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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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Page 4 of 5 ExcelFeatured Whitepaper
5 Best Practices for Smartphone Support
If, like me, you don't spend much time in Excel but the tasks you need to perform don't fit into the templates, the Formula Builder and Formula AutoComplete features make it easier to find the functions you need and to get the arguments right. While the maximum spreadsheet size has been increased to 16,000 rows and more than one million columns (and if your spreadsheet is that big I'd suggest you're probably using the wrong tool) to match the Windows edition, the absence of VBA will limit compatibility. PowerPoint Again, my use of PowerPoint is fairly basic. I tend to use Apple's Keynote unless I know I'll be using a computer that only has PowerPoint installed. Indeed, my main use for PowerPoint is to watch decks during teleconferences. (It would be better if more people used web-based presentation sharing tools, but there you go.) This means compatibility with the Windows version is very important, and the newly added support for OOXML documents and a graphics engine that's common across the platforms will be very welcome. Waiting for PowerPoint 2004 to convert some graphics elements could become embarrassing. Additional interoperability is provided by the ability to exchange custom layouts between PowerPoint 2007 and 2008. As with Word and Excel, the new gallery simplifies the selection of themes, layouts, transitions and other elements, and the Object Palette in the Toolbox speeds the selection of clip art and photos stored in iPhoto. It's a shame this doesn't extend to movie and audio clips. The Insert Movie dialog doesn't even default to the user's Movies folder. The translucent effect when resizing graphic objects is useful, and guides appear automatically to help align objects. Being able to export a presentation to iPhoto as JPEG or PNG images could prove useful, especially as an intermediate step to putting it onto an iPod. Presentations can be sized for 16:9 and 16:10 screens via the Page Setup dialog, but the default is 4:3 regardless of the aspect ratio of the screen being used to create the document. If you resize an existing presentation for widescreen use, any photos will be stretched in the same proportion. |
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