Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac

A streamlined user interface, hundreds of new themes and templates, and better compatibility with your Windows-based colleagues–with Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, you’ll simplify your work and achieve more with less effort.

Simplify Your Work
Your presentation will make an impact. Your documents will be professional. Your analysis will be insightful. And Office 2008 will be there.
The latest version of the industry standard for productivity software on the Macintosh platform, Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac is more powerful and easier to use. Office 2008 combines Microsoft Word for Mac, Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac, Microsoft Excel for Mac, Microsoft Entourage for Mac, and Microsoft Messenger for Mac and lets you easily create high-impact documents and seamlessly share your ideas with others, whether they are on the Mac or Windows platform.

What’s New in Office for Mac?

• Universal versions of the most popular productivity applications on the Macintosh platform (Universal applications run natively on Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs.)
• Microsoft Office for Mac natively supports the Open XML file formats for compatibility with Windows-based 2007 Microsoft Office products.
• A redesigned user interface and powerful new tools for simplifying work, creating great looking documents, and exchanging ideas and information with others.

Highlights of Office 2008 for Mac

• Office 2008 is a Universal Binary, was built by Mac users for Mac users, and includes many features which take advantage of underlying technologies of the Macintosh platform.
• Office 2008 uses Open XML file formats for compatibility with Windows-based 2007 Microsoft Office products. XML file formats help reduce the risk of lost information due to damaged or corrupted files and also result in smaller file sizes–up to 75 percent smaller than comparable binary documents. Office 2008 for Mac is backward-compatible with earlier file formats and users can continue to use the older .doc, .xls, and .ppt binary formats.
• Elements Gallery is the foundation of the new user interface, and gives easy access to the most commonly used tools and templates. With the new UI, you’ll harness the capabilities of Office for Mac more easily than ever before.
• Office 2008 includes OfficeArt, the powerful graphics engine also used in the Windows-based Office 2007 products. You get great cross-platform file fidelity and easy access to stunning visual and graphic effects.
• Your words will make an impact with the modern styling of SmartArt graphics, which makes transforming text and bulleted lists into professional diagrams and graphics one-click easy.
• A new Themes capability simplifies the process of applying a consistent look and feel across documents. Easily apply a complete set of colors, fonts, and effects to your Office 2008 documents, and change them as easily as changing your mind.
• Automator Actions for Workflows in Microsoft Office enables you to automate Office 2008 with more than 70 pre-defined actions built to simplify your work and extend your productivity. (Available in Office 2008 for Mac and Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition.)

Entourage 2008, the hub of Office 2008, helps it to happen, one task at a time.

Enjoy powerful new tools, over 100 designer templates, rich themes, and an intuitive user interface in Word 2008.

Entourage 2008
Your e-mails will spark ideas, you’ll schedule meetings where creativity abounds. Entourage 2008, the hub of Office 2008, helps it to happen, one task at a time.

• My Day keeps you connected to the action. Schedules, tasks, and priorities in one easy, standalone interface. Time will have no choice but to be well-managed.
• Use color-coded categories, status indicators, and flexible To-Do list management humble even the most hectic schedules.
• Office 2008 for Mac and Office 2008 Special Media Edition enable users to access their Microsoft Exchange server accounts with Entourage.
• Improved Junk E-Mail filtering capabilities and phishing protection tools help shield your inbox from the scourge of junk. Your inbox will breathe a sigh of relief.
• Projects submit to your superior management skills when you unleash the power of Project Center, With project details like e-mail messages, documents, schedules, and contacts in one convenient place, Project Center helps keep your information–and your stress–under control.

Word 2008
Powerful new tools, over 100 designer templates, rich themes, and an intuitive user interface in Word 2008 will help you to make your ideas look as good as they are.

• When you turn blah into brilliant, Publishing Layout View will elevate the way you think about Word 2008. This new specialized and customizable workspace lets users create incredibly rich documents such as newletters, flyers and brochures without a degree in design.
• Great looking document construction won’t require a hard hat. New Templates, Themes, and Document Elements like cover pages and bibliographies make creating professional-looking output a snap.
• Your words will make an impact with the modern styling of SmartArt, which makes transforming text into high-quality graphics and diagrams as easy as one click.
• Dynamic Guides will help you keep all of your words and graphics in line and on point.
• Mass mailings will have a personal touch and Word 2008 Mail Merge Manager will guide you step by easy step.

Inspire your audience’s imagination with compelling visuals and engaging layout in PowerPoint 2008.

Analyze, share, and manage your data, and easily create persuasive charts and thought-provoking graphs for powerful results with Excel 2008.

