Filed under: Software, Universal Binary
Screenshots of Office 2008 for Mac
While I was at Macworld last week I got a chance to sit down with some Microsoft folks and talk about Office 2008 for Mac. We did a video interview which should be up shortly, but Microsoft was kind enough to share some screenshots with us. Check out the gallery for a look at some cool new features in Office 2008.Pictured here is 'My Day,' the brand new application that will be included in Office 2008. It is a command center for all your tasks and appointments, which can be called up with a system wide hot key. You can then update things in it, and those updates will be reflected in Entourage.
The gallery has some screenshots of Word, Excel, and a bigger picture of My Day.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Sheridan said 7:43AM on 1-15-2007
I'm going to wait for iWork '07.
Reply
Shreedhan said 7:57AM on 1-15-2007
I don't like iWork (I have 06) at the moment. I feel more comfortable word processing in a Word-like app (I use NeoOffice at the moment). I find Pages to much of a publishing software. But keynote is amazing and I hope MS catch on to what makes it so amazing and build it into power point!
Reply
JT said 7:57AM on 1-15-2007
ill get both iwork 07 and office 08, as I converted to keynote long ago, but must use word and excel on a daily basis for elementary compatibility issues.
Reply
Evan Hindra said 8:04AM on 1-15-2007
My Day seems like a really cool app on itself!
The 'Ribbon' UI on MacOS doesn't seem to be as robust as the one on PC. But I hope that will change a little.
Judging by the Excel screenshot, it looks hella weird! ;/. There's still elements from the old UI, with Ribbon. It almost defeats the purpose of having Ribbon UI.
Reply
Digg said 8:13AM on 1-15-2007
Feel free to digg it to the front page of digg:
http://digg.com/apple/Screenshots_of_Office_2008_for_Mac
Reply
Goobimama said 8:23AM on 1-15-2007
All that office for Mac needs is Access. One missing feature and the whole things goes kaput.
Reply
rdas7 said 8:32AM on 1-15-2007
Wow, I can't believe that their focus for Office 2008 and they came up with that! Those screenshots alone are possibly the most CONFUSING ui I have ever seen! How many buttons, menus and options can you count in any screenshot? Those MS guys just don't get it, do they? Even when they try... they come up with Office 2008.
What a joke.
Reply
Peter said 8:36AM on 1-15-2007
I still think it looks crowded, old fashioned (like 10.0 Aqua) and confusing
Somehow their UI just isn't really pro to look at
Reply
Galley said 8:54AM on 1-15-2007
I'm also waiting for iWork with its rumored Word Processing mode and Spreadsheet app.
Reply
iMatt said 8:56AM on 1-15-2007
Like a lot of folks, I use MS Office at work on a PC, and I use a Mac at home. I'm worried that the new Mac Office UI looks nothing like the PC Office UI. This is a big blow to compatibility, and undermines one of the main reasons people buy Office for Mac.
Reply
molo said 9:04AM on 1-15-2007
i am looking foward to getting both office 08 for documents, and ilife 07 for keynote.
Reply
molo said 9:04AM on 1-15-2007
i am looking foward to getting both office 08 for documents, and ilife 07 for keynote.
Reply
Martin said 9:06AM on 1-15-2007
I think the problem is they tend to try to show everything it's likely to be capable of to any user who might want to use it, instead of stripping it down and showing what it could be like for a pro user performing a simple task such as writing. The first thing I do whenever I install Word is customise the toolbars so they contain as little as possible.
My main toolbar has five buttons (I could get away with four), two formatting items and the zoom option. That's it.
And I wonder who decided that the ribbon in Word should be blue, but in Excel it should be green - just in case we suddenly become befuddled and can't work out what app we're using...
Reply
Christian said 9:16AM on 1-15-2007
I'm trying not to be negative, but that My Day window seriously looks like a WinAmp skin from 1998. It's only January 15, but I'm going to go ahead and proclaim it Worst UI for 2007.
Reply
scralpha said 9:32AM on 1-15-2007
Any shots of normal functions? These 'template and wizard' type shots don't really show what the 'normal use' interface would be like. I'm withholding judgement until I see those, but I do agree with others who've said that being so dissimilar from Office 2007 for Windows is a bad idea.
Reply
Chris K said 9:38AM on 1-15-2007
I finally found the perfect Office package just a few weeks ago: Office 2000 for the PC, running through Parallels Coherence mode.
Office XP on the PC is a useless upgrade, and 2007 looks absolutely moronic with its moving target UI.
Mac Office 2004 copies Photoshop's worst design element (the floating toolbar) to a maddening extent, and Mac Office 2008 looks like MS's UI experiment ported to the Mac.
No thanks, I'll stick with the app that has worked fine for me for more than five years. Office has its UI problems, but the fact of the matter is, everyone learned its UI years ago (Word 4.0 on the Mac for me). Once you know how to use it, it's quick and efficient. Radically changing it only stands to completely confuse millions of users. And for what? Some new templates? A little control panel app?
Reply
Ronan said 9:38AM on 1-15-2007
Using an Office application is like trying to see out of a letterbox. The doodads and screen junk that clutter the screen give you almost no view of your actual work! Is this progress? Does Excel still calculate a whole bunch of statistics incorrectly? Probably. Just with a whole new forest of bunper stickers. Bleaugh.
Reply
Mr Lizard said 9:38AM on 1-15-2007
Looking at the screenshots, I don't think they look that bad at all.
I don't like the way Office 2004 has toolbar/pallettes, I much prefer the toolbar 'fixed' into the Window like Office 2008 is showing.
I also quite like the way each app has a different colour theme to it.
I don't consider myself a power user by any stretch of the term, yet I find pages just a little *too* thin on buttons, to the point where I feel as though I'm pulling down menus or squinting at the inspector window just to get simple things done.
Looking at the buttons the MacBU have decided to place into the Office 2008 UI, I think they've struck a good balance. Time will tell if the ribbon attempt will pay off, but I'm very tempted by what I've seen in this handful of screen shots.
Reply
woodrow said 9:43AM on 1-15-2007
Google Docs is free, good enough for most day-to-day tasks, and you can use on any machine wherever you are at. http://docs.google.om
Reply
woodrow said 9:44AM on 1-15-2007
Make that .com (whoops!)
http://docs.google.com
Reply