The 2008 Microsoft® Office for Mac® is the Mac OS® X equivalent of Microsoft Office 2007, both catering to the latest operating systems from their respective makers. It is, in simple words, the Microsoft® Office productivity suite for Mac OS® X. Released in the early part of 2008, it has been developed by Macintosh Business Unit and has the same core programs which are included in with Microsoft® Office 2004 for Mac® like Microsoft® Entourage, Microsoft® Excel®, Microsoft® PowerPoint®, and Microsoft® Word.
Features
- Although both the Microsoft Office of both the operating systems run parallel to one another, there are some customized features which have been devised only for Mac®. This include a publishing layout view, offering the same features as that in Microsoft® for Windows. In order to make financial issues a lot easier, there is also the provision of a “Ledger Sheet mode” in Microsoft® Excel® with a unique “My Day” application providing a faster way to view the day’s events.
- The 2008 Microsoft® Office for Mac® also supports the fresh Office Open XML format, and defaults to saving all files in this format. However, a drawback is in the form of the Microsoft® Visual Basic® for Applications which is not supported in this version. Because of this Microsoft® Excel®, add-ins dependent on VBA, such as Solver, have not been packaged with this release.
- Microsoft® Excel® 2008 does not have some functionalities such as Pivot Chart functionality. This feature had long been embedded in the Windows® version. There were streaks of positivism when Microsoft® declared that VBA is set to make a comeback in the next version of Microsoft® Office for Mac®. But then applications like AppleScript® and the Open Scripting Architecture is supported.
