Be careful what you ask for. Office:win-compatibility is a double-edged sword, but neither edge may be to your liking. Office:win is only compatible at the version level. Upgrade Office XP to Office 2003 and experience formatting issues. Upgrade Office 2003 to Office 2007 and leave your old files behind. All the while, your Mac-using friend has no trouble with Office XP files with his installation of Office v.X or Office 2004. In an act of desperation, the Office 2007 user turns to the Office 2008 user to convert his Office 2003 files.
I repeat a statement from earlier posts: Prior to Office 2007, Office 2004 was the most compatible version of Office on any platform. Office 2008 suffers a feature-deficit, but it can open Office 2003 files.
Microsoft appears to be telling us that Office 2011 will be a clone of Office 2010. How many different versions of Office formats can Office 2010 open? How many can Office 2011 open?
The other part of this compatibility equation is Microsoft's claim that Office 2011 will produce visually identical documents to Office 2010 documents. As amazing as it may seem, Windows is not the standard for layout; the Mac is?at least among personal computers. Has Microsoft adopted the Mac layout model, cloned the Mac model for Windows, or is it porting the Windows layout model to the Mac?
Be careful what you ask for. Office:win-compatibility is a double-edged sword, but neither edge may be to your liking. Office:win is only compatible at the version level. Upgrade Office XP to Office 2003 and experience formatting issues. Upgrade Office 2003 to Office 2007 and leave your old files behind. All the while, your Mac-using friend has no trouble with Office XP files with his installation of Office v.X or Office 2004. In an act of desperation, the Office 2007 user turns to the Office 2008 user to convert his Office 2003 files.
I repeat a statement from earlier posts: Prior to Office 2007, Office 2004 was the most compatible version of Office on any platform. Office 2008 suffers a feature-deficit, but it can open Office 2003 files.
Microsoft appears to be telling us that Office 2011 will be a clone of Office 2010. How many different versions of Office formats can Office 2010 open? How many can Office 2011 open?
The other part of this compatibility equation is Microsoft's claim that Office 2011 will produce visually identical documents to Office 2010 documents. As amazing as it may seem, Windows is not the standard for layout; the Mac is?at least among personal computers. Has Microsoft adopted the Mac layout model, cloned the Mac model for Windows, or is it porting the Windows layout model to the Mac?
Be careful what you ask for!
To date, any document I have created in Mac 2011 and opened in Windows office 2007 has been unchanged, and that includes PowerPoint presentations, which have always been problematic in the past.
At a certain level it does not matter which format is ported, if you get identical documents. Besides, the issue is largely one Mac users experience in a predominately Windows world. Rarely have I seen a Windows person have to present in a Mac environment.
A big selling point is that this software will be compatible with itself?
Crazy.
Absolutely but it's an achievement given the incompatibility nightmare that was Office 2003 for Windows & Office 2007 for Windows.
Frankly most of our customer correspondence isn't for editing (it's specifically read-only) and PDF is a more secure & compatible output than Word .docx anyway. From that point of view Pages is more than good enough with fewer typography issues.
While Microsoft did not, you might be pleased with openoffice.org, who produce a more Microsoft compatible version of Microsoft Office. For example, it has an Access clone.
Microsoft itself is just trying to make money, without attracting any serious business users to the Mac platform.
BTW, basic photo editing has been a feature of iWork for a long time. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they included a rip of Instant Alpha and called it an innovation.
I assume the joke here being that on countless occasions, Apple has "borrowed" ideas from others and called it a revolutionary new feature.
Office 2011 seems to be a very good product from the time that I've spent using it. I find it far more capable than iWork for my needs, and I'll be looking forward to the final release.
Be careful what you ask for. Office:win-compatibility is a double-edged sword, but neither edge may be to your liking. Office:win is only compatible at the version level. Upgrade Office XP to Office 2003 and experience formatting issues. Upgrade Office 2003 to Office 2007 and leave your old files behind.
Office 2007 can open and save files in 97-2003 format (.DOC) and in new 2007 format (.DOCX). Much as I recall you can select .DOC to be your default format, though you are going to loose some new features compatible with .DOCX format... still, good for mixed environments.
