Manage updates with the Download AppMicrosoft Office for Mac 2008
Manufacturer: Microsoft Part number: 731-01727
- More product information:
- Editors' review
- User reviews
- Specifications
- Product series
- Manufacturer info
- Bottom Line:
- Office for Mac 2008 may be the best pick for business users, but most people can get by with less costly alternatives.
Read more
Where to buy
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CNET editors' review
Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 price range: $114.00
- Reviewed by: Elsa Wenzel
- Reviewed on: 01/07/2008
- Released on: 01/15/2008
The good: Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 offers good looks that encompass deeper features than other Mac productivity software; business users get full Word mail merge, robust Excel spreadsheets, and better tools in Entourage; amateur desktop publishing features more polished documents; runs on Intel-based Macs.
The bad: Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 is pricey; saves work in new file formats by default; Excel drops Visual Basic support; features don't match the depth of those in Office 2007 for Windows.
The bottom line: Office for Mac 2008 may be the best pick for business users, but most people can get by with less costly alternatives.
User reviews
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Review should mention crippled Excel 2008
by heladas on January 4, 2008
Pros: Microsoft still willing to take our money
Cons: Excel 2008 less functional than Excel 2004
Summary: Seems to me than any review of Office 2008 is remiss if it doesn't mention that Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) support, which was present in Excel 2004, is ...
Summary: Seems to me than any review of Office 2008 is remiss if it doesn't mention that Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) support, which was present in Excel 2004, is absent from Excel 2008. For those of us who work with complicated spreadsheets, Excel 2008 is a huge step backwards. Excel 2004 and OpenOffice can both handle spreadsheets with VBA macros, but Excel 2008 cannot. For me, upgrading isn't an option.
16 out of 20 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Nice update
by Maclover1 on January 3, 2008
Pros: Intel Mac code, speed, compatible with office 2007 file format
Cons: Price, not a open format.
Summary: If I did not need to exchange word and excel documents I would never buy this. iWork is all I would ever need for my needs.
However I do on ...Summary: If I did not need to exchange word and excel documents I would never buy this. iWork is all I would ever need for my needs.
However I do on a daily basis so having this lets me stay on my Mac and not run Windows.13 out of 16 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Don't upgrade from 2004 until 2008 is fixed
by Christopher Serjak on May 4, 2008
Pros: Entourage finally becomes almost usable
Cons: Crashes. Stalls. Unexplained errors. Even on newly installed OSX
Summary: I cannot express the utterly profound level of dissatisfaction, disappointment, and disgust I feel for the Office: Mac 2008 product. I have worked as a consultant for nearly 20 years. ...
Summary: I cannot express the utterly profound level of dissatisfaction, disappointment, and disgust I feel for the Office: Mac 2008 product. I have worked as a consultant for nearly 20 years. I watched the evolution of Microsoft from the days of the IBM PC XT through the years of the Internet. The current product represents either new depths of incompetence, utter disregard for customers, a callous attitude toward the Macintosh platform, or all of the above.
From the first install on a brand new Macintosh the software has not functioned properly. After repeated installs, including reinstalling the Mac operating system (just to be sure) I gave up and went back to Office: Mac 2004. Ahh…but that doesn’t work well either, since apparently components of 2008 cannot be entirely removed.
I believe it to be the ultimate height of hypocrisy that Microsoft positions Office products as unlocking ideas, potential, and productivity. I’ve neither the time nor the patience to list the many disappointments in Office: Mac 2008 product. I am surprised that the Microsoft legal department believes that the product meets adequate standards to survive a challenge on the Warranty of Merchantability.
I sincerely hope that the people who manufacture passenger jets, medical equipment, prescription medicines, and manage our urban infrastructure do not sink to the same level of incompetence embodied in Office: Mac 2008. For if they do, we are all doomed.6 out of 6 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Not a breakthrough - but a nice update
by getwired on January 5, 2008
Pros: Universal app (better perf on Intel Macs), Office 2007 file format support...
Cons: Entourage still a second-class citizen to Outlook, no OneNote or InfoPath
Summary: Overall, I'm really happy with this. I find it disappointing that two of the above reviews are completely worthless. If you haven't used it, don't review it. ...
