Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac

Microsoft office 2008 for Mac is the most recent version of the Microsoft Office productivity for suite for Mac OS X. It supersedes Office 2004 for Mac and is the Macintosh equivalent of office 2007, the latest version for Windows. It was developed by Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit and released on January 15, 2008.

Office 2008 for Mac was originally slated for release in the second half of 2007; however it was delayed until January 2008, citing the need to fix lingering bugs. Office 2008 is the first version of Office for Mac supplied as a Universal Binary.

Unlike Office 2007 for Windows, Office 2008 was not offered as a public beta before its scheduled release date.

Features

Office 2008 for Mac includes the same core programs currently included with Office 2004 for Mac: Entourage, Excel, PowerPoint and Word.

Mac-only features included are a publishing layout view, which offers functionality similar to Microsoft Publisher for Windows, a "Ledger Sheet mode" in Excel to ease financial tasks, and a "My Day" application offering a quick way to view the day's events.

Office 2008 supports the new Office Open XML format, and defaults to saving all files in this format. On February 21, 2008 Geoff Price revealed that the format conversion update for Office 2004 would be delayed until June 2008 in order to provide the first update to Office 2008.

Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications is not supported in this version. As a result such Excel add-ins as solver, which are dependent on VBA, were not bundled in this latest release. Excel in Office 2008 for the Mac also still lacks Pivot Chart functionality, which has long been a feature in the Windows version. Microsoft has announced that VBA will be making a return in the next version of Microsoft Office for Mac. AppleScript and the Open Scripting Architecture is, however, supported.

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What is an Office Community?

If you are unfamiliar with the ins and outs of conversing with others over the Internet, don't worry. Once you take the plunge and join in, you'll find that working with discussion groups is not as difficult as you might think.

An Office Community is an online forum where you can interact with fellow Office users, get your questions answered, share ideas, and learn more about the Office products and technologies that interest you. This interaction with fellow Office users takes place in discussion groups (also known as newsgroups).

A discussion group is a place on the Internet where people interact by posting and reading messages about topics that are of interest to them and the rest of a community. Discussion groups in the Office Communities are organized by Office program, such as the Outlook New Users discussion group. Each discussion group contains a number of discussion threads, each of which contains a series of related messages. Each individual message either responds to an earlier message, or addresses the overall discussion group topic in some way. In contrast to e-mail messages that are sent to specific individuals and visible only to them, messages posted in a discussion group are visible and available to anyone and everyone.

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Collaboration features of Office 2007

SharePoint

Microsoft Office 2007 includes features geared towards collaboration and data sharing. As such, Microsoft Office 2007 features server components for applications such as Excel, which work in conjunction with SharePoint Services, to provide a collaboration platform. SharePoint works with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, which is used to host a SharePoint site, and uses IIS and ASP.NET 2.0. Excel server exposes Excel Services, which allows any worksheet to be created, edited and maintained via web browsers. It features Excel Web Access, the client-side component which is used to render the worksheet on a browser, Excel Calculation Service which is the server side component which populates the worksheet with data and perform calculations, and Excel Web Service that exposes Excel functionalities as individual web services. SharePoint can also be used to host Word documents for collaborative editing, by sharing a document. SharePoint can also be used to hold PowerPoint slides in a Slide Library, from which the slides can be used as a formatting template. It will also notify users of a slide automatically in case the source slide is modified. Also by using SharePoint, PowerPoint can manage shared review of presentations. Any SharePoint hosted document can be accessed from the application which created the document or from other applications such as a browser or Microsoft Office Outlook.

Groove

Microsoft Office Groove 2007

Microsoft Office 2007 also includes Groove, which brings collaborative features to a peer-to-peer paradigm. Groove can host documents, including presentations, workbooks and others, created in Microsoft Office 2007 application in a shared workspace, which can then be used in collaborative editing of documents. Groove can also be used in managing workspace sessions, including access control of the workspace. To collaborate on one or more documents, a Workspace has to be created, and then those who are to work on it have to be invited. Any file shared on the workspace are automatically shared among all participants. The application also provides real-time messaging, including one-to-one as well as group messaging, and presence features, as well as monitoring workspace activities with alerts, which are raised when pre-defined set of activities are detected. Groove also provides features for conflict resolution for conflicting edits. Schedules for a collaboration can also be decided by using a built-in shared calendar, which can also be used to keep track of the progress of a project. However, the calendar is not compatible with Microsoft Outlook.