Quote:
Microsoft appears to be telling us that Office 2011 will be a clone of Office 2010. How many different versions of Office formats can Office 2010 open? How many can Office 2011 open?
2010 will open both DOC and DOCX, of course (among other formats). As we moved to Office 2003 to 2007 to 2010, we did not notice any issues with changing document format. I'm not saying it cannot happen, but from my point of view it does not seem to be common problem.
Quote:
The other part of this compatibility equation is Microsoft's claim that Office 2011 will produce visually identical documents to Office 2010 documents. As amazing as it may seem, Windows is not the standard for layout; the Mac is?at least among personal computers. Has Microsoft adopted the Mac layout model, cloned the Mac model for Windows, or is it porting the Windows layout model to the Mac?
Be careful what you ask for!
I have no idea as of what you consider "Standard for personal computers".
I assume the joke here being that on countless occasions, Apple has "borrowed" ideas from others and called it a revolutionary new feature.
Office 2011 seems to be a very good product from the time that I've spent using it. I find it far more capable than iWork for my needs, and I'll be looking forward to the final release.
Nope, not the joke. MS Office became totally irrelevant in my work years ago. I am just finishing writing and laying out a 200 page book in Pages. I found it fully capable of handling this challenging task. I wouldn't even consider trying this in Word.
I don't get it. A year or so ago there was a lot of hoopla about OOXML and open document formats, now everybody and their dog uses .docx, and suddenly MS goes on about compatibility? They don't seem to trust their own formats.
While Microsoft did not, you might be pleased with openoffice.org, who produce a more Microsoft compatible version of Microsoft Office. For example, it has an Access clone.
Microsoft itself is just trying to make money, without attracting any serious business users to the Mac platform.
+1
I stopped giving money to Microsoft years ago. OpenOffice is a fine tool - and its documents have been cross-platform compatible for years.
So, I was at a conference recently, and a grad student, who made her presentation on a Mac with Office, got up to present, using the default Windows PowerPoint, and all her figures were gone.
So, she tried the version she made in Keynote, saved to ppt, and again, all the figures were gone.
So, yes, full compatibility is a big deal, and I am will to bet that the lack of compatibility is what makes a lot of people bootcamp their Macs.
Oh, I'm sure it's a big deal. That's why it's funny. Only the most high-on-cheap-weed of design teams would be able to wrap up a meeting with, "Yes, team, we'll ship Office without compatibility with itself. Excellent move, folks. Let's enjoy another doughnut."
A big selling point is that this software will be compatible with itself?
Crazy.
Microsoft can't even make office 2010 run consistently on PCs with windows 7 on them. We have trouble transferring files all the time, with powerpoint and embedded movies and pictures still being the biggest offender. This image problem with them not showing up is not just a PC vs mac thing. Our computers are all the same Dell model, and all are set up off an IT disk image, so theoretically are exactly the same. Of course, theory is often well separated from reality in a microsoft world.
When I have trouble, I usually open up my laptop and use iWork to fix it. Drives the IT guys nuts..... I'll believe this compatibility thing when I see it.
Office 2007 can open and save files in 97-2003 format (.DOC) and in new 2007 format (.DOCX). Much as I recall you can select .DOC to be your default format, though you are going to loose some new features compatible with .DOCX format... still, good for mixed environments.
2010 will open both DOC and DOCX, of course (among other formats). As we moved to Office 2003 to 2007 to 2010, we did not notice any issues with changing document format. I'm not saying it cannot happen, but from my point of view it does not seem to be common problem.
.doc is an extension, not a format. Prior to Office 2007, the primary extension used for Word documents was .doc. However, the specific versions of the underlying format had varying degrees of compatibility with each other. The spectrum of compatibility spans from occasional format glitch to outright incompatibility. Open a Word XP document in Word 2003 and you've got formatting problems.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nikon133
I have no idea as of what you consider "Standard for personal computers".
Personal computers are not the only computers used for document creation. Macs replicate the work of high-end professional computers better than can most configurations of Windows.
.doc is an extension, not a format. Prior to Office 2007, the primary extension used for Word documents was .doc. However, the specific versions of the underlying format had varying degrees of compatibility with each other. The spectrum of compatibility spans from occasional format glitch to outright incompatibility. Open a Word XP document in Word 2003 and you've got formatting problems.
