Office 2008 for Mac provides a suite of desktop productivity tools that helps Macintosh users get more impact out of their information and seamlessly share their ideas. The latest release delivers new capabilities that enhance how users work with each other and empowers them to achieve the results they want, faster. For example, the redesigned user interface reduces clutter and interruptions. The intuitive design makes it easier for users to find and use product features and supports the creation of great-looking documents.
 | New features available throughout Office 2008 for Mac |
Office 2008 includes new tools that help users create more professional-looking documents in less time, build documents more easily from frequently used content, and produce great-looking letters, proposals, workbooks, and presentations. Quick formatting capabilities help users rapidly apply a new look and feel to documents and the preview capabilities give users a quick look at any changes they make to the documents. The following list describes some of the new features introduced in Office 2008.
Share documents across platforms
The new Open XML Formats are the default file formats for Office 2008 desktop applications. Open XML Formats are also the default file formats for the 2007 Microsoft Office system. This makes it easier for Macintosh users to share files with users running Windows-based computers.
Open XML Formats offer a dramatic reduction in file size. They also offer an improvement in data recovery for damaged files. These new formats provide tremendous savings to storage and bandwidth requirements and help reduce the burden of IT costs.
In addition to using the Open XML Formats, Office runs on Intel-based and PowerPC-based Macintosh computers, which enables Macintosh users to share documents easily with each other regardless of the Macintosh computer that they use.
Add preformatted elements in just a few clicks
The Elements Gallery in Office 2008 puts frequently used design features in a convenient thumbnail collection.
The Elements Gallery is located below the toolbars in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. It provides quick access to some of the most-used features. From the Elements Gallery, users can add SmartArt graphics, WordArt, charts, tables, and templates to their documents and presentations. For example, in PowerPoint, users can apply slide layouts or slide themes from the Elements Gallery. And in Excel, users can find preformatted ledger sheets in the Elements Gallery.
Access the most-used tools quickly and easily
The Office Toolbox is now a one-stop destination for some of the most useful tools in Office. The new Toolbox consolidates the Formatting Palette, Object Palette, Compatibility Report, Scrapbook, Reference Tools, and other application-specific tools in one convenient interface. Users can also customize Toolbox settings, such as which palettes to show and how the Toolbox should appear when it's not in use.
The new Object Palette gives quick and easy access to all shapes, Clip Art, symbols, and photos (including iPhoto). Users can adjust the Object Palette zoom slider to show just the size and number of objects that they want.
Create a unified look for your documents, presentations, and workbooks
By using Quick Styles and document themes, users can quickly change the appearance of text, tables, and graphics throughout their documents and presentations to match their preferred style or color scheme. Users can use the new theme-aware color picker on the Formatting Palette in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, to quickly see how various theme colors appear when applied to a theme. Office 2008 users can easily share themes across all Office applications to create a great-looking and coordinated set of materials.
Use designer-quality SmartArt graphics
Users can now quickly create designer-quality diagrams, charts, and other information graphics by using SmartArt graphics. They can choose from dozens of SmartArt graphics to visually represent lists, hierarchies, and other relationships. Users can add stunning visual effects to SmartArt graphics, shapes, WordArt, and charts, including three-dimensional (3-D) effects, shading, reflections, glows, and more. Users can also preview and add all SmartArt graphics from the Elements Gallery in Excel, PowerPoint, and Word.
Use new designer-quality chart templates
Users can use the new designer-quality chart templates to illustrate their data with special effects such as 3-D, transparency, and shadows. In Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, users can insert charts from the Elements Gallery. They can also apply updated chart styles, edit, and format charts. Users must create and edit data in Excel, but they can insert the chart into Word document or PowerPoint presentation.
Save as PDF
It is now easier to save and share documents, presentations, and workbooks by using the popular Portable Document Format (PDF). PDF helps ensure that documents appear with the correct layout and fonts on any computer that can view PDF files. The PDF file format option is now available in the Save As dialog box on the File menu in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
Automate commonly performed tasks
Automator is a Mac OS X v10.4 (Tiger) application that helps to automate commonly performed and repetitive tasks. In Office 2008 and Office 2008 Home and Student Edition, all of the applications come with several sample Automator workflows. For example, a workflow in Word converts text to audio and sends the audio to an iPod. In Entourage, users can use a sample workflow to print selected e-mail messages.
| New features in Word |
New formatting tools, views, templates, and a fresh, intuitive user interface in Word 2008 can help transform creative ideas into great-looking documents. In addition to enhancements made to the standard print layout view, Word 2008 introduces a new specialized environment called publishing layout view that brings desktop-publishing-caliber tools to Word.
