One feature of Mac OS X, sometimes forgotten about, that has caused gripes from many users for a long time is Spaces. When it was first introduced almost two years ago in Leopard, some applications would not always "play nice" with each other, causing windows not to display or move correctly.

Microsoft Office applications in particular were prone to these problems. There were always some nagging issues that would not allow Spaces to work correctly, due to the way Office windows are drawn on the screen. Over time, they started working better, but a few issues still remained with Office, especially in Word when the Toolbox floating window was in use.

With Snow Leopard's debut, however, Microsoft states that these issues have been fixed through "collaborative efforts" with Apple. Hopefully, this will help a lot of eager and frustrated Spaces users manage their many windows on their desktops.

Do you use Spaces, or have you held off because of these issues? Leave a comment below and share your experiences!

With Microsoft Office for Mac still owning a hefty portion of the Mac software market, it's always news when the Mac Business Unit decides to spill the beans on their product plans for the future.TUAW's Michael Rose was on the press call this morning and noted the headlines, with details in the press release in the 2nd half of the post:

• Next month, Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac will be trimmed down to 2 editions: Home/Student and Business Edition. The new SKUs for Business Edition 2008 will be available next month. This makes more sense than the 3 editions currently available.
• The Office 2008 Business Edition includes Entourage Web Services Edition & Microsoft Document Connection
• Entourage Web Services Edition ships today (August 13, 2009)
• Office 2008 Business Edition has extra templates, clip art and bundled Lynda.com training lessons
• Upgrade costs for 2008 Business Edition $240, full licenses $340; Entourage Web Services update will be free for existing Office 2008 users
• One More Thing: The next Mac Office version will be ready by holiday season 2010, and includes a 'brand new application' -- Microsoft Outlook for Mac (!)
• Outlook for Mac will be a Cocoa app, will sync tasks and notes, and has a new database supporting Spotlight searches; IRM for confidential data controls.
• There was no announcement from Microsoft on any Office for iPhone development to date
• Visual Basic returns in Office 2010

See the continuation of this post for the full press release from the Mac BU.

As promised, Microsoft has released a patch (dubbed version 12.2.1) to address issues that some Microsoft Office 2008 users have had with opening XML-based documents. When attempting to open a document in Microsoft Office 2008, some users have been presented with an error message that resembles the following:

"Microsoft Excel cannot open the file. You may have to download the latest updates for Office for Mac. Do you want to visit the Microsoft Web site for more information?"

For those who held off on the Service Pack 2 update, guess what? Surprise! Service Pack 2 is required to install the patch. Unlike many Mac apps, where update checks are found in an app's namesake menu, in Microsoft Office 2008 it's in the "help" menu. So, click on "help," and "check for updates" and you're all set. Well, you're all set if you already had Service Pack 2 installed. You're only halfway there if you didn't have it installed. If this is the case, simply do this again. And there you go. Opening XML on Microsoft Office 2008 is no longer XM-hell. (You can also download the patch from the Mactopia web site.)

A few weeks back, Microsoft released its Service Pack 2 update for Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac. While adding a host of features and refinements (such as Custom Path Animation in PowerPoint and increased speed and load times in Word and Excel), the service pack apparently packed too much of a punch.

The update has prevented some Open XML files from opening, for which Microsoft provides the following suggestions, and I've done a bit of MS-to-English translation (with apologies to DF)... read on to get the gist.

Today, Microsoft released the Office 2008 Service Pack 2 update. This update brings many improvements and fixes to Office 2008, including improved speed and stability to Word and Excel, new features in PowerPoint, as well as improvements to connecting to SharePoint servers. A brief list of fixes follows below:

• Two new features in PowerPoint 2008: Custom Path Animation, which adds the ability to author motion-path animations and Default Theme, which lets users define their default theme, including fonts, color scheme and slide layouts.

• Increased speed in Word 2008 (launch and scroll times) as well as Excel 2008 with features such as calculation performance.

• Expanded Mac browser support in Microsoft Office Live Workspace to include Safari 4.

• Microsoft Document Connection. Document Connection is a new application that improves the SharePoint experience for Mac users, allowing for easier collaboration within a SharePoint environment by simplifying how users can browse, access and manage files online and offline.

For a complete lists of changes and fixes, visit this description page.