PowerPoint 2008
Your presentation is a story. PowerPoint 2008 will illustrate it. Inspire your audience’s imagination with compelling visuals and engaging layout.

• Great ideas will get their graphic due with SmartArt graphics in PowerPoint 2008. Start with a blank slide or a bulleted list, and, with a click of a button, you’ll have a stunning chart, table, map, or diagram.
• Designer Themes help you give your presentation a creative look, simply and quickly.
• The new Object Palette allows quick access to all your shapes, art, symbols, and pictures–including iPhoto files–in one easy-to-access space.
• Dynamic Guides will help you place and resize your graphic element to create professional-looking presentations in a snap.
• You’ll lay out custom designs to showcase your unique content with custom layout capabilities in PowerPoint 2008.
• PowerPoint 2008 integration with Apple Remote Control lets you concentrate on your words, not your keyboard. Now control your presentation and engage your audience unleashed from the podium.

  Excel 2008
  It’s a numbers game. With Excel 2008, analyze, share, and manage your data, and easily create persuasive charts and thought-provoking graphs for powerful results.

  • Ledger Sheets in Excel 2008 make tracking finances, inventories, even invoices and portfolios easy with preformulated spreadsheets and automatic calculations.
  • Charting improvements artfully convey the message your data is telling. You’ll see your numbers in a whole new way.
  • The new prebuilt functions tackle the most common tasks and make creating error-free complex conditional formulas easier.
  • Quick access to formulas makes functions more functional with Formula Builder in Excel 2008.
  • Your data will know virtually no limits. Excel 2008 now supports over 16,000 columns and over 1 million rows.
  • Whether you’re an Excel expert or a complete novice, Excel 2008 Formula AutoComplete simplifies your calculations by providing a dynamic pop-up menu so you can select and complete your formula.

  Messenger for Mac
  Convenience is the name of the game for Mac users who want to communicate instantly with family, friends and colleagues from one convenient place. Messenger for Mac is now a Universal application, and gives you more ways to share what’s on your mind or on your plate.

  Use Messenger for Mac to instantly check the status of project team members, streamline workflow by sending documents directly from Word, or offer questions or comments on document changes instantly.

  • Yahoo! Interoperability will allow personal users to connect and message with Yahoo! Messenger for Mac users.
  • Your intentions will never again be in doubt when you create your own custom emoticons in Messenger for Mac.
  • Spelling Checker is now included in Messenger for Mac.
  • Let the world know your tastes when you display your iTunes selection with the new “What I’m listening to now” feature.

  User Ratings and Reviews

  3 Stars Buggy
  I wanted to like this, I really did. The only reason that I use Microsoft is to be compatible with the files that other users are sending me who are already on this version. But I have to say, this is not an improvement as it introduces more bugs and problems that its worth. When I work with people I suggest that the try to use an older version on their Windows computer and I still use the older version myself. If you are looking to buy a package for the first time and you don’t need Excel’s advanced features, iWork is the way to go. If you do need advanced Excel, then getting VMware Fusion, a copy of Windows operating system, and the Windows version of Excel is the way to go (pricey as it is).

  5 Stars A Better Office Suite
  As I unpacked my new Macbook Pro, the enclosed iLife was a killer does-all addition to a stellar Apple laptop. I loaded the new MS Office with glee. Microsoft runs fast, and flawlessly on the laptop, unlike the chuggy versions (aside from Word) of the Apple past. The funky docX save feature is a bugger: save a doc in docX and it’ll be tough for most earlier Macs to open, but just upgrade: word is now a strong contender for very good layouts that, until now, I’d thought was beyond Microsoft. for a Quark/InDesigner like me, here is the MS version for newsletters and business use that really looks terrific and is easy to use. Plus, I’m a returning student, so using the school’s recommended Word is the correct approach.

  Entourage and the rest included and a recommended alternative to, ahem, the other options for email and online communicating. Faster, no baloney: SWEET.

  Excel is the standard for spreadsheets: Much as I adore other apps that come close, stick with Excel and it’ll always work best.

  Well done, MS! I’m happy and working without fear of problems!

  4 Stars Probably not perfect, but the bottom line is it works…
  I have installed MS Office 2008 on my iMac and the installation went smoothly and effortlessly. The programs I use most are Word, Powerpoint and Excel. I use these programs on my iMac when I don’t want to use the Dell laptop my employer has given me. I use only the fairly basic functionality with Excel and Word and Powerpoint, although as Bill Gates would say, “Do you open spreadsheets from more advanced users? (Yes) Then you are using advanced functionality!” and have had no problems reading anything or creating anything. Many of the below reviewers have complained about more advanced functionality that may be missing or things they may be able to do, which I am sure are all valid, but if you are using it mostly to open things others have created and use the basics of Word, Powerpoint and Excel than you will have no problem.

