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Microsoft Office X for Mac Upgrade

Microsoft Office X for Mac Upgrade

List Price: $239.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Quite Simply, Extraordinary Software.
Review: As a long-time user of both Windows and Apple software products, I can honestly say that this software package hands down, is the most elegant, intuitive, user-friendly, bug-free piece of software I have ever owned.

And for users of both systems, it is a dream to go back and forth between Windows and the Mac. There is no conversions, etc, as in the past, the files just open and work as if the file had been created on the native system.

Note that all of the software in this suite - Word, Excel, Powerpoint and especially Entourage (Outlook in Windows) are far superior to the Windows products. And once you start using them, you won't want to go back to the Windows versions.

Congrats to the Macintosh team at Microsoft for one of the most refreshing pieces of software in years, and of course congrats to the Apple OS X team that made this possible as well.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Better than its Windows Counterpart
Review: I am forced to use a Windows PC at work and use MS Office every day. I hate this term, but I would fall into the "power user" classification. I have a Mac with OS X at home, and working from home often, I use the OS X version of Office. I can say without hesitation that the OS X version is superior. With this limited space let me just say that there are no issues sharing documents. I am constantly building spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations, and Word docs at home and sending them to colleagues and customers with no issues. They never even know I am on a Mac. The Mac version is more intuitive and looks better as well. If you want a deep discussion of the features, see the details on Apple's web site.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Better than its Windows Counterpart
Review: I am forced to use a Windows PC at work and use MS Office every day. I hate this term, but I would fall into the "power user" classification. I have a Mac with OS X at home, and working from home often, I use the OS X version of Office. I can say without hesitation that the OS X version is superior. With this limited space let me just say that there are no issues sharing documents. I am constantly building spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations, and Word docs at home and sending them to colleagues and customers with no issues. They never even know I am on a Mac. The Mac version is more intuitive and looks better as well. If you want a deep discussion of the features, see the details on Apple's web site.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Pretty much an essential purchase
Review: I recently upgraded from Mac Classic (9.2.x) to OS X Jaguar. That was a story in and of itself. There was a major bump along the way for me there. However, now that it's done, I'm quite happy. OS X Jaguar is great. Best OS ever in my opinion. Fast, stable, feature-rich.

So, now that I've got an OS, I need office apps. I work at home mostly; and the people I work with all use Windows XP in the office.

Whatever your/my opinions about MS Word, Excel, and Powerpoint might be as standalone applications hardly matters these days. The facts are that they have become the de facto office app standards.

I'm happy to say that the Office X versions of these apps are just fine. All the functionality is there. They have been updated to take advantage of some of the cool new features of OS X. And, they have proven to be remarkably stable in my opinion. I've had no crashes at all to speak of.

Most importantly for me, they provide seamless file-sharing with other folks using other systems. I regularly exchange Word, Excel and Powerpoint files with colleagues (via email and our company network) using Windows-based systems without a hitch!

Despite some initial grief from our IT staff about me using a Mac; I've proven to them all that there is absolutely no reason not to. The fact that Microsoft has made these office app file formats stable and sharable across platforms has made my life a heck of a lot easier. There are no barriers to me using a Mac any more.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Could have been much more
Review: I use Word and Entourage, every single day. I use PowerPoint at least once a week. I use Excel about once every month. I must use this suite for the interaction I need with PC users, but I am not a happy camper. This program is pretty, and it has some nice features, but, overall, it's mediocre. At times, it's downright bad.

Entourage is the worst of the programs in this suite. The freebie Mac Mail program has the most incredible junk mail filter I've yet used. It does nearly everything that Entourage does as far as making it easy to drop pictures or attachments into email. No, it doesn't have its own Calendar, but I don't use one of those things anyway. The Entourage calendar is a pain to deal with, anyway. It doesn't lay out well, and it doesn't account for schedules like mine. I have no use for it. Entourage also doesn't have a feature to just receive mail. No, one must send AND receive, at the same time, or just Send. Maybe I don't want to send mail just yet. Sheesh. Even MacMail lets you just Get Mail, without sending.

