By John I. Livingston
Posted June 1, 2004
Some of the performance improvements Microsoft Office 2004 offers might not be obvious at first glance-and there are some glitches that will need to be worked out in updates. But slowly, the product is evolving for the better. Its scrapbook feature is a huge plus making it very easy to add pictures and even text to office documents. We will be demonstrating some of the good and the bad at the Office Applications SIG meeting Wednesday, June 17 at the RC at 7:00 p.m.
Anyone who wants the software to work flawlessly out of the box-or who wants a seamless update of items like Entourage contacts and folder sorting-might face a bit of frustration.
A heavy-duty user of Word--and anyone who needs to interface with Microsoft Outlook users--will appreciate some of the features I have encountered.
Word 2004 begins to offer a return to some of the functionality of Word 5.1 in features like the "Format, Style" dialog box. Unlike Word 2001 or X, I found I could easily reach various font and paragraph attributes right in the dialog box without having to open the additional "Format..." pull-down menu.
The Compatibility Check feature is a welcome addition. When I first tried to save my Word document, one of the dialog boxes said, "Compatibility Check recommended."
The only glitch in this dialog box is that while its warning says "check," the button to the left of it says "compatibility report." This doesn't match the dialog box, and most users' eyes would progress from left to right. But that is a minor quibble.
A bigger problem with the Compatibility Report... in my case was that it kept telling me a particular document was set to be saved compatible for "Word 6 and 95," a feature that is no longer available in Office 2004. My own detective work showed that this came from importing styles from a document created in a much older version of Office. The good news is that the Macintosh Business Unit has been very receptive to my input on issues like this.
At our Main Meeting last month, the Macintosh Business Unit showed off a Project Manager tool that is supposed Project Manager tool that is supposed Project Manager to tie documents, contacts and calendar events together in Entourage.
When I attempted to use the Project Manager, I found it difficult to find and difficult to follow the instructions for setting it up. They referred to some events and settings without instructing the user how to make them. Suffice it to say, I went back to doing my event planning in Entourage the old-fashioned way, using its Event and Contacts tools, and they worked fine, almost.
I frequently will create events and calendars in Entourage using a handy-dandy built-in Applescript called "Create Event from Message." I can still indeed create an Event but if I go to "invite attendees," I can't add more than one person to send the mail to and then I cannot send it. Microsoft tells me there is a problem with the script and they are working on it.
Entourage 2004's calendars, events and address book features did work seamlessly with my Microsoft Outlook account on a Windows computer without being part of a Microsoft Exchange for Windows network. Additionally, the Entourage 2004 contact worked seamlessly. In fact, Outlook added it and gave me a reminder chime before I could even open the message.
On the minus side, the Address dialog box in Entourage's mail feature does not have a "close" button, unlike any other Microsoft Office 2004 or other Mac application we have seen. Microsoft says it is aware of this bug, and one customer support person's explanation of this possibly being removed as a "convenience issue."
The old "screen hangs and distorts while scrolling in Page Layout view" bug seems to be back in Word 2004. This is a known issue to Microsoft in previous versions of Microsoft Word for Macintosh (like 2001) Unicode really works in Word 2004 and Entourage using the Apple Character Palette and the Lucida Grande fonts. Entourage even warned me that people with E-mail programs that did not support Unicode might not be able to see the character. Unlike Word X updating from Word 2001, I was able to seamlessly use my customized Normal template in Word 2004, with customized menus intact.
Bottom line: Office 2004 does have some improvements in tools, but it has a number of minor glitches and does not always work well with files made several versions ago.
Someone who is moving to OS X and wants an OSX-native Office suite could use Office 2004 now. Other users who buy it will need some patience-and need to keep using the Office Applications SIG, MacFixit, and whatever help Microsoft can offer-and they will need patience. If you have none, wait until we have some updates and fixes, say version 11.1.
John I. Livingston is the leader of the Office Applications SIG.