  1 Star Possibly the worst product ever released by Microsoft
  Blind untrained chimps could write a better software application for the Mac. Having used Microsoft Office on both PCs and Macs for as long as it has existed, I am amazed that this product could actually be released by any software development organization. It is unbelievably slow, even on an Intel CoreDuo Mac with 2GB of RAM. As an example: copying 25 cells from Excel and pasting (as unformatted text!) into MS-Word takes 45 seconds to a minute. During that time the Mac “beach ball of death” comes up and the entire system becomes unresponsive. Music stops playing, your skype call is dropped, etc… Formatting a line in Word can reformat the entire document. Word crashes quite frequently, often with the beach ball of death and a system so hung that I can’t even get to the “Force Quit” menu for minutes. (In fact I usually keep a terminal window open just for the purpose of doing “kill -9″ on the MS-Word process. Excel is not as bad but like many other reviewers have noted, it’s missing many features of the Windows version. Powerpoint is mediocre. It crashes frequently and formatting is often broken when transferring files to the Windows version. Entourage? Completely useless compared to Apple’s built-in mail client and a pale shadow of Outlook on Windows.

  I use MS-Office because my company is 95% Windows but on the Mac it’s a misery-inducing experience. Give me Khalid Sheik Mohammed, a Mac, and a copy of MS-Office and I will find out where Osama Bin Laden is stat!

  5 Stars Office the mac way….
  Installation on a macbook 2.4 was seamless. It was quick and easy. No more using bootcamp to use microsoft office. Since it is a microsoft product the programs take a while to load up compared to any program in iwork from apple. I prefer iwork but the rest of the world is still catching up and they prefer microsoft office. Great product if you need to use it instead of iwork.

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Microsoft Office Excel Home and Student 2007

Excel Home and Student 2007 has the improved tools that help you create documents faster, easier, and more intuitively. Reduce the time and frustration of learning new software with menus and commands that present the right tools when you need them. The improved Help system provides tooltips and links to relevant information in Microsoft Office system programs or on the Internet when connected. Get started easily by using online tutorials with step-by-step instructions or by using some of the new out-of-the-box templates. Detect and remove unwanted comments, hidden text, or personally identifiable information in your documents using the Document Inspector New support for PDFs and XML files — convert and share them on any platform

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Excel’s New Format
I’ve only been using this new version of Excel for several days, but it clearly deserves at least 4 stars. It’s much more user-friendly than my previous version of Excel and offers additional features, but it takes a little getting used to. There is tons of stuff at the top, and lots of tabs through which to navigate. But it seems to be well worth getting to know.

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Abbyy USA ScanTo Office

Who needs all that paper? Abbyy USA ScanTo Office lets you scan your documents and convert them to Windows Office files. There’s no need to retype your documents. ABBYY ScanTo Office is an easy-to-use and affordable solution that efficiently converts your paper documents into editable Microsoft Word and Excel files or as email attachments. With a few simple steps, ABBYY ScanTo Office recreates the file in Microsoft Office applications and maintains the looks of the original documents. ScanTo Office is virtually a one-click conversion for your paperwork. Repurpose information from paper documents or image files into Microsoft applications, while retaining the original appearance, without having to retype or reformat. The software efficiently converts from paper to a Microsoft Word, Excel or e-mail file. This is the ideal software tool for home users or small businesses that need to quickly scan paperwork and share information. It’s a great way to manage your papers at the office and at home. Reads bi-lingual documents by selecting a secondary language Layout retained in output document System Requirements - PC with Intel Pentium /Celeron / Xeon; AMD K6/Athlon/ Duron or compatible processor 200 MHz or higher - Microsoft Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows NT 4.0 (SP6 or higher), Windows Me/98 - Minimum of 64 Mb RAM (Windows XP/2000/NT 4.0), 32 Mb RAM (Windows Me/98). Document save formats - Microsoft Word 2003/XP/2000; Microsoft Excel 2003/XP/2000; Rich Text Format - Requires scanner for paper scanning

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Work smart .. save time and be more productive
The only thing that separates you and the crowd, is being smarter, and this software will help, just doing that. Get Scan to Office and work smart insted of hard, you can save more than 80 to 95% of your time, depending on the size of your work. Just get your scanner to work with more than 200 dpi, for me 300 dpi works great.

