Product Description

Move up to Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Standard Edition and let your ideas take flight. Its groundbreaking new features, created with input from thousands of Mac users, are designed to help you manage, create and share ideas with ease and confidence.

Main Features

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3350 in Software
• Brand: Microsoft
• Model: 731-00996
• Released on: 2004-05-10
• Platform: Mac
• Format: CD-ROM
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .79 pounds

Features

• A productivity suite with a host of ground-breaking new features
• Access e-mail, documents, contacts, and more from one central location
• Take notes, flag information, and record audio directly into documents
• Convenient Excel page-layout view and PowerPoint presenter tools
• Improved junk e-mail protection

Customer Reviews

MS: I'd like to clear something up...
My friend worked with the MS team on this product. So reading some of the reviews, I've noticed quite a few inaccuracies. I personally have no direct connection with Microsoft and not interested in defending its interests much, but I'm against spreading bogus information.
First of all, there is no "3 strikes you are out" rule with the new Office 2004.
Some people seem to claim that Office 2004 can only be installed 3 times, after which user would have to do a clean re-install of the system. This is completely not true. Student and Teacher, Standard and Professional versions of Office 2004 do not have any special write protection and do not count how many times you install the program on your computer. However, license agreement for Standard and Pro versions states that you can only use one copy of software on one (1) desktop and one (1) laptop computer connected to the same network. Program does indeed check computers connected to the same network for opened Office 2004. If any Office 2004 program is opened on a desktop computer that is connected to the local network, it will refuse to launch until program on other computer is closed.
This is a security measure that doesn't affect regular consumers at all most of the time. The only reason for this is to make sure that small and even big businesses do not use one copy of a program on many computers. There is nothing new here either. Many companies have been utilizing similar security features for quite some time.
Student and Teacher edition which retails for a low price has ALL the features of Standard edition and can even be installed on three (3) computers at the same time.
The down side to it is that Student & Teacher edition cannot be upgraded in the future. But again, is not a big deal since upgrade for Standard version still costs more than full S&T edition. And of course, one must be a student or a teacher to purchase it.

I would recommend upgrading to the Office 2004 for many reasons. Not only you get a more stable programs now but also many new features like advanced Power Point timers, advanced printing themes and previews, audio note taking, a better option grouping and support for long file names, and many more. Most operations now also work faster and smoother.

Just like any new program, of course, Office 2004 will have a fair share of bugs, but they will be taken care of in a timely manner.

My Recommendation: Professional edition is a great buy for those who want to get Virtual PC 7.0 (included), as a VPC7 will retail for over half the price of the Office 2004.

If you are not sure about Office 2004 and would like to take it for a test drive, go to microsoft.com and download a "test drive" version. Try it out for yourself.

Hope this helps.

Some interesting improvements - but keep your Office v.X Entourage
Though there are improvement to the other programs, you'll want to keep your Entourage from the previous Office v.X version. The Office 2004 version of Entourage is more full of bugs than a bug-zapper on a Summer Sunday... during a picnic... at dusk... near a stagnant pond. You get the idea.

Try to get your email, get an error. Try to print your email, get an error. Tell it to refresh, get an error. In all honesty, I haven't found an Entourage 2004 command yet that doesn't seem to resullt in some kind of error.

The reason I'm still giving this three stars is my Excel and Word portions are responding faster and with greater ease than previously. Also, the fact that the standard installation does not include the whole-sale deletion of the previous version was the saving grace that still lets me get my email with the old Entourage. So kudos, because though the Office 2004 Standard Upgrade did put me up a river Entourage-wise, it did not leave me without a paddle.

Cleaning up some confusion
In Office 2004, Microsoft continues to support most Palm handheld devices. However, one common situation Microsoft has seen is that people upgrading from Office X to Office 2004 do not install the Office 2004 Handheld Sync software (which is found in the Additional Tools folder). Failure to do so results in sync failure.

That said, Office 2004 Handheld Sync does not fully support the Palm Tungsten T3 or E [it is incorrect to say that it does not support any Tungsten T - it does!]. To enable sync with those devices, the user needs to go to the Conduit Settings and enable syncing capability with those devices. There are possible issues when this capability is enabled - and all of this is clearly documented in the read me that is installed when you install the Office 2004 Handheld Sync.