Product Description

Provides the basics of Office 2008 for Mac for home users and students. Whether your projects are around the house or in the classroom, the reinvented Office 2008 for Mac experience makes it easier than ever to create professional-looking work. Includes: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Entourage.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2 in Software
• Brand: Microsoft
• Model: GZA00006
• Released on: 2008-01-15
• Platforms: Macintosh, Mac OS X
• Format: DVD-Video
• Dimensions: 19.68" h x 19.68" w x 19.68" l, 3.00 pounds

Features

• Streamlined user interface runs natively on both Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs
• Open XML file formats, the Office Art graphics engine, and other features that result in compatibility and file fidelity
• Professional design is within your power with hundreds of new customizable templates and suite-wide themes, SmartArt graphics, and the new Publishing Layout View in Word 2008
• My Day keeps you connected to all of the day's action. Command your calendar, tackle your tasks, and simplify your day
• Includes: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Entourage

Amazon.com
Homework and Home Work will be easier than ever with Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Home and Student Edition. Get better results faster and create high-quality documents you can be proud of, with less frustration and more enjoyment.

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.

Customer Reviews

Easy to Use, Expansive Product Suite
Office 2008 is much what it is advertised to be: it is fast, flashy, and overflowing with ways to get your work done. From installation (which is more like a windows installation) you can pick and choose which products to install - I don't use Entourage, so this review ignores that product - it was very simple to exclude from the installation.
It's hard to escape MS Office these days, and though Apple Pages can save documents in Office readable formats it is a process at every save that you must go through - this isn't a Pages review, but I have used the Apple productivity suites, and I must say I prefer Office 2008 and not just for compatibility issues.
Don't be fooled, there are some problems with Office 2008 - the graphics are very nice and there are numerous views to organize and create Word documents in - the cost is that these graphics do not always work correctly. Problems occur especially when multiple windows are open, and Office reacts strangely to OSX Spaces - the main Word window will shift spaces when cycling through programs, and the toolbox has a strange way of dispersing itself across the Spaces - press f8 to bring up all open spaces and you can quickly locate the fragments of the toolbox and by dragging them, reassemble it - a simple fix that can become time consuming (say if you like using the internet and iTunes in different spaces) and it's something that shouldn't have to be fixed in the first place. In Word the cursor has a way of disappearing after switching Spaces and if it becomes visible again, well lucky you.
Despite these flaws there have been some significant improvements. These are of course similar to those witnessed in Office 2007 for PCs - bright graphics which replicate the menus of yesterday for doing such things as changing the style of your paper, adding word art, charts or virtually anything else you may want to do. These are again replicated in the toolbox - giving users at least three ways of accomplishing the same tasks (menus remain largely intact).
These changes make for a more customizable workspace, and much quicker access to various different functions of Office 2008's various programs. Things that even an experienced user may have once passed over are obvious and easily inserted quickly and without fuss (hyperlinks in Power Point are extremely easy, and provide thumbnails of slides for easily linking slides together). It doesn't just look good, it truly is useful - what really is simply a cosmetic change, is surprisingly helpful.

So - in conclusion Office 2008 works faster, is reliable (never had a crash, always opened documents, works great with other versions of the programs - older versions still open and edit 2008 saved documents), is visually appealing and quickly provides its entire expansive list of features for users. Unfortunately it is completely ignorant of Spaces, and as such may become more of a headache than a blessing for anyone that uses spaces (pretty much at all - changing spaces leads to erratic behavior - writing this review I changed a song in iTunes and literally lost the Word window!).
I would recommend buying Office 2008 - it has a lot of features, it is easy to use and can create some very nice looking documents and presentations. If the spaces get annoying, and you don't use or need all of the features then try Apple's Pages and Front Page - it has a lot to offer, but not quite as many features.

Not a good dollar value.
The primary reason a lot of people buy Office is simply to be compatible with other Office users, but this version _isn't_ very compatible. MS omitted VBA from all the 2008 Mac editions, and the home edition further lacks Exchange Server support (making Entourage pretty much pointless), and the data analysis pack for Excel.

Backward compatibility is not terrific either, and no I'm not talking about the switch to OOXML file formats. I have a number of "legacy" files and templates that were originally created with Office 2000 and XP on Windows. They open fine in Office:mac 2004 and Office 2003 for Windows. The even open with iWork and OpenOffice. They do _not_ open properly with Office 2008 or 2007. (This won't be a surprise to longtime Office users. Swapping files between old and new versions has never been completely painless.)

So with compatibility with other Office users all but removed from the equation, it seems to me there's little reason not to use one of the cheaper, or even free, alternatives to Office. Apple's own iWork is really slick, and costs about half what the Office home edition does. NeoOffice and OpenOffice will keep even power users happy, and they're _free_. By comparison, MS Office is sluggish in operation, and doesn't bring enough to the table to justify its high price.

Office 2008 for Mac
I have been using Office 2004 for Mac for the past few years. I decided to switch to Office 2008 due to compatibility reasons with Vista. 2008 is very similar to 2004, although it does offer some more advanced features. In terms of using applications, most applications have the same or a very similar layout. Although I don't think it is completely necessary to upgrade, I would recommend Office 2008 for Mac anytime. If you are interested in purchasing 2008, I believe there is a video on apple.com that explains all of the new features.