Summary: Overall, I'm really happy with this. I find it disappointing that two of the above reviews are completely worthless. If you haven't used it, don't review it. There is simply no other office suite on the Mac that compares. All of the open source office suites on the Mac have half-witted file format compatibility, and a UI that is completely confused - none are certainly Mac-like enough to be workable on the Mac.
I wish Entourage was Outlook, but for the Mac. Instead it seems like Outlook Express++ for the Mac. There also is no OneNote or InfoPath for the Mac - I wish there was. Oh well, another reason to run VMware Fusion. Finally, the best reason to upgrade (for those who blah-blahed on about why this isn't a good upgrade but open source alternatives are), this gives those of us with Intel Macs an office suite that runs well without PPC emulation.6 out of 7 users found this user opinion helpful.
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MOST UNSTABLE MAC SOFTWARE IN EXISTENCE
by Brian Levy on May 20, 2008
Pros: Features are slick
Cons: Word is chock full of formatting errors, glitches, and ways to corrupt your data
Summary: I was once a happy Microsoft customer...that is, until Vista...That pushed me to go Mac, and I love it. However, something has gone completely awry with Microsoft's ...
Summary: I was once a happy Microsoft customer...that is, until Vista...That pushed me to go Mac, and I love it. However, something has gone completely awry with Microsoft's quality control. This product crashes constantly (and none of my other software does)...It loses data, it has huge problems with cutting and pasting and the most basic functions you count on a modern day word processor for. It is so fundamentally unstable I am uninstalling it.
4 out of 4 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Huge Loss of Functionality
by esta_musta_tausta on January 7, 2008
Pros: I do not know of any yet.
Cons: No Visual Basic
Summary: The largest advantage that previous versions of Office had
for the power user was integration with Visual Basic via
VBA. It appears that this new release does not have VBA,...Summary: The largest advantage that previous versions of Office had
for the power user was integration with Visual Basic via
VBA. It appears that this new release does not have VBA,
removing its major competitive advantage over the
lower-priced iWOrk.4 out of 4 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Lack of VBA support kills Office 2008 as an option
by saffroncapital on February 5, 2008
Pros: Much Improved Powerpoint
Cons: Vastly inferior Excel to Office 2004
Summary: As a heavy spreadsheet user and only mildly interested in producing flashy documents Office 2008 is a major letdown. In fact I can't see the point in 'upgrading' at ...
Summary: As a heavy spreadsheet user and only mildly interested in producing flashy documents Office 2008 is a major letdown. In fact I can't see the point in 'upgrading' at all.
The only major improvements I can see are the Universal support for Intel processors and the changes made to Powerpoint. Although Office 2004 seems to run slower using OS X 10.5 "Lepoard" than 10.4 it doesn't matter a whole lot.
Improved Powerpoint features would be nice, but then I use Apple's Keynote for doing presentations as it is so much better than Powerpoint in Office 2004.
Better Word doesn't matter and although Exchange support is improved in Office 2008 I can get by with the Office 2004 version when using Entourage.
The biggest issue is the maddening and clearly stupid decision by Microsoft to kill VBA in Office 2008. Why is anyone's guess. But I can only assume that this is a response to the release of Numbers by Apple... a sort of 'I'll see you and raise you X' approach to business which does nothing to help customers. If Apple have their thinking caps on they will be looking at putting VBA support into the next version of Numbers.
By the time Microsoft gets around the releasing the next version of Office (if there is one) I expect that Numbers will have moved along a couple of versions and be able to provide some real competition to Excel (even better if VBA support is available in Numbers).
So I am prepared to wait. There is no point in me buying Office 2008 and I suspect any Office 2004 user who needs spreadsheets and VBA support will do the same.
Lets see what Apple can deliver in the next version of Numbers...3 out of 3 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Horrible. Horrible. Horrible.
by prestongrant on October 18, 2008
Pros: None. Nada. Yuck.
Cons: It is hard to describe how terrible this product is.
