Office for Mac 2008 Service Pack 1

We just received a disk for our Open Value Licensing Office 2008 for Mac with service pack 1 integrated.

A download on the MVLS site for the service pack 1 integrated version is not available yet.

The Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 1 (12.1.0) download link. The download is approximately 180MB.

We have not applied this update yet, though Office 2008 for Mac is installed on our iMac with Mac OS X Tiger.

It looks as though the next step for us is to flatten the iMac and run through setting it up on SBS 2008. The new SBS 2008 WSUS management features actually allow us to exclude it from being monitored by WSUS and thus eliminates the "This computer has not registered with Update Services yet" errors we get here.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

iMac Safari troubles and Office 2008 for Mac

Our iMac has been sitting here in the office relatively unused for the last while due to high demands on the Windows side.

It has our HP 5590 ScanJet connected to it since the HP driver setup on Vista, our office is essentially 100% Vista now, is rather flaky. We cannot get documents scanned with relative ease into PDFs anymore on the PC.

The iMac doesn't make it any easier, as the HP Scan to PDF always wants to OCR the input. That doesn't work so well for all of the handwritten notes we like to digitize for archival and wiki purposes.

So, we use the Scan to Print HP feature to Save as PDF in the iMac's print dialogue! ;) A bit of a funky way to get around the problems we are having, but it works.

We have since installed Office 2008 for Mac on the machine and began to work our way through the new product.

However, we cannot for whatever reason get Safari to work on any secure sites or to log into Blogger and get the Blogger editor up and running. This we are not able to do any blogging via the iMac at this point.

Suffice it to say that Office for Mac 2008 is a really neat update to the Office for Mac product.

When our priority bench catch-up projects get done here over the next week or so, we will format and install Leopard on the iMac and run through the setup on our SBS 2K3 network, install and configure Office 2008 for Mac, and then blow it away to start fresh connecting it to our Beta 2 of SBS 2008.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Office for Mac 2008 is available to Volume Licensing Customers

This post comes a little late relative to the actual release date which was January 4, 2008.

Office for Mac 2008 Open License Download

Note that the download is 556MB and may take a while for slower connections.

Also, please note the following product install system requirements:

• Processor: Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (500 MHz or faster)
• Memory: 512 MB of RAM or more
• Hard Disk Space: 1.5 GB of available hard disk space
• Operating System: Mac OS X version 10.4.9 or later

Note the requirement for a relatively up to date Tiger: 10.4.9

This post is not coming via our in-house Mac due to Safari's seemingly not wanting to open the Blogger editor without dying.

Microsoft's Product Licensing sites:

• Microsoft Volume License Services (MVLS)
• Microsoft eOpen Web site (Note that the https must be there to connect)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Mac on SBS - Excel:Mac and Excel Windows Inconsistencies

We are in the process of putting together the final draft of a set of technical assessment forms that we will be using for client's job candidates.

The forms are in Excel. They were created in Excel on Windows.

When we create forms in Excel, we always set the column width to 1 for enough columns to hit the .25" margins across the page. We modify it accordingly for forms that need to have .5" margins.

This gives us the flexibility to create forms with fields that are not restricted in their placement because of one big column. If the form is for print only, we don't bother merging the respective fields. If the form is for live data input via a laptop, then the respective cells will be merged and the range labeled.

When we open this particular form in Excel:Mac, we end up with the form being 4 columns (4 points) too wide. The margins and page size are identical on both the Mac and Windows PC. But, something within the Mac version of Excel says the number of columns is too many to fit on the page.

To make it work in Excel:Mac, we have to scale the "Adjust to" 94% in the page setup, and define a page break between the two pages.

They sit side by side, so the page break goes on the left boundary column on the page that sits to the right.

This was definitely unexpected, as we have been working with Word documents back and forth between the Mac and Windows platforms with no issues so far other than constraining Office 2007 to save in the legacy non-XML format.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Mac on SBS - Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 Screen Shots

We purchased our Office 2004 for Mac via Open Value licensing. That means that we will receive the new Office 2008 for Mac when it is released.

Here are some screen shots of the new Office: tuaw.caom - The Unofficial Apple Weblog: Office 2008 for the Mac screenshots.

Mac Mojo: The Office for Mac Team Blog. Keep up with what's happening on the Office for Mac front. Posts to the blog should get more frequent as the product gets closer RTM.

I do hope we see a huge improvement in Entourage's Exchange integration! :D

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.