To download this update, run the Microsoft AutoUpdate application on your Mac or go to the Microsoft Mac Downloads page. This update weighs in at 182.6 MB and is available right now.

There's a new patch in town. Microsoft Office 2008 was updated today to protect against two privately-reported vulnerabilities in the handling of Word files; these security risks could have allowed an attacker to execute arbitrary code on your machine. The update also patches Entourage 2008 to prepare for the Web Services edition of the mail and PIM app.

The 154 MB/268 MB (delta or combo) update is available through Microsoft's AutoUpdate tool or via direct download.

In the hustle and madness of yesterday's wayback machine activity, there were a couple of App Store introductions (and a notable upgrade) that might have slipped through...

First up: The long-awaited version of Quickoffice for iPhone that allows editing of Word and Excel files hit the store today and was demoed at CTIA. [Looks like the new Quicksheet is available now, but the full bundle and the Quickword standalone app aren't on sale yet as of Thursday morning.] While QO has had a 'mobile files' tool on the iPhone for a while now, this is the first build of the venerable portable office suite (which has been a favorite on Palm handhelds for years) that can do editing in both formats.

Quickoffice for iPhone can do font formatting and cut, copy and paste within Word documents -- presumably to be tied in with system-wide C/P in the OS 3.0 world-to-come. Both the Excel and Word tools will support landscape mode for extra editing area.

Files on the iPhone can be transferred off the device using WiFi to a local Mac, or straight to a MobileMe account. Quickoffice for iPhone is shipping now for an "introductory price" of $19.99, but if you just want the Excel spreadsheet editor (formerly MobileFiles Pro) you can have it for $12.99; the Word document editor is also $12.99. Quickoffice Files (previously known as MobileFiles 2.0) is $3.99 and offers similar file transfer capability to Readdle and other file managers. We're getting a review copy for a more thorough walkthrough later this week. It's worth noting that a Microsoft exec hinted at a version of Office itself for the iPhone that may be coming sometime in the not-too-distant future.

Second... who doesn't love a good robot game? For $4.99, you can now dive into Pangea's classic Otto Matic series with the company's new title for iPhone, Otto Matic: Alien Invasion. The B-movie style game pits Otto against the attacking Brain Aliens from Planet X; his job is to save as many humans as possible. Otto Matic: Alien Invasion features 10 levels and 25 different enemies, multiple weapons and activities, and quite a bit of fun.

Lastly, the TUAW top pick Evernote has been updated with a nifty landscape mode, thumbnail viewing, improved performance, favorites sorting, and an embedded web browser to reduce the tap a link --> Safari --> back to home screen --> scroll around --> relaunch Evernote loop-the-loop annoyances. Evernote 2.0 for iPhone remains a free download, and the basic Evernote service is also free; a year of pro-level service costs $45.

If you're looking for a quick "pick up and play game," give iHangman a try? iHangman [iTunes link] allows you to play the timeless game of hangman right on your iPhone.

In iHangman, you pick letters from the side to make a word. If you don't get the word after a couple tries, then you complete the hangman and lose the game. However, if you guess the word, then you win. iHangman gives you plenty of options in the Settings tab -- you can change the timer, have single or multiple players, see the leader board for your iPhone, turn sounds on/off, and choose the word list categories. You have the option to choose from a myriad of word lists including: Animals, countries, sports, SAT, GRE, Science, and more.

This game includes over 36,000 words and their definitions. That's right ... definitions! When you lose or win a game, you are presented with the full word; when you shake your iPhone side-to-side, you will see the definition of the word. This is a very nice feature. Overall, iHangman is a fun game to play, and at $0.99US, it's not very expensive. You can download this game from the iTunes App Store.

When Apple made the move from Tiger to Leopard, they decided to throw in more than a few features. One of those new features was the ability to search Wikipedia right from Dictionary.

To start searching Wikipedia, just open Dictionary (located in /Applications). Next, click on the Wikipedia button and enter a search term. Leopard will then browse Wikipedia for the answer.

You can access the dictionary from most applications by highlighting a word, right-clicking and selecting "Look Up in Dictionary."

Want more tips like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 section.

Google Docs gives you document storage in the cloud, so why shouldn't you be able to access your documents anywhere you are connected to the cloud -- including your iPhone? Well, Google Docs viewing on the iPhone has been a bit kludgy ... until now.