Summary: Microsoft's products are always bloated and sketchy reliability while they continue to take your money. As a Word power-user I cannot begin to describe the joys of a program ...
Summary: Microsoft's products are always bloated and sketchy reliability while they continue to take your money. As a Word power-user I cannot begin to describe the joys of a program that looks this ugly, crashes so often (simple Replace function crashes documents!), and is missing so much basic functionality. Shame on Microsoft for selling such a crappy product.
horrible. untrustworthy. shameful. save your money, it won't do what you want anyway.2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Worthy of a class-action lawsuit
by MattPete2 on October 14, 2008
Pros: None.
The only reason I'm typing these extra words is because this field requires at least 10 characters, and 'none.' only has 5.Cons: (1) On an Intel Mac, this 'native' application is slower than running Office 2004 (PowerPC) in emulation.
(2) New interface hides commonly used commands (e.g. font size, color, etc.)
(3) No VBA/Solver = less features in this 'upgrade'Summary: Slower, with less features, and poor usability . This is not an upgrade, but a downgrade from Excel 2004. I feel ripped-off and bitter, and this is worthy of a class-action ...
Summary: Slower, with less features, and poor usability . This is not an upgrade, but a downgrade from Excel 2004. I feel ripped-off and bitter, and this is worthy of a class-action lawsuit. I'm glad I didn't delete my old copy of Office 2004 before installing this.
2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Microsoft should pay users to use Office 2008 for Mac.
by jeff.bloom on August 31, 2008
Pros: Of course, the potentiality of the features are good, but why not use NeoOffice, which is freeware. NeoOffice has 99.9% of the features of MS Office.
Cons: Unreliable. Slow. Awkward.
Summary: I continue to find that Microsoft Office is horribly unreliable. I have major deadlines and can only hold my breath that Office won't crash. If I set the automatic ...
Summary: I continue to find that Microsoft Office is horribly unreliable. I have major deadlines and can only hold my breath that Office won't crash. If I set the automatic backups for 5 minutes, I end up not being able to work for an unbearably long period of time while it backs up. In addition, why have they changed the menus from a bar to the tops of documents? What's the point? Does it function better? I don't think so. Why don't they put their efforts into producing a tight, fast, and reliable product?
Office crashes far too often. And, the crashes occur during the most benign activities, like scrolling down a page or changing the insertion point. Maybe Microsoft gets away with their inferior products, because PC users are so used to problems.
We have a site license for this product. If I had to pay for it, I wouldn't. In fact, it's such an awful product, I may just use NeoOffice. It's free (unless you wish to donate something), has 99.9% of Word's features, has some features Word doesn't have, and it is much more reliable.1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
Specifications
- Manufacturer: Microsoft
- Part number: 731-01727
- Description: Look great with Office 2008! With beautiful documents, spreadsheets, and multimedia presentations, you can quickly create, manage, and re-use content across any platform.
General
- Packaged Quantity 1
- Category Office applications
- Subcategory Office applications - office suite
- Language(s) English
- License pricing Standard
- Localization English
Software
- License Type Complete package
- License Qty 1 PC
- License Pricing Standard
- Platform MacOS
- Distribution Media DVD-ROM
- Package Type Retail
System Requirements
- OS Required Apple MacOS X 10.4.9 or later
- Min Processor Type 500 MHz,
500 MHz - Peripheral / Interface Devices DVD-ROM,
XGA monitor - System Requirements Details Apple MacOS X 10.4.9 - PowerPC G4 - RAM 512 MB - HD 1.5 GB,
Apple MacOS X 10.4.9 - Intel x86 - RAM 512 MB - HD 1.5 GB
Product series
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Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 (Home and Student Edition)
Manufacturer: Microsoft
Specs: Office applications,
Mac -
Manufacturer: Microsoft
Specs: Office applications,
Mac -
Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 (Special Media Edition)
Manufacturer: Microsoft
Specs: Office applications,
Mac
Manufacturer info
- Manufacturer profile
- Browse Microsoft products on Shopper.com
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- Manufacturer:Microsoft
- Address:
One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052 - Phone: 1-425-882-8080
- Fax: 1-425-706-7329
