The Office 2008 suite has a new appearance for its applications although its user interface has not been altered substantially from Office 2004. Office 2008 is now universal and therefore will run natively on Intel-based Macs. By default, Office 2008 saves its documents in a new file format as also used by Office 2007 for Windows.  Office 2008 documents saved in this new format cannot be opened by earlier versions of Office unless a compatibility pack has been installed in the older version of Office or a converter program is used.

TR recommends you save documents in the older Office format if you will be sharing your documents with users who have not upgraded to Office 2008 for Mac or Office 2007 for Windows.  See also the Texas State University and Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac white paper.

Preview Office 2008

You can learn more about the new features of Office 2008 and how to use them most efficiently by accessing the online resources at the following Microsoft web pages:

• http://www.macoffice2008.com/

• http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/Office2008/default.mspx

Before Upgrading

it is important for Office 2008 for Macintosh users to realize the following:

• Office 2008 saves documents in a new format and older versions of Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) will not be able to open Office 2008 documents without  a Open XML File Format Converter for Mac utility.  Office 2008 documents have different file extensions.  For example, Word 2008 documents will have a ".docx" extension as opposed to the ".doc" extension used by earlier versions of Office.
• Office 2008 applications do give you the capability to save a document in the older format.  However, if you use a  feature that is only in Office 2008 than you will lose that info when the document is saved in the older format.
• Macintosh Office 2004 users must run a separate Open XML File Format Converter for Mac utility  before they can open Office 2008 documents.
• Office 2008 cannot run Visual Basic macros or load add-ins that contain Visual Basic macros. This means that all macros in existing Office documents will NOT work in Office 2008.  These macros will have to be rewritten in AppleScript to work in Office 2008.

Opening an Office 2008/2007 document in an older version of Microsoft Office

To open Office 2008/2007 documents, Macintosh Office 2004 users will need to upgrade to Office 2008 or download and run a converter program at:

• Open XML File Format Converter for Mac

Scroll down the right most text column and click on the English (.dmg) link.

Note: The latest version of the converter program released in June 2008 by Microsoft  can convert any Office 2008 document to its older Office format.

Network Installation of Office 2008

Technology Resources is pleased to provide Texas State faculty/staff users the ability to download and install Microsoft Office 2008 to their workstations across the Texas State Network.

• Continue to the Office 2008 for Mac Download Site.