Microsoft Office 2004

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  • Reply 121 of 192
    gabidgabid Posts: 477member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by mrmister

    Back on track: I have office 2004. is there anything people need to know about it?



    I'm guessing you don't have the pro version. too bad; I'd love to hear about VPC 7.



    Anyhow, on to my questions:



    1. Do the page home and end buttons on your keyboard finally do anything in Word?



    2. Any significant changes whatsoever to Messenger? Any hint voice or video might be added at a later date?



    3. Will Word now keep footnotes on the same page as the text if you tell it to (rather than letting them trail on to the next page)?
  • Reply 122 of 192
    mrmistermrmister Posts: 1,095member
    "Support .PST files?"



    What are these? I never run into them in, so I haven't tested them.



    "Display the Exchange GAL properly?/Allow users to change their Exchange/AD password properly?"



    Sadly, I have no Exchange servers to play with--I know that's a big area of concern for corporate users.



    "Do the page home and end buttons on your keyboard finally do anything in Word?"



    They go to the beginning and end of the document respectively.



    "Any significant changes whatsoever to Messenger? Any hint voice or video might be added at a later date?"



    I don't use MSN, so I'm not the best one to ask--I actually never think of that as part of office, but you're right, it's there. I do know that Messenger is incorporated throught Entourage, so that you can click once and have Messenger launch, etc.



    "Will Word now keep footnotes on the same page as the text if you tell it to?"



    Yes, footnotes appear to work--I just formatted some this week, and they obeyed.



    Apologies to everyone for my own deficiencies in using power features of Office--I'll still try and answer anything I can.
  • Reply 123 of 192
    how is powerpoint?



    text rendering?

    does it have automatic guides like keynote?

    New, better themes?
  • Reply 124 of 192
    gabidgabid Posts: 477member
    Continuing with the PowerPoint questions:



    Is it now easier to organise slide order for under "Custom Animation"? In Office v.X you have to move around with these annoying up and down arrows if you want to organise animations. Any chance this is now drag and drop?
  • Reply 125 of 192
    moogsmoogs Posts: 4,296member
    Monday is the day it will be released apparently, with the pro version coming about two weeks later. Anyone got their shopping cart cued up for a purchase, or is everyone playing the "wait and see" game?



    I am really concerned this is basically a fluff update. MS hasn't released any information about additional new features beyond the stuff that's in the demo. No word on stability improvements improvements either although I guess they'd never phrase it that way for fear of legal hassles.



  • Reply 126 of 192
    chinneychinney Posts: 1,019member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Moogs



    [...]

    No word on stability improvements either although I guess they'd never phrase it that way for fear of legal hassles.




    mrmister's testing - noted in an earlier post in this thread - seems to suggest that the new version is at least more responsive. I'll be buying it, although I may wait a few months.
  • Reply 127 of 192
    >_>>_> Posts: 336member
    "a new key feature in office 2004.. the scroll bar. we at microsoft thought this was a very very cool new key feature. der-her-her."



    I swear, Microsoft sticks all the retards on the Mac Development team. ^_^ Anyone else get that impression?



    I mean hell... Roz was having a tough time keeping the drool in her mouth at the keynote. ^_^



    =P



    - Xidius
  • Reply 128 of 192
    moogsmoogs Posts: 4,296member
  • Reply 129 of 192
    frank777frank777 Posts: 5,839member
    That's silly. I deplore the MS monopoly as much as anyone, but the Mac Business Unit has some extremely bright people in it. The Project Manager in Entourage this time around has outdone anything Apple's come up with their crazy Mail/Address Book/iCal/iSync/Palm conduit kludge.



    And demeaning Roz because she was intimidated by the bright lights of the MacWorld stage says more about you than her.



    ----



    The strangest part yet was Nisus' attempt today to steal Microsoft's thunder with the announcement of Writer Express 2.0.



    The product is wordprocessing only, won't ship till Summer, and doesn't include any whiz bang features or Mac-specific integration. I'm in the market for an MS-alternative, and the Nisus announcement seemed to confirm to me why I should be considering upgrading to Office 2004.
  • Reply 130 of 192
    drewpropsdrewprops Posts: 2,321member
    QUESTION:



    How has the address book changed in Office 2004? Back when Outlook Express jumped from 4 to 5 its address book got dumbed down (the ability to navigate your entire mail list via groups was removed and never returned, even when it became Entourage).



    Apple's Mail app has done it "right" in my opinion and I'm interested in finding out if the MBU guys went back and refined the interface of the address book, especially when you've just completed an email and need to navigate through your contacts list to add recipients.



    Hope this was clear enough, if it wasn't please just tell us as much as you can about the interface for the address book. This will be a key determining factor in how soon I consider upgrading.



    Thanks!
  • Reply 131 of 192
    cowerdcowerd Posts: 579member
    Quote:

    The product is wordprocessing only, won't ship till Summer, and doesn't include any whiz bang features or Mac-specific integration.



