID, but I can't find a way to re download 2008. The default, XML-based document format for Word 2008 for Mac, Word for Mac 2011, Word 2016 for Mac, Word 2007 for Windows, Word 2010 for Windows, Word 2013 for Windows, and Word 2016 for Windows. Word 97-2004 Document (.doc) The document format that is compatible with Word 98 through Word 2004 for Mac and Word 97 through Word 2003 for Windows. The Word 2008 for Mac thesaurus offers alternative word choices and is one of Word’s most useful writing tools. The thesaurus works just like a printed thesaurus, but it’s even better because it’s faster than leafing through pages, and it’s always just a couple of clicks away when you’re using any of the Office applications.
Apr 20, 2018 How to print labels in Microsoft Word 2008 for Mac. Content provided by Microsoft. This article describes how to print a single label or a sheet of labels in Microsoft Word 2008 for Mac. More Information. To print a single label or a sheet of labels, follow these steps.
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Microsoft Word 2008
It has been 24 years since Microsoft first released Word, and four years since the program’s last major upgrade. How much more can Microsoft do to tweak its venerable word processor? Surprisingly, Word gets several major enhancements in Office 2008, the first version of Microsoft’s productivity suite to run natively on both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs. Those changes include a new document format, a simplified toolbar, and a new toolbox that combines palettes for managing formatting, clip art, iPhoto images, research, and bibliographies. But the biggest improvement is the addition of a new view option called Publishing Layout.
In this new view, arranging text and graphics on the page is far simpler than it was in previous versions of Word. Like Apple, Microsoft has apparently concluded that people use word processing programs for far more than just creating text-based documents. Creating complex, graphics-rich documents requires tools historically found in powerful page layout programs such as Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress. Like Apple’s Pages, Microsoft Word now allows you to select a distinct editing environment specifically for creating layout-intensive documents. That environment is Publishing Layout.
The biggest downside in what would otherwise be an excellent upgrade: the elimination of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). In its place, Word 2008 offers limited support for AppleScript and Automator. Those replacements don’t offer the recording or other features that made it pretty simple to automate and customize Word 2004. If you’re accustomed to Word 2004’s automation features, you’re going to be disappointed in Word 2008.
Fresh look
Like the other Office 2008 apps, Word has a new user interface that makes it easier to manage preferences, consolidates most of Word’s formatting tools, and puts key document elements—including cover pages, headers, footers, and bibliographies—a single click away.
The first and most obvious interface change is the new toolbar. It sits at the top of your document window, rather than being tied to the menu bar. In previous versions, Word’s toolbars could fill up most of the top of your screen. They were too easy to accidentally rearrange and contained way more buttons than most people used. Word 2008’s simpler toolbar includes all of what you need to effectively open, create, and save documents, undo and redo changes, and add tables and columns. If there’s a button you don’t want or one that you think is missing, it’s easy to change the toolbar. Unfortunately, Word still doesn’t use the typical Mac toolbar customization sheet; Microsoft says those sheets couldn’t manage all the options Microsoft wanted to offer.
Just below Word’s toolbar is the Elements Gallery, a set of five new buttons from which you can quickly add document elements, tables, charts, SmartArt graphics, and WordArt to documents. The Document Elements button, for example, lets you quickly add or modify cover pages, headers and footers, or a table of contents. Some users may find it annoying that they can’t remove this Gallery; I think more will be grateful for its presence.
Word 2008’s new Toolbox combines a bunch of different palettes in one floating tool. From it, you can quickly access formatting options, insertable symbols, clip art, your iPhoto library, reference tools, and Office’s Scrapbook and Project Center. In previous versions, those tools were scattered among menus, toolbars, and floating palettes; they’re now all in one place.
Aside from the formatting tools, I particularly liked the Toolbox’s Citations panel, which allows you to quickly and simply create a database of reference works. By adding articles, Web sites, books, and other materials to this database, you can easily add them to your document. Word will then automatically create a bibliography or citation page (in APA, Chicago, MLA, or Turabian format). Previous editions of Word had limited versions of this feature, but it was not this obvious or easy to use.
Still, the Toolbox lacks the simplicity of Pages’ floating palettes. For example, depending on what was selected in my document and which disclosure triangles were opened, the Formatting palette sometimes outgrew my screen—even when I was working on a 20-inch iMac. Closing those disclosure triangles took care of this problem, but it would be nice if Word worked more like Pages, which uses a tabbed format for document options and which allows you to open more than one floating palette at a time. I was also frustrated by the fact that my scroll wheel didn’t work on scrollbars in the formatting palette but did work on other scrollbars in the Toolbox.
One other nice interface change: Word 2008’s new Preferences panel is much better organized and more Mac-like than Word 2004’s.
