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Our Blogs Core Dump Microsoft Office 2008: first look
Our Blogs Core Dump Microsoft Office 2008: first look | Microsoft Office 2008: first look |
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| by Stephen Withers | |
| Monday, 21 January 2008 | |
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The drag-and-drop installation that's become familiar during the last couple of versions has been dropped in favour of the more commonplace Apple installer. Most of the components end up in the Microsoft Office 2008 folder within Applications, with a few in /Library/Application Support/Microsoft and of course in HOME/Preferences. Uninstalling manually would not require much effort. Office 2008 can be installed alongside other versions, though the installer will offer to remove them. Trial versions must be removed, but I encountered no problems running Office 2004 and 2008 side by side except that only one copy of Entourage can run simultaneously. Some people have complained that the installer seems to be all or nothing. That's not actually true, but you do need to watch out for the Customize button if you want to omit any of the applications or foreign language proofing tools. The overall look and feel has been brought into line with Leopard, and Open Office XML (Office 2007) file formats are supported throughout the suite. At this stage, it seems wise to retain .doc, .xls and .ppt as the defaults until more people are running Office 2007 or 2008, and this means a trip to the preferences in each application. VBA has been dumped, something that many advanced Excel and Word users will miss, especially in medium and large businesses. AppleScript support is still there, and Automator actions have been added to make it easier to (umm) automate processes. Example actions include adding an attachment to a message, applying animation to PowerPoint slides, or sorting Excel data. SmartArt graphics simplify the addition of text-based visuals such as lists, processes and hierarchies, while the outliner-style Text Pane makes it easy to enter the data. Alternatively, you can select an existing list and convert it to SmartArt. Another general and very welcome improvement is the snappier operation thanks to the delivery of a universal binary. This was especially noticeable when searching in Entourage. |
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