Microsoft releases Office 2008 SP1, says VBA to make return

[AppleInsider]

Microsoft on Tuesday released Service Pack 1 for Office 2008 and also provided a glimpse at its roadmap for the Mac productivity suite by announcing the return of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) in the next version.

Since its release at Macworld Expo 2008, sales of Office 2008 for Mac have "soared," the Redmond-based software giant said, "selling faster than any previous version of Office for Mac in the past 19 years."

"The response has been amazing -- since we launched in January, the velocity of sales for Office 2008 is nearly three times what we saw after the launch of Office 2004," said Craig Eisler, general manager of the Mac BU at Microsoft.

Eisler's team on Tuesday made its biggest move yet towards fortifying the office suite with the release of Service Pack 1 (SP1), which aims to increase overall stability, and provide security and performance enhancements to the suite.

In particular, the update will deliver improvements to printing accuracy and reliability in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It should also deliver improved compatibility with files exchanged between Excel 2008 for Mac and Excel 2003 and Excel 2007 for Windows, Microsoft said.

Meanwhile, Word will gain updates to Notebook layout view and improved document map responsiveness, while PowerPoint's AppleScript compatibility will see enhancements that will offer users the ability to use the PowerPoint selection object in AppleScript to implement custom scripts that operate on the current selection in PowerPoint.

Some other changes target Entourage, such as improved calendar views and Exchange support. The personal information manager and email client will also gain the ability to send and view image from third-party tools.

As part of its announcements Tuesday, the Mac BU also said it intends to bring VBA-language support back to the next version of Office for Mac, but offered no timeframe for the update.

"Sharing information with customers as early as possible continues to be a priority for the Mac BU to allow customers to plan for their software needs," the group said. "Although the Mac BU increased support in Office 2008 with alternate scripting tools such as Automator and AppleScript -- and also worked with MacTech Magazine to create a reference guide -- the team recognizes that VBA-language support is important to a select group of customers who rely on sharing macros across platforms."

Office 2008 users can download the SP1 update for free at Microsoft's Mactopia Website (not yet available at press time), or can receive the file automatically via the Microsoft Auto Update installed as part of initial version of the productivity suite.

Readers interested in Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac can purchase various version of the suite at Amazon.com at discounts of up to 21 percent, or check out AppleInsider's 6-part, in-depth Road to Mac Office 2008 series published earlier.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[miamitranceman]

They better have fixed the spaces issues in word...

[Clive At Five]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

...also said it intends to bringing VBA-language support...

/me intends to slapping Kasper for the lack of a grammar check on this one.

GET A PROOF-READER! YOU'RE A PROFESSIONAL MAC SITE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.

-Clive

[Virgil-TB2]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

... Since its release at Macworld Expo 2008, sales of Office 2008 for Mac have "soared," ... "selling faster than any previous version of Office for Mac in the past 19 years."... "The response has been amazing...

This is quite easy to achieve when you don't release an update to the previous product for five or six years.

Where I work (all Mac University environment), every single person gets a copy of it for 5 bucks so there's about 600 hundred "sales" right there. However most found it so unusable they asked for a rollback to the 2004 edition. Actual number of Office 2008 users versus the 600 "sales"? ...

Probably 80 or so.

[NasserAE]

I wonder whose idea it was to remove VBA in the fist place?!

[dr_lha]

Only Microsoft would release a press release saying Office 2008 SP1 is released before its actually released. WTF? Did they not expect that people might think such a press release might actually mean that the patch was downloadable now?

[mstone]

I would buy it if it came with Access. I wonder what the problem is. Is there any application that can edit and save Access file format on Mac?

[Cubert]

Once someone downloads the SP and installs it, can you post on the speed of Office 2008? I have stuck with 2004 because of how dog slow 2008 is on both Power PC's and Intel Macs. Many owners of Intel Macs are saying that 2004 runs faster under Rosetta than 2008 does natively!

[dr_lha]

Originally Posted by Cubert

Once someone downloads the SP and installs it, can you post on the speed of Office 2008? I have stuck with 2004 because of how dog slow 2008 is on both Power PC's and Intel Macs. Many owners of Intel Macs are saying that 2004 runs faster under Rosetta than 2008 does natively!

The 12.0.1 update actually helped a lot with the slowness of the first release of Office 2008, hopefully SP1 will continue that trend.

[mr_zebra]

Originally Posted by Cubert

Once someone downloads the SP and installs it, can you post on the speed of Office 2008? I have stuck with 2004 because of how dog slow 2008 is on both Power PC's and Intel Macs. Many owners of Intel Macs are saying that 2004 runs faster under Rosetta than 2008 does natively!

That has certainly been my experience.

The other day it took Word 45 seconds to open a new document.

[bwik]

Wow, so in the future they will de-downgrade Office for the Mac somewhat (but not all the way).

Maybe by 2012 or so, Office for the Mac will equal Office 97 for the PC. But I actually doubt it (Access, Macros, etc).

[Mr. H]

Originally Posted by NasserAE

I wonder whose idea it was to remove VBA in the fist place?!