In Newsgroups, Entourage doesn't offer a preference to view only subscribed newsgroups for a particular server. No, I must go to the server, then go to View--Subscribed only. What a pain.

Where Entourage really messes up is its junk mail filter. It consistently lists valid mail as Junk Mail. Much of the time, anything from Apple comes in as Junk Mail. If Mac Mail mistakenly attributes an email after its "learning" phase, correcting it is a breeze: Click on Junk/Not Junk. The program REMEMBERS how to classify mail from the sender after that. To make the same change in Entourage, you have to add the sender to your address book. Maybe I don't want Apple in my address book, hogging up useless space. Why can't Entourage just REMEMBER that mail from that address isn't junk mail??? If I can ever get Mac Mail to connect to my college newsgroups (it's being temperamental about this ONE thing), Entourage is HISTORY.

If that's not bad enough, Entourage [alters] information I cut and paste into its standard text window from Word. Information I get from PC Outlook Express users who cut and paste from Word likewise gets jumbled when it gets to me. This program is a horrible mess.

Word has its quirks as well. Several times, I've been working on a document, I try to save it, then the Save window DISAPPEARS. I can't do anything with the document after that. I can't close it. I can't cut and paste the info into a new document. The doc window just sits there, taking up space. I usually have to quit or force quit to get rid of it. Sometimes, I'm lucky and autosave/autorecover save all my changes to a doc...but sometimes I'm not lucky. Sometimes I lose whole paragraphs of data. Most annoying, and Microsoft tech help is no help at all, as usual.

Word also has a nasty habit of changing the format of whole selections of text when cutting and pasting. I'll format all of a document to say, Verdana 12, and here comes a pasted selection in TimesRoman 12, or 10 or who knows what. I've changed my styles, font preferences, everything that remotely refers to fonts in any preference window anywhere--and it still does this.

Typical of all MS products, this monster known as Office has a really hard time remembering personal preferences for any of the programs, especially font settings in PowerPoint. I keep setting certain things, and Office blithely resets it to what it wants me to have, not what I want. This is like living with my mother.

Finding how to make certain settings in Office is a chore in itself. I don't like it when Word uses AutoType to input information from my address book for me, or when it tries to input a date. My work isn't oriented toward that, so this is most annoying. The place to set this preference isn't under Finder-->Preferences (where it logically belongs), it's under Tools-->Auto Correct-->AutoType. Brilliant. If I turn off my computer, my setting for this changes, according to Microsoft's whim.

If I could, I would junk this program.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: As good or better than the PC version
Review: I've been using PC versions of Office for years. The Mac version is every bit as capable, and it's functionality and interface are very similar, making for an easy and seamless transition between the two versions. I actually prefer the Aqua interface of the Mac version. I do wish that Access and Visio were available, but apart from their absence, I find nothing else lacking.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: It's good
Review: It's good, I love Entourage much better than Apple's e-mail and calendaring software. The others are comparable to Windows products; nothing special about them.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best Microsoft Product
Review: It's indeed the best from Microsoft. I only use Word and Entourage and I must say they both are fantastic. Entourage is simply a great software that is clearly better than Outlook for Windows.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Product!!
Review: Really Great! Microsoft did it. Feature rich software. It really works well than its Windoze counterpart. Price is a bit high, but once you start using it, you won't regret for that. A must have product for Mac fans.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great Upgrade If You Need It....
Review: This is a great upgrade over my previous Word & Excel 98. I got the Word and Excel upgrade, but got Power Point and Entourage (a mail and calendar program) free. But, frankly, I wouldn't upgrade if it weren't for my employer upgrading to Office XP.

The programs have crashed a few times, but I recon that's an OS X (10.1.2) problem. Similar problems have happened elsewhere.


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