.DOC is an extension affiliated to 3 or 4 different MS Word file formats, last one being known as Word 97 - 2003. In everyday slang .DOC format is more often used therm than Word 97 - 2003 format, and since it is really hard to find anyone using Word older than 97, it is also pretty safe to use .DOC to describe format with very small margin for mistake.
While base format was the same, new Word versions had added features that could not be displayed on older versions which were missing those features (like tracking changes, additional style types... in Word 2003 compared to Word XP). However, I cannot recall us or our clients having compatibility problems with opening XP Word documents in Word 2003. Care to give some details?
Quote:
Personal computers are not the only computers used for document creation. Macs replicate the work of high-end professional computers better than can most configurations of Windows.
And... those high-end professional computers for document creation are..? OS and software they are running are..?
Nope, not the joke. MS Office became totally irrelevant in my work years ago. I am just finishing writing and laying out a 200 page book in Pages. I found it fully capable of handling this challenging task. I wouldn't even consider trying this in Word.
For the sake of this discussion it would be more interesting if you tried to do it in Word, failed and shared with us reasons for failure
As it is... back in 2005 my wife finished writing her PhD thesis in physical chemistry. She started it in Word XP and finished in Word 2003. Work was done along 3 years mixed on her university desktop and her home Toshiba Satellite 1000 laptop (upgraded, along the way, fron 128 to 512MB of RAM). Final RAW material had 600 A4 pages full of equations, illustrations, tables and images. Final thesis had 400+ A4 pages in a single document and was formatted on above mentioned Toshiba.
So I am pretty sure you would manage to do your book on Word. To be realistic, she could have done her thesis on Pages likewise, though I believe Pages were a bit late with equation editor at the time (but there were some external solutions to fill in, if I recall correctly).
Comments
I repeat a statement from earlier posts: Prior to Office 2007, Office 2004 was the most compatible version of Office on any platform. Office 2008 suffers a feature-deficit, but it can open Office 2003 files.
Microsoft appears to be telling us that Office 2011 will be a clone of Office 2010. How many different versions of Office formats can Office 2010 open? How many can Office 2011 open?
The other part of this compatibility equation is Microsoft's claim that Office 2011 will produce visually identical documents to Office 2010 documents. As amazing as it may seem, Windows is not the standard for layout; the Mac is?at least among personal computers. Has Microsoft adopted the Mac layout model, cloned the Mac model for Windows, or is it porting the Windows layout model to the Mac?
Be careful what you ask for!
Be careful what you ask for. Office:win-compatibility is a double-edged sword, but neither edge may be to your liking. Office:win is only compatible at the version level. Upgrade Office XP to Office 2003 and experience formatting issues. Upgrade Office 2003 to Office 2007 and leave your old files behind. All the while, your Mac-using friend has no trouble with Office XP files with his installation of Office v.X or Office 2004. In an act of desperation, the Office 2007 user turns to the Office 2008 user to convert his Office 2003 files.
I repeat a statement from earlier posts: Prior to Office 2007, Office 2004 was the most compatible version of Office on any platform. Office 2008 suffers a feature-deficit, but it can open Office 2003 files.
Microsoft appears to be telling us that Office 2011 will be a clone of Office 2010. How many different versions of Office formats can Office 2010 open? How many can Office 2011 open?
The other part of this compatibility equation is Microsoft's claim that Office 2011 will produce visually identical documents to Office 2010 documents. As amazing as it may seem, Windows is not the standard for layout; the Mac is?at least among personal computers. Has Microsoft adopted the Mac layout model, cloned the Mac model for Windows, or is it porting the Windows layout model to the Mac?
Be careful what you ask for!
To date, any document I have created in Mac 2011 and opened in Windows office 2007 has been unchanged, and that includes PowerPoint presentations, which have always been problematic in the past.
At a certain level it does not matter which format is ported, if you get identical documents. Besides, the issue is largely one Mac users experience in a predominately Windows world. Rarely have I seen a Windows person have to present in a Mac environment.
A big selling point is that this software will be compatible with itself?
Crazy.
Absolutely but it's an achievement given the incompatibility nightmare that was Office 2003 for Windows & Office 2007 for Windows.
