Upgrade To New Microsphoft Word For My Mac?

TO NEW MICROSPHOFT WORD FOR MY ? SERIES OF DELAYS

To New Microsphoft Word For My ? Series Of Delays

That's good news for anyone who doesn't want to relearn the locations of common functions. There's no Microsoft Access database application for the Mac, although Filemaker's upcoming release of Bento offers Mac users a new choice.Unlike Microsoft Office 2007, the interface changes don't look radically foreign next to the 2004 edition. Start quickly with the most recent versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote and OneDrive combining the familiarity of Office and the unique Mac features you love.After a series of delays, Microsoft plans to release Office for Mac 2008 to brick-and-mortar and online stores on January 15, making this the first update in nearly four years.Office for Mac includes Word, Excel for spreadsheets, PowerPoint for presentations and Entourage for e-mail and time management. Office 2019 is the next on-premises version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Project, Visio, Access, and Publisher.Get Office apps for Mac.

Now you can save to PDF, and Automator actions are supported. These are premade templates with 3D and translucent designs.There are more welcome and substantial changes as well. For instance, Office for Mac features the same templates and Smart Art graphics as the Windows counterparts.

We found the shape-shifting neither terribly distracting nor useful. Office for Mac lacks the Ribbon, but some menu items appear only in step with the task at hand. This is handy if you rely on Entourage but don't want to run it all the time.Office 2007 for Windows clusters functions within a contextual 'Ribbon' toolbar that displays different options.

That said, the new document types are smaller and purportedly more secure than their predecessors.You'll need a Mac with 1.5GB free on the hard drive, running at least OS 10.4.9, with 512MB of RAM and a 500MHz Intel or PowerPC processor. Although we're glad that Microsoft offers free converters, we find the forced extra steps annoying in Office 2007. That means for now, should you save work in a new OOXML format in a hurry, someone with the older software won't be able to open it. Free file conversion tools won't be available until as long as 10 weeks from now, or 8 weeks after the applications are available in stores. We're not thrilled about this being the default option, even though you can save your work in the older DOC, XLS and PPT formats. Being accustomed to Office for Windows, we'd rather find all these options at the top of the screen.Office for Mac saves work in the same, new Open XML formats used by Office 2007 for Windows.

Indeed, rivals to Office for Mac seem like a bargain, even though they offer fewer tools. Fortunately, those who have recently purchased Office for Mac 2004 can upgrade for free.Still, the fees feel hefty next to the $80 Apple iWork '08. The $500 Special Media Edition handles Exchange and adds Microsoft Expression media-management software. At $400 or $240 to upgrade, the full Office for Mac that we reviewed feels pricey, even though it includes Exchange support.

OpenType ligature support improves the appearance of fonts in Word.Those in academia should appreciate new reference tools, although there are only four citation styles. Document Elements building blocks make swift work of adding cover pages, tables of contents, and the like. We really like Publishing Layout View's elementary desktop publishing tools. Its changes should mostly please those creating documents they want to show off. These are all dandy for composing and editing text documents, juggling spreadsheets, and creating slide-show presentations.Although the look and feel are refreshed, Word isn't drastically different from its predecessor.

The Elements Gallery offers Ledger Sheets, templates for commonly used tasks such as juggling a household budget or managing company payroll. Excel has expanded and can now handle a total of 17.18 billion cells, as many as its Windows cousin. As you type in the Formula bar, Excel will autofill values that may match. Formula Builder walks you through building calculations, keeping recently used ones at the top of its memory. Perhaps the biggest selling point for the new Word is the ease with which it can make documents easy on the eyes.As well as making charts easier on the eyes, Excel for Mac 2008 adds tools for stepping through complex formulas. Bloggers don't get a custom layout in Word as with Office 2007, but that's not a big loss given Microsoft's lack of support for the latest Web coding standards.

However, as with Office 2007 for Windows, we find Smart Art initially a bit less intuitive than advertised. While power spreadsheet users will find Excel richer than other programs, those who rely upon macros are sure to be disappointed and may be better off keeping Excel 2004 or even switching to Excel for Windows.Microsoft continues to tout its Smart Art graphics, which can turn a bulleted list into nearly any kind of diagram or flowchart with a few quick clicks. However, we prefer the elegant layouts, outside-the-grid setup, and print preview tools within Apple's Numbers for light users of spreadsheets.Probably the worst thing about Excel 2008 overall is its lack of support for Visual Basic.

A Thumbnail View like the one in Office 2007 may help to keep from losing your place. And there are more layout and slide transition themes.While making a public presentation, a detailed digital clock is meant to help keep you on track. You can resize elements with a zoom slider in a snap, just as Dynamic Guide lines help to align text boxes and pictures.PowerPoint stands out from Apple's Keynote and other competitors in key areas, such as control over audio narration.

You can accept or reject a meeting directly within a calendar event. There are To Do lists, accessible in the My Day widget along with appointments and the color-coded calendar. Filters for junk mail and phishing are beefed up. The 2008 upgrade offers more practical functions than its 2004 counterpart, such as an Out of Office assistant that lets you craft vacation messages specific to the recipient. And there's an option for sending a presentation to iPhoto, making it accessible as a PNG or a JPEG for iPod viewing.Although Mac users can rely upon the free Mail, Entourage offers more features fit for business.

Companies using Live Communications Server 2005 can encrypt their messaging, and users can chat with those using iChat, AOL, AIM, Yahoo, and MSN.Microsoft offers searchable inline and online help menus, which answered most of our questions, as well as Web-based community forums. Messenger for Mac enables users to check spelling, pick from among many emoticons, and see what others are listening to on iTunes. For that, we searched Help and learned that Hotmail's lack of free POP support was the culprit.Microsoft also throws in this free instant-messaging application, which enables users of its IM tool and Yahoo Messenger to contact each other. However, after claiming to have succeeded at setting up our Hotmail account, Microsoft failed to explain why it couldn't do that after all. We just wish that it showed an entire day's events instead of hiding the morning's appointments in the afternoon and displaying overdue appointments in a separate pop-up window.Setting up Entourage for a Gmail account took no time. The workspace is more customizable overall, thanks to toolbar tweaks and the Favorites menu.My Day is a helpful snapshot of upcoming To Do items and appointments, although its bluish appearance can't be customized.

The document element templates may be attractive and helpful, but the selection feels skimpy next to Office 2007 for Windows, and Smart Art isn't as intuitive to use as advertised. IWork '08, for one, handles the newest, XML-based Office files pretty well.Office for Mac also skips some niceties that give its Windows counterpart an advantage over rival software, such as the interface slider bar for zooming in on a document. But other companies serve up software that's compatible with Office documents and costs half as much, if not less-or nothing at all. Sure, it's a step up from the 2004 version, and the only one that runs natively on Intel-based Macs. Video support is not (yet) available.Overall, we found ourselves wondering why someone would splurge for Office for Mac 2008.

For example, in Office for Windows, a chart pasted from Excel into Word will change when you manipulate its underlying data set in Excel. Plus, we'd like to see more integration among the applications.

Upgrade To New Microsphoft Word For My Mac?