Publishing tools
It’s always been a bit frustrating using Word to create brochures, postcards, posters, or other types of documents that require arranging different elements on the page. Previous versions simply haven’t been designed to perform that kind of page layout magic. Word 2008’s new Publishing Layout view changes that dramatically.
Publishing Layout offers a bunch of tools for placing and manipulating text and graphics on the page. Like Pages, Word 2008 allows you to create template documents with image and text placeholders; you can drag and drop images and text into those placeholders, making it easy to turn those templates into new, fresh documents. You can also link text boxes so text overflows from one to another.
The image-editing tools in Publishing Layout aren’t as good as those in Pages. While it is possible to add masks and transparency and make minor adjustments to images in your document, the program is nowhere near as adept at it as Pages. Another thing I noticed: the longer I worked in Publishing Layout mode, the slower Word seemed to get when manipulating images or moving text boxes around on the page.
Bye-bye, VBA
Word 2008 adopts the new, XML-based .docx format for documents. That format makes Word 2008 compatible with the latest version of Word for Windows. Unfortunately, those documents can’t be opened in older versions of Word without the downloadable .docx converter from Microsoft. To bypass this problem, Word 2008 does allow you to save documents in the older .doc format using a Compatibility Mode.
More significantly, Office 2008 marks the demise of Visual Basic for Applications. In its stead, Word includes an AppleScript library. Unfortunately, according to Microsoft, Word’s AppleScript library isn’t nearly as complete as the VBA library was. In addition, while there are 30 Automator actions for Word, they aren’t that useful. Neither AppleScript nor Automator will let you record a string of events in Word and save them as a reusable script.
Word does a good job of merging data from a variety of sources, including text files, Office’s own address book, and FileMaker Pro. But, unlike Pages, Word can’t merge data from Apple’s Address Book app. I’d prefer a program that can merge data from any source. But, given the choice, I’d take Word’s missing Address Book merge to Pages’ missing everything else.
Should I stay?
The question for most Mac users isn’t “Should I buy Word 2008?” It’s “Should I upgrade?”
As a word processor, Word 2008 is no better or worse than Word 2004. You’ll be able to create and format documents the way you want to, print them, and get them out the door. But the new user interface is cleaner; thanks to some great design decisions at Microsoft, there’s virtually no learning curve. Yes, it’s a pain that you can’t hide the Elements Gallery, but it never got in my way and it definitely put some previously hard-to-find features at my fingertips.
Word’s enhanced publishing tools are a huge plus; Windows users have had Publisher for eons and the addition of Publishing Layout levels the playing field for Mac users. That said, you can get better page layout tools for less money (without losing Office file compatibility) from iWork’s Pages.
The loss of VBA is a travesty; if you’re using Word in a mixed business environment with both Macs and Windows machines and you rely on a lot of macros, it’s a deal breaker. The Automator scripts that come with Word 2008 are not particularly valuable as automation tools, and there’s no easy way to automate with AppleScript. If you need automation, Word 2008 is not for you.
Macworld’s buying advice
As a word processor, little has changed in Word 2008. The elimination of VBA and weak support for AppleScript and Automator make the program far less versatile and valuable for users who really need automation. But the program’s streamlined interface and the addition of the new Publishing Layout view make it a compelling choice, especially if you want to stretch Word beyond its current capabilities.
[Jeffery Battersby is a network manager who lives in upstate New York. You can read his blog at jeffbattersby.com.]
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.
Microsoft Word 2008
Pros
- Improved citation and bibliographic tools
- New Publishing Layout view
- Elements Gallery makes adding graphics, charts, and other elements easy
- Streamlined new interface
- Refined preferences tools
Cons
- Formatting Palette may outgrow even large screens
- Scroll wheels don’t work in Formatting Palette
- No Visual Basic support
- Limited support for AppleScript and Automator
Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard | |
Developer(s) | Microsoft |
---|---|
Initial release | January 15, 2008; 11 years ago |
Stable release | |
Operating system | Mac OS X 10.4.9 or later |
Type | Office suite |
License | |
Website | www.microsoft.com/mac/products/Office2008/default.mspx |
System requirements[2] | |
---|---|
CPU | PowerPC G4 or G5 (500 MHz or faster) or any Intel processor |
Operating system | Mac OS X10.4.9 or later |
RAM | 512 MB |
Free hard disk space | 1.5 GB |
Optical drive | DVD-ROM (for local installation) |
Notes | Unofficially runs on PowerPC G3 Macs (like the iMac G3 in Bondi Blue) and with less RAM |
Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac is a version of the Microsoft Officeproductivity suite for Mac OS X. It supersedes Office 2004 for Mac (which did not have Intel native code) and is the Mac OS X equivalent of Office 2007. Office 2008 was developed by Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit and released on January 15, 2008. Office 2008 was followed by Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 released on October 26, 2010, requiring a Mac with an Intel processor and Mac OS version 10.5 or better. Office 2008 is also the last version to feature Entourage, which was replaced by Outlook in Office 2011. Microsoft stopped supporting Office 2008 on April 9, 2013.