Frankly most of our customer correspondence isn't for editing (it's specifically read-only) and PDF is a more secure & compatible output than Word .docx anyway. From that point of view Pages is more than good enough with fewer typography issues.
McD
First, don't ever have a guy named Schmucker pitch your products.
After reading through that article, that was the big standout for me too!
McD
Wish they would make a Mac version of Access.
While Microsoft did not, you might be pleased with openoffice.org, who produce a more Microsoft compatible version of Microsoft Office. For example, it has an Access clone.
Microsoft itself is just trying to make money, without attracting any serious business users to the Mac platform.
Hey it's Microsoft -- call it business as usual.
BTW, basic photo editing has been a feature of iWork for a long time. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they included a rip of Instant Alpha and called it an innovation.
I assume the joke here being that on countless occasions, Apple has "borrowed" ideas from others and called it a revolutionary new feature.
Office 2011 seems to be a very good product from the time that I've spent using it. I find it far more capable than iWork for my needs, and I'll be looking forward to the final release.
AH, the paid trolls are showing up.
Only following your lead they are, I'd say.
Be careful what you ask for. Office:win-compatibility is a double-edged sword, but neither edge may be to your liking. Office:win is only compatible at the version level. Upgrade Office XP to Office 2003 and experience formatting issues. Upgrade Office 2003 to Office 2007 and leave your old files behind.
Office 2007 can open and save files in 97-2003 format (.DOC) and in new 2007 format (.DOCX). Much as I recall you can select .DOC to be your default format, though you are going to loose some new features compatible with .DOCX format... still, good for mixed environments.
Microsoft appears to be telling us that Office 2011 will be a clone of Office 2010. How many different versions of Office formats can Office 2010 open? How many can Office 2011 open?
2010 will open both DOC and DOCX, of course (among other formats). As we moved to Office 2003 to 2007 to 2010, we did not notice any issues with changing document format. I'm not saying it cannot happen, but from my point of view it does not seem to be common problem.
The other part of this compatibility equation is Microsoft's claim that Office 2011 will produce visually identical documents to Office 2010 documents. As amazing as it may seem, Windows is not the standard for layout; the Mac is?at least among personal computers. Has Microsoft adopted the Mac layout model, cloned the Mac model for Windows, or is it porting the Windows layout model to the Mac?
Be careful what you ask for!
I have no idea as of what you consider "Standard for personal computers".
I assume the joke here being that on countless occasions, Apple has "borrowed" ideas from others and called it a revolutionary new feature.
Office 2011 seems to be a very good product from the time that I've spent using it. I find it far more capable than iWork for my needs, and I'll be looking forward to the final release.
Nope, not the joke. MS Office became totally irrelevant in my work years ago. I am just finishing writing and laying out a 200 page book in Pages. I found it fully capable of handling this challenging task. I wouldn't even consider trying this in Word.
While Microsoft did not, you might be pleased with openoffice.org, who produce a more Microsoft compatible version of Microsoft Office. For example, it has an Access clone.
Microsoft itself is just trying to make money, without attracting any serious business users to the Mac platform.
+1
I stopped giving money to Microsoft years ago. OpenOffice is a fine tool - and its documents have been cross-platform compatible for years.
People here are funny.
So, I was at a conference recently, and a grad student, who made her presentation on a Mac with Office, got up to present, using the default Windows PowerPoint, and all her figures were gone.
So, she tried the version she made in Keynote, saved to ppt, and again, all the figures were gone.
So, yes, full compatibility is a big deal, and I am will to bet that the lack of compatibility is what makes a lot of people bootcamp their Macs.
Oh, I'm sure it's a big deal. That's why it's funny. Only the most high-on-cheap-weed of design teams would be able to wrap up a meeting with, "Yes, team, we'll ship Office without compatibility with itself. Excellent move, folks. Let's enjoy another doughnut."
A big selling point is that this software will be compatible with itself?
Crazy.
Microsoft can't even make office 2010 run consistently on PCs with windows 7 on them. We have trouble transferring files all the time, with powerpoint and embedded movies and pictures still being the biggest offender. This image problem with them not showing up is not just a PC vs mac thing. Our computers are all the same Dell model, and all are set up off an IT disk image, so theoretically are exactly the same. Of course, theory is often well separated from reality in a microsoft world.
