Office 2004 for Mac

Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
I hope this is an appropriate post for this board, but if not, feel free to delete it.



Today I ordered Office 2004 for Mac. In a way, I feel like I should be loyal to Apple and only use AppleWorks. haha. However, I have grown to love the features of Office through the years. Plus, I do make use of a lot of features in Office, and I use Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. I'm not yet sure if I will use the included email client, or stick with OS X's mail program. Do many like the mail program included in Office 2004? I like the Outlook 2003 included with the XP version of Office.



I also wanted to let everyone know that Amazon.com has a great deal on Office 2004 Student & Teacher edition Mac right now. It is $129.99, but there is a $20 rebate, so the total after rebate is only $110.



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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 23
    I rarely use Entourage on my computer but it seems nice. It's not bad.
  • Reply 2 of 23
    ibook911ibook911 Posts: 607member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by tonton

    Entourage is excellent. Many OS X users prefer it to Mail.



    By the way, PowerPoint is very, very dated. Keynote is worth the added price, even if you already have Office.




    I would buy Keynote, but I use my built Powerpoint presentations on other computers, so I can't really use Keynote for that.
  • Reply 3 of 23
    torifiletorifile Posts: 4,024member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by tonton

    Entourage is excellent. Many OS X users prefer it to Mail.



    By the way, PowerPoint is very, very dated. Keynote is worth the added price, even if you already have Office.




    Entourage is a nice looking program. As a mail client, it sucks. I've been trying to use it for the past 2 weeks. It's been painful. I went about 3 years using mail.app for my email and when I bought Office 2004 I was really excited about the Project Center. It seemed cool and useful. But as I got to use it more and more I realized that there's just something wrong with Entourage mail capabilities. I don't know how often - at least 20 times per day - I get unintelligible mail errors when it tries to check my email. It makes NO SENSE. It doesn't work with our Domino server even though mail.app does without a hitch. It often loses passwords or claims connectivity problems. The list goes on and on. I still use it for calendaring and tasks but I've actually started using mail.app again.



    Just yesterday I was using Entourage to compose a very long email. I had to go to a meeting while I was composing so I saved it. I came back, finished it up, tried sending it, got a crazy error about it not being sendable because it was being edited (by me!). I clicked "ok" on a dialog box that made no sense, I tried sending it again and it said it sent. I found out later when someone replied that it only sent what I wrote before my save! Ridiculous and a typical MS program's behavior. In all the time I used mail.app I never once had any sort of problem like that. Good idea, poor execution.
  • Reply 4 of 23
    mr. memr. me Posts: 3,221member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ibook911

    I would buy Keynote, but I use my built Powerpoint presentations on other computers, so I can't really use Keynote for that.



    You know that Keynote can both import and export PowerPoint files, don't you?
  • Reply 5 of 23
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Mr. Me

    You know that Keynote can both import and export PowerPoint files, don't you?



    No, I was not sure about this. How well does a Keynote presentation export as a Powerpoint presentation?



    Thanks for the help! I was just worried it would look crazy if I did this...
  • Reply 6 of 23
    rhoqrhoq Posts: 190member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by torifile

    Entourage is a nice looking program. As a mail client, it sucks. I've been trying to use it for the past 2 weeks. It's been painful. I went about 3 years using mail.app for my email and when I bought Office 2004 I was really excited about the Project Center. It seemed cool and useful. But as I got to use it more and more I realized that there's just something wrong with Entourage mail capabilities. I don't know how often - at least 20 times per day - I get unintelligible mail errors when it tries to check my email. It makes NO SENSE. It doesn't work with our Domino server even though mail.app does without a hitch. It often loses passwords or claims connectivity problems. The list goes on and on. I still use it for calendaring and tasks but I've actually started using mail.app again.



    Just yesterday I was using Entourage to compose a very long email. I had to go to a meeting while I was composing so I saved it. I came back, finished it up, tried sending it, got a crazy error about it not being sendable because it was being edited (by me!). I clicked "ok" on a dialog box that made no sense, I tried sending it again and it said it sent. I found out later when someone replied that it only sent what I wrote before my save! Ridiculous and a typical MS program's behavior. In all the time I used mail.app I never once had any sort of problem like that. Good idea, poor execution.




    Although I have yet to try MS Office 2004, I'm not surprised that you have encountered so much trouble. I have heard nothing but horror stories about how buggy Office 2004 is. I have also heard that it has been known to slow down the performance of Panther on some machines!



    I use MS Office X and I have absolutely no problems with it. Entourage works great and I have never experienced any errors.
  • Reply 7 of 23
    kcmackcmac Posts: 1,051member
    I have Office 2004 and only use Word and Excel. Word seems to work better for me now than with the previous version. Formatting is easier to use, long titles, text looks better on the screen, etc. A lot of little things.



    I am sticking with Mail as I left Entourage a long time ago. The project center is more work than it is worth plus I already use Daylite. Don't need the notebook feature.



