|
Microsoft
Office 2004 has been installed on most Mac OS X systems and
older versions of the program have been removed. The update
will reach all machines eventually.
|
About
the updated program:
- For
an overview of the program look for information
in the Project Gallery. The nearest thing to a
manual is the PDF document "Discovering Office"
available from the sidebar of the Project
Gallery dialog. You can view a summary of the
new features from the HTML documents listed in
the "What's New" item in the Project
Gallery.
- The
2004 edition of Microsoft Office is finally
compatible with Network Home Directories. In
particular, the supporting programs (such as the
Equation Editor and Excel Charts) are now
directly accessible and Excel macros
work.
- Multiple
displays are natural tools for presentation and
have been available since the late 1980s. It is
only now that Powerpoint can make use of them.
The "View Presenter Tools" option shows on the
presenters private display: a timer, notes,
thumbnails of all the slides and navigation
controls. Only the current slide shows up on the
external display (or projector). This works with
either mirrored or spanning displays. With this
feature, you no longer have to make overly
complex slides.
- Word
2004 does not work with the Cite While You Write
feature of EndNote 7. A less than satisfactory
solution
is posted at the EndNote web site.
|
Some
things you might want to do:
- Although
it is not necessary, you can delete old
preference files. See the file
"/Users/Shared/Remove Office log.txt" for a list
of files you can delete.
- You
will also have to recreate aliases to the Office
programs (and to EndNote for some people). Your
dock icons have probably reverted to question
marks; take them off and install new
icons.
- Learn
to use the programs. The Mac OS X and Windows XP
versions of Microsoft Office share many features
and file formats. However, they are different
programs written for different audiences. If you
expect to reproduce your experience of the
program from Windows XP in the Mac OS X version,
then, you will be very disappointed. You should
treat Office on the Mac as a different program
and look out for and make use of its unique
features.
- Microsoft
Office is a complex suite of programs that is
overkill for many tasks. You can accomplish many
simple chores with a simpler program like
AppleWorks, which is available on
iMacs.
|
|