Office 2008 for Mac Released

By Greg McNevin

January 17, 2008: After a wait of nearly four years since the last version, this week’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco has seen Microsoft release a new version of its dominating office suite, Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac.

The company claims it has tried to make this version of office more “Mac like” on the interface side, and says that this version comes with a wealth of new features such as the Embedded Toolbar and Elements Gallery, which streamlines the look and functionality between applications.

The new version supports Microsoft's Office Open XML file format, as well as older formats such as .DOC, .XLS and .PPT. It is not currently known if the suite supports the open source OpenDocument format.

The suite runs on Macs sporting Power PC-based or Intel CPUs, and comes features mainstay applications Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage, as well as Microsoft Exchange Server, Automator tools and a new application called My Day that Microsoft claims “allows users to track professional and personal priorities to stay on top of daily activities regardless of which application they are working in.”

The new core version of Office for Mac will be generally available on January 31 for an expected $649. Other versions such as the $229 Student version (which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and a basic version of Entourage) and a $849 Media Edition, which includes a digital media management system, will also be available. Cheaper upgrade versions of the Core and Media editions will also be available.

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