    It's a cocoa app for fscks sake. I think that makes it pretty mac specific. It's also a Mac only app. What exactly is your definition of Mac specific?



    Here's a list of my favorite MS Office whiz bang features:

    Still extent eps embedded graphic bug from Word 5.1

    Extra-modal dialog boxes. Did you know it was easier to edit styles in 5.1, i.e. before they 'fixed' the interface for the OS X version?

    Inability to grasp OS X file structure, i.e. it goes in ~/Library/Application Support.

    Non-standard widgets.

    Finally unicode, but not full support for RtL languages.

    Lack of file compatability with Windows versions of Office.
  • Reply 132 of 192
    mrmistermrmister Posts: 1,095member
    "Lack of file compatability with Windows versions of Office."



    I will say that this is much better, at least in my humble experience, with 2004. There is now a full compatability testing suite, so you can test flight files for all MS Office formats on all platforms. It's a good feature.



    "How has the address book changed in Office 2004?"



    To be honest, it doesn't seem any different than the old address book to me, except that it is noticably faster to use. I don't really understand what feature your looking for with the individuals within a group, but I suspect it is not implemented.



    "No word on stability improvements either."



    Well, I am running on a beta build from February and I have to say that Word and Entourage are more stable than they used to be--only one crash, which for Office is pretty good in my experience over two months.
  • Reply 133 of 192
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Does Word save files longer than 32 characters?
  • Reply 134 of 192
    mrmistermrmister Posts: 1,095member
    As I reported earlier in the thread, yes it does.
  • Reply 135 of 192
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Nice. Do Excel charts imported in to Word still show up as X'd out pictures in PC Word?
  • Reply 136 of 192
    frank777frank777 Posts: 5,839member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by cowerd

    It's a cocoa app for fscks sake. I think that makes it pretty mac specific. It's also a Mac only app. What exactly is your definition of Mac specific?



    I was thinking of something along the lines of being able to automatically address letters using Address Book, or maybe integration with Filemaker and Keynote.



    Give us some reason to forsake Microsoft other than blind hatred.



    I'd love to see a project manager that didn''t lock us into MS Office.

    I think this will be Office 2004's killer feature.
  • Reply 137 of 192
    kcmackcmac Posts: 1,051member
    I'm getting Office 2004 for Word, Excel and Powerpoint.



    I am not going back to entourage after using Mail, Addressbook and iCal.



    While the project center looks interesting, it would be more interesting to me if MS would allow it to work with the Apple apps.
  • Reply 138 of 192
    hassan i sabbahhassan i sabbah Posts: 3,987member
    I've been using Word 2004 all day today, properly working with it. I'm going to buy it. It's really, really good.



    Observations: it doesn't do that irritating thing where it can't decide where to put the last line on a page anymore. Nice. It doesn't take 30 seconds to drop in your graphic paragraph break using autocorrect anymore. It's instant. And it doesn't crash when you click on the place where it should be. It doesn't fall off to sleep for a second mid-sentence anymore.



    It works alright for me, anyway.
  • Reply 139 of 192
    gabidgabid Posts: 477member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Hassan i Sabbah

    Observations: it doesn't do that irritating thing where it can't decide where to put the last line on a page anymore.



    Oh, thank goodness! It's little fixes like this that are going to make the upgrade worthwhile.
  • Reply 140 of 192
    kirklandkirkland Posts: 594member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Frank777

    The strangest part yet was Nisus' attempt today to steal Microsoft's thunder with the announcement of Writer Express 2.0.



    The product is wordprocessing only, won't ship till Summer, and doesn't include any whiz bang features or Mac-specific integration. I'm in the market for an MS-alternative, and the Nisus announcement seemed to confirm to me why I should be considering upgrading to Office 2004.




    What are you talking about? NWE is an excellent product, and as much as I'm a huge fan of Microsoft Word, I found the 1.1.x releases of NWE to be very tempting. The new 2.0 version adds in ALL of the features from the wish list I sent Nisus, including Styles, Tables and Footnotes. For a ground up written-in-Cocoa project, Nisus Writer Express is coming along fast and furious.



    NWE integrates with Cocoa's services function, allowing you to integrate in the features offered by other Cocoa programs. It also renders text with Cocoa goodness and supports the Mac OS's built in spell checker. It utilizes sheets and drawers very well, and is all around a much more Mac-like product than Word.



    Integration with Address Book for letter writing would be an excellent addition. Though, frankly, so would integration with Entourage. Send it as a requested feature to Nisus, and maybe it'll show up in version 2.1 or 3.0. They're writing code fast and furious over there, and I'm staggered by the completeness of this 2.0 release. They're quite responsive to customer wants.



    Just as soon as they get their product finalized, I'll do an update to my Word Processor Shootout column. I think it will fare quite well.



    Kirk
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