Themes and Quick Styles

Microsoft Office 2007 places more emphasis on Document Themes and Quick Styles. The Document Theme defines the colors, fonts and graphic effects for a document. Almost everything that can be inserted into a document is automatically styled to match the overall document theme creating a consistent document design. The new Office Theme file format (.THMX) is shared between Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook email messages. Similar themes are also available for data reports in Access and Project or shapes in Visio. Quick Styles are galleries with a range of styles based on the current theme. There are quick styles galleries for text, tables, charts, SmartArt, WordArt and more. The style range goes from simple/light to more graphical/darker.

File formats of Office 2007

Office Open XML

Microsoft Office uses a new file format, called Office Open XML, as the default file format. Word documents (without macro extensions) are now saved using a .docx extension rather than the traditional .doc extension. Word 2007 can also save documents in the old format which is compatible with previous versions of Word. In addition, Microsoft has made available a free add-on known as the "Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack" that lets Office 2000-2003 editions open, edit, and save documents created under the new 2007 format.

Office Open XML is based on XML and uses the ZIP file container. According to Microsoft, documents created in this format are up to 75% smaller than the same documents saved with previous Microsoft Office file formats, owing to data compression.[18] Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office PowerPoint also use the new OOXML file formats. Word files containing macros are saved with the extension .docm.

PDF

Microsoft had initially announced that it will support exporting to Portable Document Format (PDF) in Office 2007. However, due to legal objections from Adobe Systems, Office 2007 does not have PDF support out of the box, but offers it rather as a separate free download

XPS

Office 2007 documents can also be exported as XPS documents; via another free plug-in that is also a separate download.

Open Document

Microsoft backs an open-source effort to support Open Document in Office 2007, as well as earlier versions (up to Office 2000), through a converter add-in for Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and also a command-line utility.[21] As of 2008, the project supports conversion between ODF and Office Open XML file formats for all three applications.

User assistance system

In Microsoft Office 2007, the Office Assistants have been completely removed because of the much-improved help system. One feature of the new help system is the extensive use of Super Tooltips which explains in about one paragraph what each function performs. Some of them also use diagrams or pictures. These appear and disappear like normal tooltips, and replace normal tooltips in many areas. The Help content also directly integrates searching and viewing Office Online articles.

New Feature of Office 2007

User interface

The new user interface (UI), officially known as Microsoft Office Fluent, has been implemented in the core Microsoft Office applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and in the item inspector used to create or edit individual items in Outlook. These applications have been selected for the UI overhaul because they center around document authoring. The rest of the applications in the suite will also be upgraded to the new UI in subsequent versions. The default font used in this edition is Calibri. Original prototypes of the new user interface were revealed at MIX 2008 in Las Vegas

Office button

The Office 2007 button, located on the top-left of the window, replaces the File menu and provides access to functionality common across all Office applications, including but not limited to opening, saving, printing, and sharing a file. It can also close the application. Users can also choose color schemes for the interface.

Ribbon

The Ribbon, a panel that houses the command buttons and icons, organizes commands as a set of Tabs, each grouping relevant commands. Each application has a different set of tabs which expose the functionality that application offers. For example, while Excel has a tab for the Graphing capabilities, Word does not feature the same; instead it has tabs to control the formatting of a text document. Within each tab, various related options may be grouped together. The Ribbon is designed to make the features of the application more discoverable and accessible with fewer mouse clicks. as compared to the menu-based UI used until Office 2007. It is not possible to remove the Ribbon, modify it, or replace it with menus with the normal Office 2007 functions. However, the Ribbon can be minimized simply by double clicking the active section's title, e.g the Home text in the picture below. There are third party add-ons that can bring menus to Office 2007.

Contextual Tabs

Some tabs, called Contextual Tabs, appear only when certain objects are selected. Contextual Tabs expose functionality specific only to the object with focus. For example, selecting a picture brings up the Pictures tab, which presents options for dealing with the picture. Similarly, focusing on a table exposes table-related options in a specific tab. Contextual Tabs remain hidden when the object it works on are not selected.

Live Preview

Microsoft Office 2007 also introduces a feature called "Live Preview", which temporarily applies formatting on the focused text or object when any formatting button is moused-over. The temporary formatting is removed when the mouse pointer is moved from the button. This allows users to have a preview of how the option would affect the appearance of the object, without actually applying it.

