Review by Linda Cameron, editor McMUG

Microsoft Office 2004 for Macintosh consists of MS Word, the most widely used word processor for creating rich text documents, Excel, the most commonly used program for spreadsheets, PowerPoint for presentations, Entourage, for E-mail with Contact manager and Calendar, and Messenger to integrate instant messaging into other tasks.

Word, Excel and PowerPoint can be purchased separately, but an advantage to having the whole suite is integration between the applications, such as being able to insert contact information into a Word document from Entourage's Contact database. There are many other tools which can be used interactively between the Office applications, including custom dictionaries and AutoCorrect glossary (my favorite).

The name "Office 2004" gives you a mental picture of what this suite is all about. It was designed so that organizations, for example, can create, share and manage ideas from each program. The ability to share files with Windows users and previous versions of Office is also a big plus.

New in Office 2004

New tools include the Office Project Center, Word Notebook Layout View, and Entourage's junk E-mail protection.

A complete list of Office 2004 features and technical specifications can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office2004/office2004.aspx

The Project Center uses color-coded dots to indicate all documents which are attached to each other, and each item can be attached to as many projects as necessary, a nice feature when working with others and using lots of different types of documents.

The new Scrapbook feature lets you store frequently used blocks of text, logos, and other types of inserts including QuickTime video, and spreadsheets that one would use over and over.

Compatibility Reports is a new feature which can be run before sending documents off to people who are using different platforms. If you know you are sending something to someone who uses Word 97, you can specifically flag any potential compatibility problem and change it before sending it.

Enhanced Unicode Support lets users take advantage of most non-Roman fonts and file naming beyond the 31 character limitation.

Notebook Layout changes the look of your document to what appears to be a lined notebook. It is a good way to take notes during a meeting to outline and organize your thoughts.

Comment Balloons can be used when working on a project with other people. Each individual puts in their opinions here and there about the work in progress. Changes in the Comment balloons can be identified with colour-coding. Ideas can be instantly accepted or rejected or initiate instant messages with MSN Messenger for Mac.

Smart Buttons appear at the end of the pasted text. You can choose whether you want the text to retain its original formatting or match the destination formatting. This feature also helps to find and explain formula errors in Excel and gives control over AutoFill and formatting functions.

Page Layout View is a Mac-first feature. Layout can be changed from portrait to landscape or scaled to fit a desired number of pages, and the user will see all changes happen in real time.

Presenter Tools in PowerPoint display a slide show on one monitor (or an LCD projector) as usual, while your personal monitor (or laptop display) shows a different view-see the next slide, speaker notes, and the elapsed time. Navigation buttons are handy to jump to any slide you want.

PowerPoint 2004 comes with more than 100 new slide templates.

Those who need to run an application that is only available in Windows can purchase the Office 2004 Professional version which comes with Virtual PC 7.

Students and teachers can purchase the Educational version of MS Office 2004 for a much cheaper price. Upgraders from previous versions can get a reduced price as well.

As with the previous version of Office, you can download a "test drive" copy of Office 2004 and try it out for a month. If you are seriously considering buying it but aren't sure it is worth the money, that would be the way to find out. http://www.microsoft.com/mac/default.aspx?pid=office2004td

My personal experience

Many people are longtime users of Word and Excel, especially Word. I assume that those who use Word regularly have little trouble learning the new features. I am one of the odd ones who never used Word and still do not use it regularly. In my case, I have been using plain word processors (like TextEdit) then laying out my document in QuarkXPress or InDesign. That would be overkill for most people, but since I am already using the layout software for the newsletter, it is easier for me to use it for any document I create.

I have had Microsoft Office for Mac since the Office 98 version, because it comes in handy when I need to share documents with other people over the Internet. Many times, I have had friends forward E-mail with attached documents that they could not open-asking me to look at the document and share it with them. Having a copy of Office, I am always able to open the documents and copy and paste the information into an E-mail to send back to the person.

I have a sneaking suspicion that I might need to know better how to use Word one of these days. Already, I have been helping PC users to use Word and my qualifications are only having had a little experience using it on a Mac.

At my part-time job, I use a Mac in a PC shop. Every month, I am given a PC version of a Word document that opens up with TextEdit. TextEdit (Apple's free word processor which replaces SimpleText) opens Word documents as Rich Text, although I also need a printed copy from the PC (which has Word) so that I can see how it was laid out. I then use InDesign to produce a new document. I suggested to my boss that it might be simpler to just get Word for the Mac, but that gave him the idea that I could do the work from a PC and not even have the Mac at all, so now I am keeping my mouth shut.

I don't create a lot of spreadsheets, but again, because it is so compatible with sharing documents with other people, having Excel has been very handy too. Once every couple of months, for example, I get an Excel document sent to me by E-mail from a member of my Toastmasters club. It is the schedule which lists all members of the club, their phone numbers and several columns of tasks assigned to each member for each week's duties. I am able to open the Excel document and with very little effort, get it posted to our club's website where every member can check to see what their assignment is for the week.

I have also used Excel for several other similar tasks. I would like to use Excel with our Mac club's database for printing mailing labels, but so far I have not figured out how to do that, so I continue to print the mailing labels using AppleWorks. From what I know about using MS Office for mailing labels, the Entourage Address Book is used with Word to do mailing labels or envelopes. Apparently, a new feature in Word is that it can have its own Address Book independent of Entourage. There is no way to import data into it that I can see. It appears you have to add contacts manually, one at a time.

The one program I use every day in the Office Suite is Entourage. You may ask what it has that Apple's Mail program doesn't have? The AutoCorrect tool is something Apple's Mail program doesn't have. It saves me a ton of time. The only thing that bothers me is occasionally I have lost my saved entries (for shorthand and typos) and then I end up having to start over by adding them all again. When I have tried to figure out where the AutoCorrect file is located, so that I might back it up regularly, the only thing I have been able to find is a small file called ACL and I don't think it is the one I want to backup. I would like it if Microsoft would have a built-in backup system for any custom dictionaries and shorthand glossaries which could be configured by the user.

I can easily drag my contact information from Entourage into Apple's Address Book, or vice versa. The files become .vcf files. Those files can be dragged and dropped into Address Book, and added to an iPod. My problem is that I originally used NowContact as my address book for many years. When I started using Entourage for my E-mail program, I kept a separate Address Book in it with mostly E-mail addresses and names. Now I wish I had imported my whole NowContact database into Entourage because I have updated info in Entourage that doesn't match what I have in NowContact. With the hundreds of contacts I have, it would be a huge job to go through and get everything corrected. What would be nice-if Entourage would let me create more than one Address Book, I could import from all other address book programs I have. Actually, I can have more than one Address Book with Entourage by Switching Identities. The only problem with that, is if I want to use another Identity's Address Book to do a data merge in Word, it won't recognize that identity. It only recognizes the Identity that was used the first time you Open Word.

As you can see, my personal use of MS Office is limited. Most people who use it depend on it for every day work. I get lots of articles submitted to me for the newsletter in Word format. Both QuarkXPress and InDesign can import them including the rich text or Stylesheets if I want those.

I would say the biggest advantage to having MS Office for a Mac user, is compatibility with just about everyone else in the world. I for one get tired of hearing the old myth that Macs are not compatible. Not only are Macs compatible, but in truth they are more compatible than any other platform if you have the right software.

Microsoft Office 2004 for Macintosh is jam-packed full of powerful features. Most people in an office environment will already be working with some version of MS Office. The newest version makes it all the easier to share work with little fuss.

http://microsoft.com/mac

(c) 2004 Mid-Columbia Macintosh User Group