Microsoft issues first update to Office 2008 for Mac

Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
Microsoft on Tuesday released the first update to Office 2008 for Mac in the form of a maintenance and security patch which the company is recommending for all users of the relatively new productivity suite.



"The Office 2008 for Mac 12.0.1 Update [114.1MB] contains several changes that improve security, stability, and performance," Microsoft wrote in a lengthy set of release notes. "These changes include fixes for users of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and include fixes for vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of a computer's memory by using malicious code."



The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant also outlined about a half dozen improvements to each of the suite's component applications. For instance, it said Word will no longer quit unexpectedly during launch or during spell check, and that blank pages are no longer printed when using a high resolution printer. Improvements to citation deletion and font substitution were also implemented.



Meanwhile, Excel will also see improvements that will also prevent unexpected quits. In addition, the new version will feature more reliable ledger sheets, present better support for secondary displays, fix formatting issues for rotated text, and respond more reliably when receiving copy and pastes of linked data and charts.



For Entourage users, the update should improve IMAP connections to servers running IBM's Lotus Domino and synchronization with Exchange Server. It should also correct problems with notification sounds under Leopard, import rules, and the stability of Database Utility when used to rebuild large identity databases.



Rounding out the fixes in the Office 2008 for Mac 12.0.1 Update are those targeting the suite's presentation software, PowerPoint. After applying the update, users should experience faster launches of PowerPoint, better character spacing and layout, and improvements to saving files to an SMB network volume, as well as saving files in PowerPoint 97-2004 formats.



Tuesday update is the first for Office 2008 for Mac since the software launched in January at Macworld Expo.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 68
    dagamer34dagamer34 Posts: 494member
    It looks like Spaces compatibility was fixed but it's not mentioned anywhere in the release notes. I'd still say that's some shoddy QA; Leopard was out for 3 months when Office 2008 was released!
  • Reply 2 of 68
    dr_lhadr_lha Posts: 236member
    Great, Microsoft Office 2008 is as buggy as all hell, not to mention slow. I hope that Excel plotting now can be at least as fast as it was on Excel 2004 running under Rosetta.
  • Reply 3 of 68
    nasseraenasserae Posts: 3,167member
    I don't know what MS was thinking when they released Office 2008 for Mac. It is the worst product I have ever seen! During my 20 years working with computers this is the first time that I have seen a product upgrade that actually a downgrade from the previous version. The only thing they did was make the interface look better. The only reason I need office was for cross platform compatibility related to macros and now thats out. The second issue I have with office 08 is limited charts options. I am still using Office 2004.



    Hey MS, how hard is it to have video calls enabled on your Messenger for Mac?
  • Reply 4 of 68
    the cool gutthe cool gut Posts: 1,714member
    WOW - hope the 23 people who bought the suite don't crash their servers while they all rush to download it all at once.
  • Reply 5 of 68
    To the folks who have purchased and installed Office '08: do you like it?
  • Reply 6 of 68
    bjkbjk Posts: 34member
    Office 2008 is nearly worthless to me. Without the statistical analysis toolpack for excel, I'm forced to stick with 2004. I have used Office 2007 for windows, and actually liked it, so I don't have a huge issue with the interface.



    I agree with NasserAE, why would Microsoft release a downgrade in functionality? I usually scoff at conspiracy theories, but I really do suspect that this is a move to discourage a move to macintosh computers.
  • Reply 7 of 68
    axc51axc51 Posts: 98member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by dr_lha View Post


    Great, Microsoft Office 2008 is as buggy as all hell, not to mention slow. I hope that Excel plotting now can be at least as fast as it was on Excel 2004 running under Rosetta.



    For me Office 08 is at least twice as fast as Office 04 under Rosetta ever was. But yes, it is buggy as hell right now, and hopefully this update fixes some of the problems.
  • Reply 8 of 68
    gugygugy Posts: 794member
    Does anybody know why is so slow to start up?



    I am about to drop Office for good in favor of Apple apps.

    It takes sometime 3 to 4 minutes to start up the Office apps. Entourage and Word specially. I already disable the fonts WYGIWYS in the preferences. etc.



    I have a MacPro Octo 2.8 with 10 gig of RAM.



    My old Office 2004 would take 5 seconds or less.



    Man I hate Micro **** !



    I just hate it. Any solution for this issue?

    Thanks
  • Reply 9 of 68
    dr_lhadr_lha Posts: 236member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Achiever View Post


    To the folks who have purchased and installed Office '08: do you like it?



    Didn't purchase it, my work has it for free as part of their agreement with MS. However the simple answer to "do you like it" is: NO.



    The Office program I use the most is Excel, which in 2008 is slower and has less features than 2004. Until this update (which has actually speeded up graph generation considerably) I had been sticking with Excel 2004 because my work was actually impossible with 2008 due to the extreme slowness.



    I would personally say that if anyone is a heavy Excel user, they should stick with 2004 for now. Obviously if they need VBA and other stuff Excel 2008 lacks, they basically should never upgrade.