    Since the company I work for is all PC and I am the only Mac, Office is the best thing going for me since it allows me to keep using my Mac. Couldn't say if I would use it otherwise.
  • Reply 8 of 23
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Does Tiger Mail have "groups" like Entourage?
  • Reply 9 of 23
    jabohnjabohn Posts: 582member
    Re: Keynote to Powerpoint... I've tried this and it doesn't work that great. Keynote is a great app (but strangely missing some major presentation features) but I've found when converting to Powerpoint, a lot of stuff can get messed up in the conversion. For example, I used master slides in Keynote and in PowerPoint, one of the master slides applied to all the slides, causing the slide info to overlap master slide info. It was a complete mess. Effects like shadows also change or get dropped.



    As for Word, it is still PAINFULLY slow to launch, same as it has been since Word 98. It takes up to 5 minutes to get going, it's stuck on the "optimizing font menu" message.
  • Reply 10 of 23
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aquatic

    Does Tiger Mail have "groups" like Entourage?



    What do you mean by that?
  • Reply 11 of 23
    Hi Guys,



    I use Mail right now to access my email on my Mac. Does anyone know if you can get a receipt for mail being read or not with Entourage? More like a delivery confirmation receipt.I know with Mail you can't.



    -T
  • Reply 12 of 23
    mr. memr. me Posts: 3,221member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aquatic

    Does Tiger Mail have "groups" like Entourage?



    No, thank God.
  • Reply 13 of 23
    toxotestoxotes Posts: 102member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jabohn

    Re: Keynote to Powerpoint... I've tried this and it doesn't work that great. Keynote is a great app (but strangely missing some major presentation features) but I've found when converting to Powerpoint, a lot of stuff can get messed up in the conversion. For example, I used master slides in Keynote and in PowerPoint, one of the master slides applied to all the slides, causing the slide info to overlap master slide info. It was a complete mess. Effects like shadows also change or get dropped.



    As for Word, it is still PAINFULLY slow to launch, same as it has been since Word 98. It takes up to 5 minutes to get going, it's stuck on the "optimizing font menu" message.




    I wonder if there might be something wrong with your installation. I get the "Optimizing Font Menu" message the first time I run Word after I install it, but never again after that. This is on both my iMac and iBook...
  • Reply 14 of 23
    jabohnjabohn Posts: 582member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by toxotes

    I wonder if there might be something wrong with your installation. I get the "Optimizing Font Menu" message the first time I run Word after I install it, but never again after that. This is on both my iMac and iBook...



    I get the message only the first time I launch any Office app... but if I reboot, I have to wait again next time I use Office.
  • Reply 15 of 23
    toxotestoxotes Posts: 102member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jabohn

    I get the message only the first time I launch any Office app... but if I reboot, I have to wait again next time I use Office.



    Yuk, that sucks. It only does that here the first time after a reinstall, not after rebooting. I wonder if anyone else is having that problem and/or knows a solution? I can see how that would make using it extremely frustrating... I'd want to throw my computer through the window if it did that here.
  • Reply 16 of 23
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jabohn

    Re: Keynote to Powerpoint... I've tried this and it doesn't work that great. Keynote is a great app (but strangely missing some major presentation features) but I've found when converting to Powerpoint, a lot of stuff can get messed up in the conversion. For example, I used master slides in Keynote and in PowerPoint, one of the master slides applied to all the slides, causing the slide info to overlap master slide info. It was a complete mess. Effects like shadows also change or get dropped.



    As for Word, it is still PAINFULLY slow to launch, same as it has been since Word 98. It takes up to 5 minutes to get going, it's stuck on the "optimizing font menu" message.




    i believe he said he had been using powerpoint, and would be interested in migrating to keynote, which is a lot easier (let's face it, keynote in "motion lite," which means it can do things that are difficult or impossible to do in powerpoint or even flash).



    that having been said, there are two good checklists at keynoteuser.com for making sure your files make the trip in both directions as well as can be expected.



    KeynoteUser.com tips, tutorials, etc.
  • Reply 17 of 23
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    "Groups" is a good idea. However Smart Mailboxes is...sort of like that. Actualy it's way more powerful.
  • Reply 18 of 23
    xoolxool Posts: 2,460member
    I only use Word and Excel, and rarely anymore. I just don't write the volume of documents I used to.



    From my limited experience with Entourage (and previous incarnations of Mac outlook) has taught me to keep away. Recently I've learned how non-compliant Entourage is with respect to the VCard and VCal standards. Also, I hate how MS locks you in to their apps so that exporting your info to switch to something else is a nightmare.



    I can't wait to replace these two apps so I can never use Office again.
  • Reply 19 of 23
    adamraoadamrao Posts: 175member
    I replaced Word with Pages and haven't looked back. There are a number of little things that I would like to see incorporated into Pages that currently exist in Word, but nothing major enough to make me think twice about the switch.



    Fortunately I don't need to use a spreadsheet application for anything, so switching from Office to iWork was very simple.
  • Reply 20 of 23
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Xool

    Recently I've learned how non-compliant Entourage is with respect to the VCard and VCal standards. Also, I hate how MS locks you in to their apps so that exporting your info to switch to something else is a nightmare.



    That is surprising. Microsoft is usually the one not complying to standards so that they can get people locked into their software.



    In what ways is Entourage non-compliant with the VCard and VCal standard?
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