Re: Will Templates/Documents Created In Word X For Mac Function In Word 08

Hi Dave:

Sorry, Tiger is a little preoccupied hunting that elusive fifth green jacket
this weekend. You will have to make do with us.

But yes, the MVPs in this group are indeed at "world standard" in their
software of expertise :-) Except me, of course. I'm just a grumpy old
fart!!

The only major new feature in Office 2008 is the new XML-based file encoding
format. That is about a quarter the size of the old .doc format, and it is
much, much more rugged.

Because the file format is much more rugged, you can push Word harder and
closer to its limits. Master Documents, for example, are useable at last.

However, the major change in Word 2008 is that a large number of the
features power users rely on are now missing entirely. The new features
that are there are not, in my opinion, useful. Good for entertaining the
easily-impressed, but otherwise a waste of developer resources :-)

A lot depends on what you want to do: but given that in a corporate or
work-related setting Office 2008 won't do as much as Office X, and it is
also very unstable, I would be inclined to sit and wait for the next
version. The Office Compatibility Pack is a free download that will enable
you to read and write the new formats in Office X or 2004. So you can
afford to just wait :-)

Cheers


On 8/04/08 5:41 AM, in article ee97408.6@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
"VayaconDave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <VayaconDave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Thanks, again, John

Your info combined with Bob's has certainly made things crystal clear! Please
allow me to say I'm somewhat astounded how easy it is to get help in the world
of Word. Between this site and the associated MVP site, I feel like a guy who
wanted to learn how to hit out of a sand trap, and could casually find out how
to do it with a few online questions that would be answered by Tiger and his
other golf peers (if he has any!).

I'll either buy that new Mac and wait for the MS Service Pack 12.1 as you
suggested, or buy the new Mac and keep using my current computer for job/Word
purposes until most bugs and fixes are in place (to be confirmed from these
websites!). I'm not sure going to O8 for Mac would even give me any major new
feature benefits (? - subtly sneaking in a new Q. w/o a new post ;-), so I may
just cruise along with version X until I make the dynamic leap into the
future.

Thanks again for everything, and hope to see you on my next posting,

Dave Kaufmann

Hi Dave:

I believe you will be OK in Word 2008 with those templates, assuming that
they do not contain any VBA.

Office 2008 was designed and tested in OS 10.4. Obviously, they did their
best to allow for what they *thought* would be in OS 10.5. But they did not
have time to test it significantly. And they got some very nasty surprises.

Consequently, Office 2008 is currently a disaster area in OS 10.5.2. Not
just buggy, for some users, it's almost unusable. But it runs OK in OS 10.4
:-)

Microsoft is working hard to fix it. But they haven't done so yet. Bob's
advice is very pertinent: he hasn't gone above the base level of OS 10.5,
and that was the last version available to Microsoft when they did Office
2008 development and testing. As you can imagine, Bob is getting better
results than the people who blindly updated to OS 10.5.2 in a gigantic leap
of misplaced faith in computer companies :-)

I think your templates will be OK. I think you're safe enough to go up to
Office 2008, and it will run well enough for simple stuff.

If you do not take the OS above 10.4 it will run quite well (it does
here...).

But take it up to OS 10.5.2 before Service Pack 12.1 is released, and the
wheels will fall off with a hell of a bang.

I have no idea how close Service Pack 12.1 is: my guess is June/July.

Hope this helps

On 5/04/08 11:07 AM, in article ee97408.4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
"VayaconDave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" wrote:

&gt; Hello John - I may have responded to your response without hitting
'reply to
&gt; this message'. I'm new to blog posting, so please bare with me.
&gt; Dave (Please see my response in the thread if you haven't already.)
&gt;
&gt;&gt; Hi Dave:
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; I would imagine you will be safe enough to upgrade those templates
and
&gt;&gt; documents to Word 2008.
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; The answer is critically dependent upon what is IN the templates :-)
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; If you want to wait a little longer, there will be a Test Drive
version of
&gt;&gt; Office 2008 that you can download.
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; You will then have 30 days to try it out to make sure, before you
spend any
&gt;&gt; money.
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; Don't upgrade your Operating System if you can avoid it: Word 2008
is
&gt;&gt; currently very, very sick on OS 10.5.
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; Cheers
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; On 3/04/08 2:46 PM, in article ee97408.-1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
&gt;&gt; "VayaconDave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" wrote:
&gt;&gt;
&gt;&gt; &gt; Version: v.X
&gt;&gt; &gt; Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
&gt;&gt; &gt; Processor: Power PC
&gt;&gt; &gt;
&gt;&gt; &gt; Hello,
&gt;&gt; &gt;
&gt;&gt; &gt; I've created templates and a long document in Word X For Mac -
Service
&gt;&gt; Release
&gt;&gt; &gt; 1 (1983-2001). The templates were creat

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:john@xxxxxxxxxxx

.

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