    Word and Powerpoint 2008 look OK, but to be honest I use Keynote normally and LaTeX for documents so I haven't had much chance to try them.



    If I had paid $450 for Office 2008 (or whatever it costs) I'd be pretty pissed I think.
  • Reply 10 of 68
    dr_lhadr_lha Posts: 236member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by axc51 View Post


    For me Office 08 is at least twice as fast as Office 04 under Rosetta ever was.



    After the update maybe, but for excel graphs, not before. I have some graphs with 1000s of points on them, and with the initial Excel 2008, it would take literally 30-60 seconds on a Quad CPU Mac Pro to change the axis. On Excel 2004 a similar operation took a few seconds.
  • Reply 11 of 68
    aplnubaplnub Posts: 2,605member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Achiever View Post


    To the folks who have purchased and installed Office '08: do you like it?



    Excel is nice only because every time I hit the save button it saves and I don't get errors every 6 or 7 saves. Also, I needed the extra columns. The column feature was needed one month after Office was released. How nice that was. I was starting to get nervous.



    I don't use any of the rest of it. Word is loaded just to read Word doc's from PC people.



    I can say that Excel is slower than 2004 and to the person above who said 08 is twice as fast. Really? I have a Black iMac 24" maxed out 4 GB ram 2.8 GHz C2D (latest model) with best video card and it is slower than 2004 on the same machine. Slower by far!
  • Reply 12 of 68
    dglowdglow Posts: 147member
    Has anyone gotten the update to work? The updater says it can't find my install, grrr.



    Guess it's back to Office 2003 in Parallels for me....



    Agree with the comments above. How can the Mac BU ever catch up when their newest release is underwhelming compared to the *previous* version of its Windows counterpart?



    MacOffice 2008 < WinOffice 2003
  • Reply 13 of 68
    The updater seems to install Silverlight, odd.. I didn't ask for that..



    [edit] It's only a weblink in a folder, not the plugin itself.
  • Reply 14 of 68
    dcj001dcj001 Posts: 301member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Henk Poley View Post


    The updater seems to install Silverlight, odd.. I didn't ask for that..



    It's Microsoft. You should have expected things that you didn't ask for.
  • Reply 15 of 68
    bjkbjk Posts: 34member
    Slightly OT, how likely is it that iWork will have it's next release in '09? I'm hoping numbers gets some major improvements.
  • Reply 16 of 68
    dr_lhadr_lha Posts: 236member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by dglow View Post


    Has anyone gotten the update to work? The updater says it can't find my install, grrr.



    Worked for me on my Mac Pro and MacBook Pro.
  • Reply 17 of 68
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Achiever View Post


    To the folks who have purchased and installed Office '08: do you like it?



    Like others, I have mixed emotions. My MacBook Pro overall is considerably faster now that I have dumped the last program needing to run Rosetta. However, I am a heavy Excel user and the lack of VBA and other little trinkets that are missing in 2008 has led me to keep 2004 on my Mac in case I need it (you can keep the old program with no compatibility issues).



    No review yet of the MS update, but I hope it really does solve the Excel crashing and PowerPoint anemic performance issues. As far as updates under 2004, they seemed to get it right after about 2 years.



    While I, like many others, loath most things MS because of their bloated user-unfriendliness, it is a strict requirement for my work as iWork is only about 80% compatible. (I'm sure Gustav will correct me on what my profession ACTUALLY requires since he knows it all) No other suite offers all the integrated abilities that Office currently does. Perhaps some have better word processors, but they lack the other pieces in sufficient form.



    Just my 4¢ (inflation ya know)
  • Reply 18 of 68
    arlomediaarlomedia Posts: 271member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Achiever View Post


    To the folks who have purchased and installed Office '08: do you like it?



    I've been using 2008 for about a month now. I use Entourage constantly and Word regularly, and I haven't noticed them being faster or slower. Ditto for Excel and PowerPoint, although I only use those for simple files. They don't seem more or less stable, either. In fact, I haven't really noticed the transition, except for some of the keyboard shortcuts changing in Entourage. I do think the new interfaces look nice, so I guess the overall experience is like getting a haircut ... just a newer version of the same thing.



    The sad thing is that, like many software upgrades, I can't think of a single new feature that I'm using. The old feature set was fine and I only upgraded for compatibility with the new file formats.



    What's even more sad is that a 10-person, Mac-based consulting company I work with is going to have to upgrade 10 copies at $200+ each, just for compatibility, not because they need any new features. What a scam!
  • Reply 19 of 68
    I just tried to update and it said no updates are available. Then I remember downloading this update 2 weeks ago. Was I a beta tester? I've heard developers roll out updates to a small group prior to releasing the update to the masses to ensure everything is working ok.



    Regardless, first-time launch time seems to be slightly faster.
  • Reply 20 of 68
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Achiever View Post


    To the folks who have purchased and installed Office '08: do you like it?



    Installed it just a couple of days ago (17" MBP, 2.16 GHz Core Duo, 2GB). Takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r for files to open, and is r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w............
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