Publishing layout view in Word 2008 includes specialized tools like professional-quality layout guides and templates.
Create professional-looking documents
Word 2008 helps produce professional-looking documents by providing a comprehensive set of tools, such as publishing layout view, new publishing templates, and ligatures in fonts, for creating and formatting documents.
Document Elements (for word processing) This feature can help automate common, but sometimes time-consuming tasks. Available in the Elements Gallery, these professionally designed publishing components include cover pages, tables of contents, headers, footers, and bibliographies to help users quickly assemble complex documents.
Publishing layout view (for layout-rich documents) This new specialized environment in Word 2008 combines powerful desktop publishing tools and designer templates in one location. Users can use publishing layout view to quickly create professional-looking documents that are traditionally created by using advanced Desktop Publishing (DTP) applications.
Publication templates Word 2008 provides dozens of professionally designed publication templates. Users can use these templates to create great-looking brochures, newsletters, posters, and flyers. They can customize any template by using a theme. Or, they can use pictures and text to make the publication look just the way that they want.
Ligatures in fonts Ligatures are font characters that combine two or more separate characters to improve text style and readability. Some ornate font ligatures include decorative swashes that users can use to enhance the style of a document.
In Word 2008, users can use ligatures in Apple Advanced Typography (AAT) fonts in Mac OS X v10.4 (Tiger) and both AAT and OpenType fonts in Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard).
Use improved notebook layout view
Word 2008 introduces significant enhancement to notebook layout view. In Word 2008, users can customize and personalize notebook documents with different appearances and backgrounds. Notebook tabs now support colors for improved categorization of notes, and can be dragged across different Word notebook documents. The audio recording preferences for notebook layout view now offer easier customization.
Use improved mail merge
The new streamlined Mail Merge Manager in Word 2008 combines, or merges, information from a data source with information in Word document so that users don't have to create multiple versions of the document by hand. Performing mail merges by integrating Word documents, e-mails, forms, and contacts is simple and much faster than the manual alternative.
| New features in Excel |
Excel 2008 helps users manage their data for powerful results, visually persuasive charts, and thought-provoking graphs.
Ledger sheets in Excel 2008 make tracking finances, inventories, invoices, and even portfolios easy with preformatted spreadsheets and automatic calculations.
Use improved tools for writing formulas
The Formula Builder helps users create formulas in a simple, step-by-step approach. Users don't have to memorize functions or their syntax. They can use Formula Builder to create formulas, search for functions, insert functions and arguments in existing formulas, and get help on all Excel functions.
With Formula AutoComplete, users can write and edit formulas without having to remember function names, defined names, or other elements of a formula. When they type a formula in a cell, users can choose valid functions, names, and named ranges in context.
Create professional-looking charts
The new charting features include 3-D shapes, transparency, soft shadows, and other special effects. Because charts in Excel 2008 have the same functionality as drawing objects, users can apply a workbook theme or add an assortment of visual effects to a chart. New effects, such as 3-D, fill, and transparency, can greatly enhance the look of a chart. Users also can format different chart areas, such as the plot area, the title, the data label, or the legend, and can rotate and flip charts with precision.
Use more rows and columns
To enable users to explore substantial amounts of data in spreadsheets, Excel 2008 supports more than 1 million rows and 16 thousand columns per sheet. Specifically, the Excel 2008 grid is 1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns, which provides users with 1,500% more rows and 6,300% more columns than was available in earlier versions of Excel.
| New features in PowerPoint |
Users can create and deliver dynamic presentations that inspire their audience’s imagination with compelling visuals and layouts.
Slide themes in PowerPoint 2008 give your presentation a professional and unified design.