Thanks to MiGhtyDocs (iTunes link), you are now free to roam about the office to view your Docs on the go. You can't edit and you can't view spreadsheets or presentations, but MiGhtyDocs does cache your documents for offline viewing.

This application just does one thing, and does it great. And did I mention that it's free? You can download MiGhtyDocs from the iTunes App Store today.

More Mac 101, TUAW tips for new and returning Mac users. If you're typing in a text field (in Safari, TextEdit, or most any Mac OS X app), you can press F5 while your cursor rests in a particular word to see a list of words that begin with the letters after the last space.

Holding down Option and Pressing Escape works, too.

So, for example, if you type create, you get a list of words including create, created, and creates.

If there are a lot of words in the list, it only shows the first 100 results, sorted alphabetically. The results come from Mac OS X's built-in dictionary.

This trick is useful for when you have a word on the tip of your tongue, need help with possessive apostrophes, or are stuck on a crossword clue.

[Via AppleGroup]

iPresentee, a small company providing themes and objects for Apple's iLife and iWeb software suites, is offering a free download of Keynote Objects.

Keynote Objects is a package of 100 attractive icon-like objects that can be used not only with Keynote, but also with Microsoft PowerPoint and Word. All of the objects have a transparent background, and are easily resized, rotated, made more or less transparent, or shadowed.

I'm actually going to use several of the objects as icons for a new web site that I'm designing, simply because they offer an attractive and cohesive set of art objects. What will you use your free Keynote Objects for?

If you've been cursing the big price tag and lack of VBA support in Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, OpenOffice.org is coming to your rescue. Last September, the OpenOffice.org dev team announced that they would be porting the suite to run natively on the Mac. Previous versions ran under the X11 environment, which not only hogged resources, but didn't have the Aqua look and feel we all love.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 is still beta, but a quick test-drive of the application showed that it is almost ready for prime time. OOo is a full-featured office suite, complete with word processor (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc), presentation package (Impress), drawing app (Draw), as well as database tools (Base) that are sadly lacking in other office suites.

The feature set of OpenOffice.org 3 is impressive:

• Imports Microsoft Office binary (.doc, .ppt, .xls) and Office 2007/Office 2008 for Mac (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx) files
• A solver component for solving optimization problems, something lacking in Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac
• Spreadsheet workbook sharing
• Display of multiple Writer pages while editing
• MS Office-like comments in Writer
• Limited VBA macro support -- which is still better than no support
• Extensibility with Mozilla Thunderbird and Lightning, Sun Wiki Publisher and Report Builder

The price of OpenOffice.org 3 is, as always, free! If you're up to test-driving beta ware that may not necessarily be as stable or fast as your other office suite(s), click here to be transported to the beta site.

When Microsoft released Office 2008 for Mac, they did something that I must applaud -- they joined the ranks of Mac developers creating Automator-able applications. When you do a search in Automator for "Microsoft," it will reveal all of the Automator actions that ship with Microsoft Office 2008. There is lots of great stuff included, so we'll be covering some of it in this four part Mac Automation series. I will take you through how to automate each of the Microsoft Office applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage.

First off, let's take a look at what you can automate in Word 2008. Doing a search for "Word" in Automator will display the available actions for Microsoft Word. As you can see, there are plenty of actions that you can automate. For this how-to, we'll focus on a workflow that does the following:

• Creates a new document
• Sets document properties
• Gathers text from the clipboard
  
• Places a watermark in the document
• Saves the document
• Prints the document

Continue reading to learn how to create this workflow.

Hey, you there! Yes, you, Microsoft Word user -- you in the blue shirt. Do you want to have the contents of your computer's memory overwritten with malicious code? Really... you sure? We could take care of that for you, no problem. Are you positive about this? Lots of people seem to enjoy having their memory overwritten with malicious code, so we thought you might... OK, OK, no need to get snippy about it.

If you're certain you don't want your memory overwritten (c'mon, think of it like a weekend in Cabo -- what harm could it do?) then perhaps we could interest you in the Microsoft Office 2004 11.3.8 updater, which patches a vulnerability in Word (also present in Word 2000 and Word XP, but not in 2003 or 2007) that could allow the aforementioned overwriting. It's a 9.1 MB download or you can snag it from Office's Microsoft Auto-Update tool. Note that this is a patch only for 11.3.7, just in case you're a bit behind on your update schedule. As an added treat, the update is available in eight languages. Nice.