Release[edit]
Office 2008 was originally slated for release in the second half of 2007; however, it was delayed until January 2008, purportedly to allow time to fix lingering bugs.[3] Office 2008 is the only version of Office for Mac supplied as a Universal Binary.
Unlike Office 2007 for Windows, Office 2008 was not offered as a public beta before its scheduled release date.[4]
Features[edit]
Office 2008 for Mac includes the same core programs currently included with Office 2004 for Mac: Entourage, Excel, PowerPoint and Word.
Mac-only features included are a publishing layout view, which offers functionality similar to Microsoft Publisher for Windows, a 'Ledger Sheet mode' in Excel to ease financial tasks, and a 'My Day' application offering a quick way to view the day's events.[5]
Office 2008 supports the new Office Open XML format, and defaults to saving all files in this format. On February 21, 2008 Geoff Price revealed that the format conversion update for Office 2004 would be delayed until June 2008 in order to provide the first update to Office 2008.[6]
Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications is not supported in this version.[7] As a result, such Excel add-ins dependent on VBA, such as Solver, have not been bundled in the current release.[8] In June 2008, Microsoft announced that it is exploring the idea of bringing some of the functionality of Solver back to Excel.[9] In late August 2008, Microsoft announced that a new Solver for Excel 2008 was available as a free download from Frontline Systems, original developers of the Excel Solver.[10][11] However, Excel 2008 also lacks other functionality, such as Pivot Chart functionality, which has long been a feature in the Windows version. In May 2008, Microsoft announced that VBA will be making a return in the next version of Microsoft Office for Mac.[12]AppleScript and the Open Scripting Architecture will still be supported.
Limitations[edit]
Error message in Microsoft Excel showing features that are not supported
Office 2008 for Mac lacks feature parity with the Windows version. The lack of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) support in Excel makes it impossible to use macros programmed in VBA. Microsoft's response is that adding VBA support in Xcode would have resulted in an additional two years added to the development cycle of Office 2008.[13] Other unsupported features include: OMML equations generated in Word 2007 for Windows,[14] Office 'Ribbon', Mini Toolbar, Live Preview, and an extensive list of features are unsupported such as equivalent SharePoint integration with the Windows version. Some features are missing on Excel 2008 for Mac, including: data filters (Data Bars, Top 10, Color-based, Icon-based), structured references, Excel tables, Table styles, a sort feature allowing more than three columns at once and more than one filter on a sort.
Benchmarks suggest that the original release of Office 2008 runs slower on Macs with PowerPC processors, and does not provide a significant speed bump for Macs with Intel processors.[15]
A using a program to remove application support files in unwanted languages), and which do not affect Office's operations, but which cause the updaters' installers to believe that the application is not valid for update. A small modification to the installer has been found an effective work-around (see reference).[18]
Another widespread problem reported after SP1 is that Office files will no longer open in Office applications when opened (double-clicked) from the Mac OS X Finder or launched from other applications such as an email attachment. The trigger for this problem is that Microsoft in SP1 unilaterally and without warning deprecated certain older Mac OS 'Type' codes such as 'WDBN' that some files may have, either because they are simply very old, or because some applications assign the older Type code when saving them to the disk. Users have seen the problem affect even relatively new Type codes, however, such as 'W6BN'. Microsoft is apparently looking into the problem, but it is unclear if they will reinstate the older Type codes, citing security concerns.[19]
Another problem with cross-platform compatibility is that images inserted into any Office application by using either cut and paste or drag and drop result in a file that does not display the inserted graphic when viewed on a Windows machine. Instead, the Windows user is told 'QuickTime and a TIFF (LZW) decompressor are needed to see this picture'. A user presented one solution as far back as December 2004.[20]
A further example of the lack of feature parity is the track changes function. Whereas users of Word 2003 or 2007 for Windows are able to choose freely between showing their changes in-line or as balloons in the right-hand margin,[21][22] choosing the former option in Word 2004 or Word 2008 for Mac OS also turns off all comment balloons; comments in this case are visible only in the Reviewing Pane or as popup boxes (i.e. upon mouseover).[23] This issue has not been resolved to date and is present in the latest version of Word for the Mac, namely Word 2011.[24]
The toolbox found in Office 2008 also has problems when the OS X feature Spaces is used: switching from one Space to another will cause elements of the Toolbox to get trapped on one Space until the Toolbox is closed and reopened. The only remedy for this problem is to currently disable Spaces, or at least refrain from using it whilst working in Office 2008.[25] Microsoft has acknowledged this problem and states that it is an architectural problem with the implementation of Spaces. Apple has been informed of the problem, according to Microsoft.[26] The problem appears to be caused by the fact that the Toolbox is Carbon-based.[citation needed] Using Microsoft Office with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard solves some of the problems.[26]
Microsoft Word 2017 For Mac
In addition, there is no support for right to left and bidirectional languages (such as Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, etc.) in Office 2008,[27][28] making it impossible to read or edit a right to left document in Word 2008 or PowerPoint 2008. Languages such as Thai are similarly not supported, although installing fonts can sometimes allow documents written in these languages to be displayed.
