Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Home & Student Edition [Old Version]

by Microsoft

Product 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

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B000X86ZAS
• Item model number: 45426G
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 15, 2007
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (647 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #75 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #6 in Software > Business & Office > Business & Office Management Software
  • #14 in Software > The Mac Software Store

Product Description

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.

Five Great Reasons to Get Office 2008 for Mac Home and Student Edition: Universal applications: Office 2008 runs natively on both Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs. Intuitive interface: Reduce the time and frustration of learning new software and creating documents with visual galleries that present the right tools when you need them. Your Mac, more compatible: Office 2008 for Mac and Windows-based 2007 Office products share the Open XML file formats and features like the Office Art graphics engine, so you'll be confident when sharing documents with colleagues, friends, and family across platforms. Beautiful documents: Good design is a click away with hundreds of new templates, Smart Art graphics, Publishing Layout View, and professional quality clip art and photos. Priced for home users: Don't need Microsoft Exchange Server Support or workflow management? Home and student users pay for just the features they need. Office 2008 for Mac Home and Student Edition comes with three licenses of non-Exchange-enabled Office 2008 licensed for noncommercial computers. Which Version of Office 2008 is right for you? View this comparison chart.

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.

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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

278 of 284 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars This Version of Office Behaves as if it Were a Beta, January 22, 2008

By 

C. Fuller "foolish scholar" (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Home & Student Edition [Old Version] (Software)

This version of Office 2008 is an improvement over Office 2004 in that it runs natively now on an Intel Mac. It is a major improvement in speed. And the stability has improved in that it has not crashed on me in the week it has been in use. Office 2004 used to crash almost daily before. If you do not have an Intel Mac do not bother with this upgrade. You are better off with Office 2004.

The look on Office 2008 is aesthetically pleasing and is more consistent with the elegant look of OSX.

That is about the best I have to say for this new upgrade. Word is so buggy I feel like I am working with a Beta version. I work a great deal with Spaces in Leopard and I have found that Word documents will jump to other windows. I have also found that when working in the notebook layout it can become unstable and partially disappear on me. The work arounds I have been using to stop this is I minimize the documents or I open another program in the Spaces window and then return to the document.

Word is still an excellent word processing program. The Notebook layout is essential for the note taking that I have to do, which other word processing programs don't have. Since I have to share documents with others it is handy to have a standard program with which to work.

The default format in Word is now Microsoft's .docx (xtml), which can be changed in the preferences to the more universal .doc.

When I have gone to the Microsoft website they have admitted that many of these problems are bugs and that they are being addressed. Another work around that MS recommended in Word was to create a new template from which to operate as it seems that the present template can be easily corrupted.

Since Office 2008 no longer works with macros and Visual Basic I have had to abandon the Excel self-calculating Invoice template I used to use all the way back to my PC days. I am now using a template that is in Pages - that works beautifully. The reason I am sticking with Excel over Numbers is that Excel is still a more powerful program. It keeps track of things that Numbers won't keep track of.

I am happier that Entourage is now more stable and responds better than the 2004 version. The My Day widget is a nice idea, but there is almost no room for customization and really makes no difference to how I organize my day.

I am left wondering if Microsoft is planning to go out of business. It seems that their products are getting worse. It is as if they have become bereft of any sense of creativity or innovation.;0) I had read that Office 2008 was designed by Mac enthusiasts. I think that was Microsoft propaganda. The impression I get is that Microsoft does not care about Mac business.

Is this a worthwhile upgrade? Not yet. If you can wait for the bugs to be worked out it will be a more satisfying upgrade. If you are dependent upon Visual Basic, or are operating on a PPC, save your money.

649 of 673 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Few steps forward, few steps back, and some lack of changes, January 20, 2008

By 

Values Privacy "vdch" - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Home & Student Edition [Old Version] (Software)

I was running office 2004 and waiting for this. This review is limited but I was looking for specific things.