Mini Toolbar

The new "Mini Toolbar" is a type of context menu that is automatically shown (by default) when text is selected. The purpose of this feature is to provide easy access to the most-used formatting commands without requiring a right-mouse-button click, as was necessary in older versions of the software. Because the Mini Toolbar is automatically displayed, it remains semi-transparent until the mouse pointer is situated on the control in order to allow an almost-unobstructed view of what is beneath it. It also appears above the right-click menu when a user right-clicks on a selection of words. The Mini Toolbar is currently not customizable.

Quick Access Toolbar

The Quick Access toolbar, which sits in the title bar, serves as a repository of most used functions, regardless of which application is being used, such as save, undo/redo and print. The Quick Access toolbar is fully customizable similar to toolbars in previous Office versions. Any command available in the entire Office application can be added to the Quick Access toolbar, including commands not available in the Ribbon and macros. Keyboard shortcuts for any of the commands on the toolbar are also fully customizable, similar to previous Office versions.

I have to sketch out the details once again before this Monday for a official presentation. But then what i want to share here with you is my experience of sharing the Microsoft office support and providing Computer Help

Microsoft Office Version Compatibility

Latest versions for platforms

• Windows NT 3.51-Office 97
• Windows 95-Office 2000
• Windows NT4/98/ME-Office XP
• Windows 2000-Office 2003
• Windows XP/2003/Vista/Home Server/2008-Office 2007
• Mac OS 7.5-8.0-Office 98
• Mac OS 8.1-9-Office 2001
• Mac OS 10.1-Office X
• Mac OS 10.2-10.3-Office 2004
• Mac OS 10.4-10.5-Office 2008

Windows

Beginning in 2002, Microsoft instituted a policy of Support Lifecycles including: Earlier versions than Office 97 (including Outlook 97) are no longer supported.

• Office 97 (including Outlook 98) – Mainstream hotfix support ended on August 31, 2001. Extended hotfix support ended on February 28, 2002. Assisted support ended on January 16, 2004.
• Office 2000 – Mainstream support ended June 30, 2004. Extended support will end on July 14, 2009.
• Office XP – Mainstream support ended July 11, 2006. Extended support will end on July 12, 2011.
• Office 2003 - Mainstream support will end on April 14, 2009. Extended support will end on April 8, 2014.
• Office 2007 - Mainstream support will end on April 10, 2012. Extended support will end on April 11, 2017.
• Current and future versions - Mainstream support will end 5 years after release, or 2 years after the next release, whichever time is later, and extended support will end 5 years after that.

I have to sketch out the details once again before this Monday for a official presentation. But then what i want to share here with you is my experience of sharing the Microsoft Office and providing computer Help

Discontinued applications and features

• Microsoft Binder – Incorporates several documents into one file and was originally designed as a container system for storing related documents in a single file. The complexity of use and learning curve led to little usage and was removed from releases after Office 2000.
• Microsoft FrontPage – Web design software (also requires its own server program for some functionality). Offered only as a stand-alone program for the 2003 version. In 2006, Microsoft announced that this was to be discontinued and to be replaced by two different software packages: Microsoft SharePoint Designer and Microsoft Expression Web.
• Microsoft Mail – Mail client (in old versions of Office, later replaced by Microsoft Schedule Plus and subsequently Microsoft Outlook).
• Microsoft PhotoDraw – A graphics program that was first released as part of the Office 2000 Premium Edition. A later version for Windows XP compatibility was released, known as PhotoDraw 2000 Version 2. Microsoft discontinued the program in 2001.
• Microsoft Photo Editor – Photo-editing/raster-graphics software in older Office versions up to Office XP. It was supplemented by Microsoft PhotoDraw in Office 2000 Premium edition.
• Microsoft Schedule Plus – Released with Office 95. It featured a planner, to-do list, and contact information. Its functions were incorporated into Microsoft Outlook.
• Microsoft Virtual PC – Included with Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2004. Obsolete from 2006 onward due to new Macs possessing the same Intel architecture as Windows PCs. It emulated a standard PC and its hardware.
• Microsoft Vizact 2000 – A program that "activated" documents using HTML, adding effects such as animation. It allows users to create dynamic documents for the Web. Development has ended due to unpopularity.
• Microsoft Data Analyzer 2002 – A business intelligence program for graphical visualization of data and its analysis.
• Office Assistant, included since 1997 as a part of Microsoft Agent technology, is a system that uses animated characters to offer unrequested context-sensitive suggestions to users and access to relevant parts of the help system. The Assistant is often dubbed "Clippy" or "Clippit," due to its default to a paper clip character, coded as CLIPPIT.ACS. The Office Assistant was hidden by default in Office XP and following mixed public response, not installed by default in Office 2003. It has been removed entirely in Office 2007.