Moreover, Office 2008 proofing tools support only a limited number of languages (Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Swiss German).[29] Proofing tools for other languages failed to find their way to the installation pack, and are not offered by Microsoft commercially in the form of separately sold language packs. At the same time, Office applications are not integrated with the proofing tools native to Mac OS X 10.6 Leopard.
Microsoft Visio is not available for OS X. This means that any embedded Visio diagrams in other Office documents (e.g. Word) cannot be edited in Office on the Mac. Embedded Visio diagrams appear as a low-quality bitmap both in the WYSIWYG editor and upon printing the document on the Mac.
Editions[edit]
Applications and services | Home & Student | Standard | Business Edition | Special Media Edition |
---|---|---|---|---|
Word | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
PowerPoint | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Excel | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Entourage | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Exchange Server support | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Automator Actions | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Office Live and SharePoint support | No | No | Yes | No |
Expression Media | No | No | No | Yes |
See also[edit]
Microsoft Word 2008 Free Download
References[edit]
- ^'Microsoft Support Lifecycle - Office 2008'. Microsoft. Retrieved February 10, 2018.
- ^'Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Specs'. CNET. January 15, 2008. Retrieved January 5, 2017.
- ^'It's Coming: Mac BU Announces Intent to Deliver Office 2008 for Mac'. Microsoft. January 9, 2007. Archived from the original on October 11, 2007.
- ^'Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac delayed until January 2008'. TUAW. August 2, 2007.
- ^'Microsoft starts testing Office 2008 for Mac'. Cnet. April 2, 2007. Archived from the original on September 28, 2007. Retrieved September 19, 2007.
- ^'MS Office Mac Discussion Board'. January 15, 2008.
- ^'Saying goodbye to Visual Basic'. August 8, 2006.
- ^'MS Office Mac Discussion Board'. January 15, 2008.
- ^'Excel 2008 and Solver'. June 26, 2008.
- ^'Solver For Excel 2008 Is Available'. August 29, 2008.
- ^'Solver is Back for Microsoft Excel 2008 on Macintosh'. August 29, 2008.
- ^'Microsoft Office Update, and Visual Basic for Applications to Return - Mac Rumors'. May 13, 2008.
- ^'MS Mactopia Blog'. March 13, 2008.
- ^Known issues in Word 2008 – Equations saved from Word 2007 for Windows do not appear in Word 2008 for Mac
- ^'MS Mactopia Blog'. March 13, 2008.
- ^'CambridgeSoft Website'.
- ^New installer for 12.0.1 (The Entourage Help Blog)
- ^MacFixit article: More Fixes for Problems InstallingArchived January 26, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
- ^http://www.microsoft.com/mac/help.mspx?target=0b9aa757-50ab-443b-8b0e-3a50ece1d5451033&clr=99-4-0
- ^'Archived copy'. Archived from the original on June 26, 2008. Retrieved June 30, 2008.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
- ^'Archived copy'. Archived from the original on July 2, 2009. Retrieved July 9, 2009.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
- ^'IT training – IT training – IT Services – Administrative and academic support divisions – Services and divisions – Staff and students – Home'. Ittraining.lse.ac.uk. May 7, 2010. Archived from the original on February 27, 2009. Retrieved May 30, 2010.
- ^[1][dead link]
- ^http://officeformac.com/ms/ProductForums/Word/11634/0
- ^Bugs & Fixes: Office 2008 and Leopard’s Spaces don’t mix, Macworld, December 8, 2008
- ^ abOffice 2008 for Mac and Mac OS X Spaces, Microsoft
- ^Help and How-To for Microsoft for Mac Office Products | Mactopia
- ^Higgaion » It’s official: no RTL support in Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac
- ^Proofing tools that are available for each language
External links[edit]
- MacBU interview: Office 2008 Exchange Server support[permanent dead link]
Word 2008 For Mac Compatibility Issues
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