The good:
-universal binary (faster on intel macs)
-PowerPoint now shows the slides on the left instead of just the text outline.
-you can install it alongside office 2004 and run both versions on the same computer

The bad:
-dragging images from other apps doesn't work anymore
-when you paste an image in word or PowerPoint, it gets converted to a different format so that if you put it back to the original app it's a simple picture instead of an editable one. (for example if you make an illustration in OmniGraffle, paste it in word 2008, you come back a week later and decide you want to tweak it, you can no longer copy the image back to OmniGraffle and edit it. You either must have saved the original or start over. Office 2004 didn't do this and so sadly I'm more productive with office 2004).
-installation is not drag and drop anymore and it installs things like silverlight without asking you. I feel my Mac got dirty now with who knows what installed where.

What didn't change
-you still can't generate motion paths in PowerPoint (to move objects around on a slide) like you can in the PC version since a few versions ago. But you can play this back fine if you generated the PowerPoint on a PC.

Conclusion
-intentionally crippled.
-a step backward for me as I want to use it for lectures in my class but now I'm afraid to because I have hundreds of diagrams and illustrations that now will be locked in PowerPoint.
-I'm going to completely use Keynote/Pages (iWork) from now on. Unfortunately some 3rd party apps require Office so I'm stuck with it. And it doesn't have all the features yet of Office.
-Unfortunately OpenOffice/NeoOffice exhibit the same image formating problem and they have their own issues.

Disappointing.

EDIT:
I have since reformatted my computer and sold Office to a Colleague who needed it. Good Riddance. So long Microsoft.

EDIT #2:
To add a hopeful note, I discovered Nisus Pro word processor. It does (technical writing) things Pages doesn't (e.g. index) and seems better than MS Word.

EDIT #3 (Oct 2009)
I'm doing fine without MS Office for a long time now. For very math heavy documents I use Lyx (free, little complicated to start but worth it). For casual word processing, I use Pages or Nisus or openoffice (typically one of these will open a doc or docx file correctly). I use Keynote for presentations with LaTeXiT (free) for math equations. And Numbers or openoffice has been adequate for spreadsheets. Since the new OS (snow leopard) has built in exchange support (which this version of office doesn't), there is nothing lacking.

195 of 201 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Just keep it off your machine until they decide to make the "beta" a real product., February 17, 2008

By 

Darcy (Billings, MT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Home & Student Edition [Old Version] (Software)

I just bought a MacBook Pro 15". I love it. I am an Attorney and so I was concerned about making sure everything I produce on this machine is compatible with microsoft documents and programs. I bought the Macbook Pro because I didn't want to deal with Vista and because I am over microsoft in general --hot fixes, service packs, all sorts of SLOP work...and then this most recent and astounding inability to produce a stable product. Anyway, it was a big deal for me to buy a Macbook Pro rather than a Toshiba with Vista preloaded..I digress.

THE PROBLEM: I loaded microsoft Office for Mac, 2008 Home and Student Edition with hopes of using it. I shortly found that COMMON fonts do not transfer in Word, Excel does not work as smoothly and then I received a "Welcome to Entourage" email from microsoft that literally overwrote a weeks worth of emails. Poof! all gone! (gratefully I only had a weeks worth before my welcome email) I called microsoft to ask if there was a way to unwrite the overwritten and was promptly told that I need to establish a "case number" before they could process my inquiry. A Case number? good grief---A CASE NUMBER. Is it that bad? Yes, I could see how many companies may want to sue microsoft for all kinds of things right now. Anyway, I promptly uninstalled Office for Mac 2008 and I will return it. Maybe microsoft will decide to fix this BETA, surely we can expect microsoft to service pack/ hot fix this product to death and then MAYBE in six months at least something as minor as the default settings will coincide with the real world.

THE SOLUTION: I partitioned the hard drive on my macbook, installed WINDOWS XP and loaded my copy of 2003 Office Suite. Everything is perfect now. I get to have the very best laptop in the world and all this great functioning apple software (If you haven't made the switch---you will love Apple --it's so clean). I can create documents (because I must) THAT DON'T CRASH on the other side of my mac HD (the dark side). It's like having two computers in one; the preferred being the Apple. Why can't Apple make microsoft Office? (yes I really do know why).

THE FUTURE: Will I ever install a microsoft product onto the mac side of my HD again? --Not until mircosoft decides to come clean and deliver a product that isn't messed up. Who do these people think they are? How long do they think we'll just take it? Well, this time I didn't take it, instead---- I took it back.