When I have trouble, I usually open up my laptop and use iWork to fix it. Drives the IT guys nuts..... I'll believe this compatibility thing when I see it.
And, I still hate the ribbon.......
Office 2007 can open and save files in 97-2003 format (.DOC) and in new 2007 format (.DOCX). Much as I recall you can select .DOC to be your default format, though you are going to loose some new features compatible with .DOCX format... still, good for mixed environments.
2010 will open both DOC and DOCX, of course (among other formats). As we moved to Office 2003 to 2007 to 2010, we did not notice any issues with changing document format. I'm not saying it cannot happen, but from my point of view it does not seem to be common problem.
.doc is an extension, not a format. Prior to Office 2007, the primary extension used for Word documents was .doc. However, the specific versions of the underlying format had varying degrees of compatibility with each other. The spectrum of compatibility spans from occasional format glitch to outright incompatibility. Open a Word XP document in Word 2003 and you've got formatting problems.
I have no idea as of what you consider "Standard for personal computers".
Personal computers are not the only computers used for document creation. Macs replicate the work of high-end professional computers better than can most configurations of Windows.
Compatibility with itself?
Finally talking about color fidelity?
Cool graphics?
Getting the printed version to look like the version on your monitor?
And, the whole thing pitched by a guy named Schmucker?!?!?!
Too rich.
But let's thanks Microsoft for the effort they put into this new Office: it looks very nice (far better than the previous versions)
Office is the only reason I still have a Windows at work.
.doc is an extension, not a format. Prior to Office 2007, the primary extension used for Word documents was .doc. However, the specific versions of the underlying format had varying degrees of compatibility with each other. The spectrum of compatibility spans from occasional format glitch to outright incompatibility. Open a Word XP document in Word 2003 and you've got formatting problems.
.DOC is an extension affiliated to 3 or 4 different MS Word file formats, last one being known as Word 97 - 2003. In everyday slang .DOC format is more often used therm than Word 97 - 2003 format, and since it is really hard to find anyone using Word older than 97, it is also pretty safe to use .DOC to describe format with very small margin for mistake.
While base format was the same, new Word versions had added features that could not be displayed on older versions which were missing those features (like tracking changes, additional style types... in Word 2003 compared to Word XP). However, I cannot recall us or our clients having compatibility problems with opening XP Word documents in Word 2003. Care to give some details?
Personal computers are not the only computers used for document creation. Macs replicate the work of high-end professional computers better than can most configurations of Windows.
And... those high-end professional computers for document creation are..? OS and software they are running are..?
Nope, not the joke. MS Office became totally irrelevant in my work years ago. I am just finishing writing and laying out a 200 page book in Pages. I found it fully capable of handling this challenging task. I wouldn't even consider trying this in Word.
For the sake of this discussion it would be more interesting if you tried to do it in Word, failed and shared with us reasons for failure
As it is... back in 2005 my wife finished writing her PhD thesis in physical chemistry. She started it in Word XP and finished in Word 2003. Work was done along 3 years mixed on her university desktop and her home Toshiba Satellite 1000 laptop (upgraded, along the way, fron 128 to 512MB of RAM). Final RAW material had 600 A4 pages full of equations, illustrations, tables and images. Final thesis had 400+ A4 pages in a single document and was formatted on above mentioned Toshiba.
So I am pretty sure you would manage to do your book on Word. To be realistic, she could have done her thesis on Pages likewise, though I believe Pages were a bit late with equation editor at the time (but there were some external solutions to fill in, if I recall correctly).
I was preparing to ignore the new MS Office for Mac this year, and then I stumbled onto this Microsoft Outlook (with Business Contact Manager) Features page.
You've got to hand it to Microsoft. They really do understand how to build business software.
Those screenshots look more functional and feature accessible than anything Daylite has ever come up with.
I'm sure some genius in Redmond has decided that the Outlook BCM won't be ported to Mac to keep the Windows version in front.
But after a couple of years of circling the drain, I'm sure Microsoft will have to reconsider.
I think this BCM is the one reason I'd switch from Mail/AB/iCal to MS Office.
If it were in the 2010 version, we'd be talking excitedly about a Microsoft renaissance on the Mac.
It's too bad they've missed the boat. Again.