Excel on a Mac?

[shades]

Just saw this thread. I had helped a little with Starl on a couple of projects converting Win Excel to Mac Excel 2004. Not fun as she mentioned. I am a die-hard Mac user, but when I was in corporate life (Fortune 50), there was no comparison, Win Excel was far better (XL 2003 was the standard we had).

But apart from Excel, I prefer Mac programs. I have a Macbook Pro 15" laptop with the multi-finger touchpad which allows multi-button capabilities, but when at home I use a four-button Kensington trackball. So the "single button" is never an issue. But even with my eMac and a single button mouse, you can get the right-click combo in two ways: CTRL + Click, or hold the mouse button down for 1-2 seconds and the menu appears.

 

[Mark O'Brien]

OK so I found this thread by searching for "Office 2008". I've not been around much recently.

My question on this thread, having read it is this:

My wife, bless her, wants to install some version of Office on our Mac. (a Mac incidentally that just had a $650 price drop four months after we purchased it, bastards, but it does only weigh 3 pounds) My wife has decided that Mac OpenOffice is not working out for her.

I have read nothing but negativity on this thread about Office 2004/2008. I have also tried 2008 in the Apple store and it does kind of suck. I am pretty sure that I have a spare license for Office XP or 2003 at home. Would I be better served to purchase something like "Parallels" and go with my Windows Office, or should I suck it up and purchase Office 2008?

I would say that money is not to be considered here, but then someone would suggest that I purchase a Windows machine. Reasonably, I don't mind spending money on Office. I just want to get something that will not drive both of us crazy.

 

[arkusM]

OK so I found this thread by searching for "Office 2008". I've not been around much recently.

My question on this thread, having read it is this:

My wife, bless her, wants to install some version of Office on our Mac. (a Mac incidentally that just had a $650 price drop four months after we purchased it, bastards, but it does only weigh 3 pounds) My wife has decided that Mac OpenOffice is not working out for her.

I have read nothing but negativity on this thread about Office 2004/2008. I have also tried 2008 in the Apple store and it does kind of suck. I am pretty sure that I have a spare license for Office XP or 2003 at home. Would I be better served to purchase something like "Parallels" and go with my Windows Office, or should I suck it up and purchase Office 2008?

I would say that money is not to be considered here, but then someone would suggest that I purchase a Windows machine. Reasonably, I don't mind spending money on Office. I just want to get something that will not drive both of us crazy.

If you want to seamlessly go from work-to-home my vote would be use a windows emulator. If you don't use Excel a ton at work then go with the Mac version. The fairly different interface is very annoying IMO. I have no issue with Word as I don't use 99% of its bloat, er, I mean features...

(An aside,from what I hear Vista runs better on a Mac than a most windows boxes)

 

[RoryA]

For most things, I find Office 2004 works just fine. Office 2008 I use occasionally for printing out some labels, but I can't live without VBA in Excel so that never gets loaded.
If you plan to do a lot of heavy duty stuff in Office, then I'd probably go for some sort of VM/Parallels solution. If money's no object, put it on one of those Xeon-powered G3 monsters!

 

[Mark O'Brien]

The fairly different interface is very annoying IMO.

The Mac interface is one of my peeves.

For most things, I find Office 2004 works just fine. Office 2008 I use occasionally for printing out some labels, but I can't live without VBA in Excel so that never gets loaded.

I have been known to use VBA from time to time. My wife doesn't seem to think that this fact is important enough to not buy Office 2008. Maybe I should do both, VM with Office XP and buy Office 2008.

PS. I can't believe that Nathan would misuse the term "PC" in a poll. Jeez!

 

[Mark O'Brien]

I snapped, Amazon.com's deal of the day was Office 2008 Special Media Edition for $100. It was too good of a deal to pass up. I'm weak for sales.

 

[arkusM]

I snapped, Amazon.com's deal of the day was Office 2008 Special Media Edition for $100. It was too good of a deal to pass up. I'm weak for sales.

That was easy!

 

[Mark O'Brien]

That was easy!

Tell me about it. I'll be talking about my Omaha Steaks addiction next.

 

[Jay3]

Hi Everyone,

I notice this discussion thread is quite old. I've just down loaded a trail of Office for Mac 2011 and it's a vast improvement from 2004.

It looks a lot more like office 2007 on my PC in work.......I hated the floating tool bars in the 2004 version.

I was just wondering if anyone else has used it as I'm just trying to decide whether to purchase it outright.

Also can anyone comment on the VBA capability on Excel for Mac 2011.

I want to be able to move away from having to use Windows completely if possible. As having to reboot each time to use boot-camp is irritating and I find too slow.

Thanks all.

 

[RoryA]

I quite like 2011. It's not as good as 2010 on Windows (VBA performance and performance generally don't seem on a par) but it's better than 2004 and infinitely better than 2008.

BTW, rather than boot camp, if you have a reasonably well specified mac, you might want to look at virtual machines.