It was removed because the VBA runtime environment was coded at a very low-level (lots of PPC assembly code), so it was considered too hard/time consuming to port to Intel.

That and it now gives them a "major feature" for the next version of Office for Mac.

Originally Posted by mstone

I would buy it if it came with Access. I wonder what the problem is

I'm 100% sure this is fear from central Microsoft management that having Access available for OS X would remove a huge barrier to OS X adoption by business. I.e., they fear that Access for OS X = huge market-share losses for Windows.

[SteveLV702]

I run the update and says searching for program then comes back saying it can't find the program.... wont let me search for program even though Office 2008 is installed in the default location.

[NasserAE]

Originally Posted by Mr. H

It was removed because the VBA runtime environment was coded at a very low-level (lots of PPC assembly code), so it was considered too hard/time consuming to port to Intel.

That and it now gives them a "major feature" for the next version of Office for Mac.

That makes sense. Microsoft being lazy as usual

[heyjp]

Originally Posted by SARO91201

I run the update and says searching for program then comes back saying it can't find the program.... wont let me search for program even though Office 2008 is installed in the default location.

Mine seems to have installed fine and I'm using Word, Excel, and PPT all simultaneously now. No major issues thus far.

Jim

[jbh0001]

Originally Posted by Mr. H

It was removed because the VBA runtime environment was coded at a very low-level (lots of PPC assembly code), so it was considered too hard/time consuming to port to Intel.

That was the official line. But since the beta of OpenOffice 3.0 for the Mac is boasting "limited" support for VBA, Microsoft is having to back peddle.

Yes, competition is a good thing.

[dagamer34]

For some reason after I install SP1, the Setup Assistant keeps poppping up asking if i want to enroll in their consumer participation program, but my app never runs after that!

What is this, shoddy bug testing?

[blufire]

Originally Posted by dagamer34

For some reason after I install SP1, the Setup Assistant keeps poppping up asking if i want to enroll in their consumer participation program, but my app never runs after that!

What is this, shoddy bug testing?

Same experience here, and someone on MacUpdate is also getting this.

[Nai no Kami]

Originally Posted by blufire

Same experience here, and someone on MacUpdate is also getting this.

I'm also getting this behavior. Hope a solution is found.

[desarc]

"since we launched in January, the velocity of sales for Office 2008 is nearly three times what we saw after the launch of Office 2004"


...this is because three times as many people are using mac's instead of pc's as they were 4 years ago.

[Frank777]

Yeah, I think this is mainly being announced because OpenOffice is about to launch on the Mac. Redmond is afraid MS Office will eventually be eclipsed as the leading cross-platform solution for Businesses.

If Sun had gotten a clue and ported the software earlier, OO might be the leading solution already.

[hezekiahb]

Originally Posted by SARO91201

I run the update and says searching for program then comes back saying it can't find the program.... wont let me search for program even though Office 2008 is installed in the default location.

Double check the installer, when I went to the page I accidently downloaded the 2004 installer at first & got this message, wasn't paying attention.

[Haggar]

Originally Posted by Frank777

Yeah, I think this is mainly being announced because OpenOffice is about to launch on the Mac. Redmond is afraid MS Office will eventually be eclipsed as the leading cross-platform solution for Businesses.

If Sun had gotten a clue and ported the software earlier, OO might be the leading solution already.

There is still the issue of full featured Exchange support, and Entourage in its current form just doesn't cut it.

[RayCon]

"The response has been amazing -- since we launched in January, the velocity of sales for Office 2008 is nearly three times what we saw after the launch of Office 2004," said Craig Eisler, general manager of the Mac BU at Microsoft.

Mmm... you don't suppose the increase is due to the larger Mac user base, do you?

[8CoreWhore]

Gee, I wonder if higher sales of O'08 has anything to do with the fact there are a scud load more Macs out there???

[m01ety]

Originally Posted by blufire

Same experience here, and someone on MacUpdate is also getting this.

Same here. My Office 2008 install is completely hosed thanks to SP1. Thanks, MacBU!

[jabohn]

Originally Posted by m01ety

Same here. My Office 2008 install is completely hosed thanks to SP1. Thanks, MacBU!

Also same problem here.

[jzietman]

Originally Posted by m01ety

Same here. My Office 2008 install is completely hosed thanks to SP1. Thanks, MacBU!

Same here. I've had to uninstall using AppZapper and now I'm reinstalling 12.0.1...

[SirROM]

guidowenzl over on VersionTracker had this solution and it works!


try this:
delete ˜/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008/Microsoft Office 2008 Settings.plist
delete /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Office/OfficePID.plist

then start an app - put in serial number.
after that it starts the MS update again and then it should work - at least it did it for me !
Hope you all have luck too !

[TBell]

I think one of two things happened. One, Microsoft intended to remove VBA from Windows in the next update to Office for Windows and as such it didn't make sense to include it in the Mac version for one release. There were sources in Microsoft claiming it would be killing VBA on WIndows, but Microsoft has since changed it's tune. Second, Apple caught Microsoft off guard by it's sudden switch to Intel. As such it would have taken much more time to incorporate VBA in this release being that Microsoft had to do a lot of work to make Office a Universal application using new developer tools.