Enhance the visual effects of presentations with new themes and rich graphics
Office 2008 comes with new themes, layouts, and Quick Styles that offer users a wide range of formatting options. Themes simplify the process of creating professional presentations. With one click, all the background, text, graphics, charts, and tables change to reflect the theme that users select, ensuring that all elements in the presentation complement one another. Users can apply the same theme to a Word 2008 document or Excel 2008 sheet that they apply to a presentation.
PowerPoint now supports true 3-d shapes and images, bevels, powerful custom gradient support, reflections, and soft shadows control, glow effects and much more. In addition, PowerPoint supports Apple ColorSync technology.
Choose from the new custom-designed table styles
Users can choose from 74 custom-designed table styles. There is even the ability to have banded tables and different looks for the header and last row. In addition, the new table properties allows to easily add columns and rows directly from the formatting palette.
Customize presentation layouts
Users can use custom layouts to make text and other objects appear precisely where they want them to on their slides. For each layout, users can specify the number, size, and location of placeholders, background properties, graphic images, charts, and diagrams.
| New features in Entourage |
Entourage 2008 provides new features to help users manage time and information, instantly locate information, and protect important documents and files. My Day and the To Do List are some of the new features in Entourage 2008 that help users organize information in new and rich ways. The new user interface makes it easier for users to see and make changes to their schedules quickly and easily. In addition, it allows users to see their tasks along with their schedules, which makes tracking daily work a more productive experience.
The following list includes some key features of Entourage 2008.
Keep e-mail more secure and reduce spam
Junk e-mail protection in Entourage 2008 identifies and filters out more unwanted messages than earlier versions of Entourage. Users can choose from different levels of junk e-mail protection and set options to determine the optimum settings. Entourage 2008 also detects phishing messages that might have links to fraudulent Web sites.
Prioritize and manage time
My Day in Entourage 2008 manages schedules and tasks in one easy interface.
By using the new My Day and To Do List features, users can quickly view calendar events and manage their To Do List from their desktops without having to open Entourage.
Create Out of Office messages
When users use a Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 mail account, they can now schedule Out of Office messages in advance without worrying about forgetting to turn the Out of Office Assistant on or off. Entourage 2008 also allows users to customize Out of Office auto-replies for internal and external contacts.
Find information quickly
To help users better manage their time and information, Entourage 2008 offers a number of new and improved features, from Spotlight search to assigning color-coded categories to items. These features make it easier to locate, manage, prioritize, and act on the volumes of information that users encounter every day.
Spotlight search Users can access the power of Spotlight, which is built into the Mac OS, to quickly find any information in Entourage, including message attachments.
Color-coded categories Users can assign color-coded categories to items, which makes it easy to locate and organize project information.
Favorites Bar The Favorites Bar is located below the toolbar and can be customized to display shortcuts to a user's favorite views.
Schedule meetings with the new and improved calendar
Entourage 2008 has a redesigned calendar interface that makes it easier and more intuitive for users to schedule and manage meeting invitations.
Accept, Tentative, and Decline from the Calendar Attendees can change meeting status directly from the event. Calendar management actions, such as declining a previously accepted meeting directly from the event, are more straightforward and consistent with Outlook.
Meeting update and cancellation improvements Entourage 2008 provides meeting organizers more flexibility in managing invitation updates and cancellations. Organizers can choose whether to update attendees about a change or cancellation, and they can include comments. If attendees are added or removed from a meeting, the organizer can choose to update all attendees or just those attendees whose status has changed.
Meeting Reply, Reply All, and Forward By using Reply, Reply All, and Forward, organizers can quickly correspond with meeting participants through e-mail without opening or changing the meeting. Attendees can now easily forward their meetings to others who they think should participate. Those additional attendees receive their own copy of the invitation and can choose to accept if they agree.
Out of date invitation detection Entourage 2008 is smarter about handling updated invitations, making it easier for meeting participants to know which invitation is the right one. Old invitations are labeled Out of Date, and the Accept, Tentative, and Decline buttons are disabled, leaving only the current invitation active.
Invitation Conflict and Adjacent banners Invitation banner accuracy is improved, especially around delegation and single-user concurrent Outlook and Entourage Calendar usage. In addition, Entourage 2008 includes Outlook-inspired time management banners called Conflict and Adjacent.
No Response Requested support Entourage 2008 respects No Response Requested invitations and simply creates the event on the Calendar without sending a response to the organizer.
