eWEEK Labs Walk-through: Office 2008 for Mac

No Ribbons

Office 2008 for Mac uses tabs–not the ribbon that debuted in Office 2007–to organize functions. The suite also keeps the bulk of its functions accessible by drop-down menus, such as File, Edit and View.

Office 2008 for Mac includes the option to save files to PDF.

The Elements Gallery helps users quickly access a variety of tools by simply clicking through tabs.

Word’s newly introduced Document Elements toolbar helps users see the predesigned elements available to them, including cover pages, tables of contents, and headers and footers.

Premade templates for creating bibliographies and citations are new features in Word.

Users can quickly access tools to customize their spreadsheets via the Formatting Palette toolbar.

One of the brighter spots of Excel 2008 is the new Formula Builder tool, which provides a comprehensive list and explanation of all of Excel’s formula functions.

Users unfamiliar with a function can get a definition and other helpful information to better understand Excel’s formulas.

Users can now immediately start working in spreadsheets that have already been designed with formulas.

Ledger Sheets are the big new feature in Excel 2008. These templates offer pre-formulated cells so that novice Excel users can get an immediate handle on the application’s formula-driven tasks.

Still confused on a function? The Formula Builder tool further instructs users on functions, offering detailed explanations and examples.

The floating toolbar, a carry-over from Office 2004, allows users to customize objects in a spreadsheet.

The floating toolbar has been beefed up to let users customize documents by changing font size and style, and inserting bullet, border and paragraph styles.

The removal of Visual Basic means macros embedded in Excel can’t be read.

Users can now include animated effects to add pizzazz to presentations–for example, moving objects on and off a slide. These effects are similar to those found in the presentation applications of Apple’s iWork ’08 and OpenOffice.org’s OpenOffice 2.3.

SmartArt Graphics lets users select a variety of pre-designed graphic elements. Users can choose a design and easily add text to these blocks with the handy text pane.

Entourage 2008 still doesn-

The My Day interface appears even if Entourage is closed and displays a user’s calendar and to-do items.

Entourage 2008 can now launch meeting reminders and can keep multiple meeting participants in the loop as far as last-minute changes go.

Enhancements made to Entourage 2008 include beefed-up junk mail and phishing filters.