Redesigned charting tools in Excel - By using the improved charting tools, users can quickly build professional-looking charts with special effects such as 3-D, transparency, and soft shadows.

WordArt and SmartArt - Excel, PowerPoint, and Word include updated, modern-looking WordArt that users can use to apply 2-D and 3-D effects to text. Also, users can choose from dozens of SmartArt graphics to quickly create designer-quality diagrams, charts, and other information graphics.

Slide themes in PowerPoint - A theme is a coordinated set of fonts, colors, and visual effects that gives a presentation a unified design. Users can preview and apply dozens of professionally designed themes directly from the Slide Themes tab in the Elements Gallery. Users can also modify themes to match their organization’s design, as well as import themes from other Office files.

Automator support - Automator is a Mac OS X v10.4 (Tiger) application that helps automate commonly performed and repetitive tasks. All Office 2008 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.

To Do Lists and My Day in Entourage - Users can manage time and tasks more efficiently by using the new To Do List feature. The To Do List displays all To Do itemsMessages and contacts flagged as "To Do" as well as tasks. All To Do items appear in the Entourage To Do List in Tasks view. in one place. My Day is a widget-like application that allows users to display their day's events and To Do List on the desktop. Users don't even have to open Entourage to use My Day and view their To Do List.

Entourage Calendar - The redesigned Calendar interface makes it easier to manage events and tasks. Users can color-code events by using categories, quickly create new events by dragging, and view the To Do List next to the Calendar.

Toolbox and Object Palette - The Office Toolbox provides a one-stop destination for some of the most useful tools in Office 2008. It consolidates the Formatting Palette, Object Palette, Compatibility Report, Scrapbook, Reference Tools, and other application-specific tools in one convenient interface. The new Object Palette gives quick and easy access to shapes, Clip Art, symbols, and photos (including iPhoto).

Documentation support - The new and improved Help and online training resources provide extensive guidance about how to use Office 2008. They have been designed to help minimize training and technical assistance costs. In addition to Help, the Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Administrator’s Guide provides technical guidance to IT professionals who are responsible for planning, deploying, and maintaining Office 2008 in a business environment.

The online versions of these documentation sets, available both in Office 2008 Help and on the Microsoft Web site, will now be updated on an ongoing basis to provide the most up-to-date and relevant content to users.

Open XML Formats- The new file formats allow users to create documents from different data sources, reduce the size of files, and improve data recovery in corrupted files.

Security features - Expanded security features such as anti-spam and anti-phishing e-mail filters help prevent fraudulent links or spoofed domains and protect users from these types of online scams.