Save time and do more.. work in less time.

Thanks … Alberto G.GMP ABBYY SCAN TO OFFICE ( STOFBW10 )

5 Stars Just what I was looking for!
This product was exactly what I needed. After my HP Director failed to operate (apparently when I started using Explorer 7), I tried everything to once again scan editable text. I have a small typing business and often clients will give me pages of text to edit and retype. When I could no longer use my HP Director, I purchased a new HP with scanning capabilities. That Director would not work either! After many hours chatting with HP, I packed up the new printer and returned it. Back to my original printer, I downloaded ABBYY which worked perfectly for my needs. It is simple, uncomplicated and recognizes characters beautifully. All superfluous characters (handwritten notes and unwanted scribbles) are easily deleted, leaving a clean editable copy. I am very pleased.

2 Stars Good character recognition but . . .
I found the character recognition of this software package to be very good, but the package has a major drawback: unless your scanner is equiped with an automatic feeder, the software will let you scan documents of only one page or less to a single Word file. This requires copying and pasting operations for any document more than one page long. Way too tedious.

5 Stars As good as one might expect
I’d recommend this software to anyone.

It is very, very easy to use, with a wizard-like interface that takes you through the steps very quickly. Scan directly, or open a file previously scanned, indicate an output file or it can open a new MS Word file. Its only outputs seem to be MS Word or MS Excel. Inputs all major scanned-image formats e.g. jpeg, gif, etc. (This review shouldn’t be your source for tech details such as that.)

If the text is scanned at too low a resolution, for example 30 dots per inch scans of small text, then you simply won’t be able to convert it to text, no matter what — there simply isn’t enough detail in the scan. But for 10-point text, scanned at 100 dots per inch or more, I’ve found the software to do an excellent job. (Mostly, I scan things at 300 or 600 dpi, and I have seen almost no typos at all.)

The software works fast enough that I can’t imagine anyone complaining about the speed. I’d have no hesitation at scanning and converting an entire book. If you wish, you can open multiple scanned pages at once, and it will convert them to a single multi-page document with each page corresponding to one scanned input page.

It is possible to let the text highlight in red anything it wasn’t 100% certain about; an excellent feature. For 300 dpi scans of 10 point text, I simply have not found any typos at all, and very rarely will I see anything red. In other words, it’s extremely reliable.

I’ve scanned new and old books; books with fancy old-style drawings in them; books with very strange text formats, and the software does a very good job of it. I find it amazing, and impressive, that the book will create an MS Word document that looks almost exactly like the scanned page; for example, columns and their positions, the positions of photos, etc. The software will cut photos out of the scan and imbed them into the resulting page, so that you truly get a document that could pass for the original scan! (In fact, sometimes it does odd things, like if it finds text within the picture, it will chop up the picture and include converted text right smack in the middle of the picture… a bit odd, but technically quite correct.) Note, that from column to column the precisely placement of each word in the column might be slightly different, but the overall size of the column will be done right.

One POTENTIAL problem is with words that are hyphenated across column boundaries — this software can retain those hyphens / word splits, so if you then grab the text and re-format it, you’ll have to delete the hyphens. But this is easily remedied — if you choose the advanced feature that says not to retain formatting, it will put those hyphenated words back together! How smart is that!

The software seems to have no problem converting several different font styles and sizes on the same page, even some fonts like western broadside fonts that I imagine would have been too unusual to analyze.

The software clearly corrects for scans that are not truly orthogonal. That is, if the page is crooked in the scan, it will still read it correctly. I’ve tried giving it pages that were upside down, at right angles, at 45 degree angles, at a 5 degree angle, and it correctly scanned each and re-oriented it properly.

The only problem I ever encountered in scans were lines that had lots and lots of dashes in them, which occured in a 100-year old text that included lines like: “water —- wet; land —- dry; fire —- hot” etc etc. for several paragraphs. The software got confused, and dropped a few words.

In summary, I am absolutely confident that this software will work well for you, and that you’ll be quite pleased; will be easy to work, easy to use. I’m decidedly pleased I purchased it.

5 Stars Magical!
Love this program! Never knew it was even possible to transfer a printed document into a word program to edit. It literally saved me hours and hours of typing a full 20 pages of rules and regulations for our company. It works beautifully and is very user friendly. The price was extremely reasonable and it paid has already paid for itself with just this one job. This would also be great for scanning forms that need to be completed. Simply scan them,fill in the blanks, then print. Everyone should own this program.

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