Originally Posted by NasserAE

I wonder whose idea it was to remove VBA in the fist place?!

[Lafe]

Originally Posted by Clive At Five

/me intends to slapping Kasper for the lack of a grammar check on this one.

GET A PROOF-READER! YOU'RE A PROFESSIONAL MAC SITE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.

-Clive

Kasper does a fine job, and I've always known him to correct flubs quickly and then usually thank the person who pointed out the mistake.

Lighten up.

[Bowser]

I only installed Office 04 last week because I had to do a short slideshow in PowerPoint. (Nice to have the reminder of how much better Keynote is...) I was surprised at how well all of it ran in Rosetta on my MacBook Pro (2.2, 4 GB). I saw a few hiccups when using it, and while it certainly wasn't "snappy", it wasn't so slow I couldn't use it and get work done with it.

Until last week I've been blissfully Microsoft free... iWork has been doing everything I need it to and haven't had any issues with it. I've even got the hang of Numbers now, and for the kinds of things I need a spreadsheet for, I have no reason to use Excel. In fact, I've found that Numbers work fantastically with Keynote for making really nice looking tables to use in slides. More control than with the built in tables in Keynote, and better appearance too. Now if OmniGroup would just make OmniGraffle Pro able to place objects in Keynote slides that can be edited with OmniGraffle...

I won't be buying another copy of Office for Mac ever again. By the time 2004 won't run on OS X there will be other better solutions available.

[pmoeser]

Re-introducing VBA to the Mac platform also gives [conspiracy theory] the "secret department" at MSFT[/conspiracy theory] a hook to get malicious code access to a more stable competitor?

[jzietman]

Originally Posted by SirROM

guidowenzl over on VersionTracker had this solution and it works!


try this:
delete ˜/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008/Microsoft Office 2008 Settings.plist
delete /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Office/OfficePID.plist

then start an app - put in serial number.
after that it starts the MS update again and then it should work - at least it did it for me !
Hope you all have luck too !

Unfortunately, that didn't work for me... I guess I'll go back to using Pages until I get this figured out. I actually really like Pages, so no problem.

[bwik]

Originally Posted by Bowser

I won't be buying another copy of Office for Mac ever again. By the time 2004 won't run on OS X there will be other better solutions available.

I don't intend to either. But not because of that silly Apple iWork that doesn't do jack.

I am upset that Microsoft Office for the Mac won't do the Microsoft Office tasks that I need it to do for business. That's what makes me reluctant to purchase it again. Because I paid for something that doesn't really exist at all. Office for the Mac. Currently, NeoOffice has more features.

The one good thing about Word is the Equation Editor works pretty well. That's handy. The rest sucks.

[g.money]

Originally Posted by SirROM

guidowenzl over on VersionTracker had this solution and it works!


try this:
delete ˜/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008/Microsoft Office 2008 Settings.plist
delete /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Office/OfficePID.plist

then start an app - put in serial number.
after that it starts the MS update again and then it should work - at least it did it for me !
Hope you all have luck too !

deleting the PID file and re-entering serial worked for me.

annoying though! you'd think MS would at least test to see if the thing installs before releasing an update!

[Schwieb]

A number of people have reported a problem after updating to Office 2008 SP1 where the Setup Assistant launches each time and refuses to let you continue to the main app. If you are running into this problem, please help me collect some information:

a) Did you ever install the Office 2008 beta?
b) What version of Office 2008 did you have installed (12.0 or 12.0.1)?
c) Please send me the following files:
/Users/<USERNAME>/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008/Microsoft Office 2008 settings.plist
/Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Office/OfficePID.plist
d) Please send me your product key from your DVD.

PLEASE NOTE that the above files and product key contain information that can be used to identify your user registration, so if you are uncomfortable sending it you can indeed choose to not do so. If you do send it, rest assured that I'll use it only to help verify that the problem is indeed what we think it is. I do not have access to user registration information and do not need it, so I won't go looking for it.

You can send these file and information directly to me at 'erik at schwieb dot com'.

Having done so, you can then reset your product key. To do so, quit all Office 2008 apps and move both of the files from item C above to the trash. Then, launch any one Office 2008 app and you should be prompted to enter the product key (which should be either on the DVD sleeve or on the back of the Install Guide). For additional assistance, visit the Help and How-To <http://www.microsoft.com/mac/help.mspx> section of the Microsoft Web site.

Thanks,
Schwieb
MacBU Dev Lead
http://www.schwieb.com/blog

[tmac]

Installed the update with no problems, but guess what...Microsoft has failed to correct the spaces and exposé issues. While the bugginess is slightly different, the windows don't want to behave properly and it is continuing to drive me crazy.

Has anyone else had these issues? Anyone with successful spaces integration?

[wickerbone]

Time Machine to the rescue! SP1 install resulted in "the loop" for me, too. Deleting the files got me to the point of re-entering PW, etc, but would not progress beyond that screen. Now I'm back to 12.0.1.

[ksec]

Can anyone confirm the speed up. Office 2008 has been ultra slow. I hope SP1 finally makes it feel more like a Native application