Office 2008 SP1

[Pat McMillan]

Hi,

As many of you may have noticed, today we announced the release of Office
2008 SP1 (as well as an update to Office 2004). Both downloads are available
on the Mactopia site:

Office 2004 for Mac 11.4.2 Update (KB 952332)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=99F54471-CCF9-4D94-
A882-A05ECD128ADC

Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 1 (12.1.0) (KB 952331)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=395D1487-A3A6-4106-
A0F8-4D6E1D6D89D2

We're hoping to make both downloads available via Microsoft AutoUpdate soon.
We've addressed a very large number of issues in Excel in the 2008 update
(many of which came to our attention via this newsgroup), so we hope you
will install the update and let us know how it works for you. We will be
continuing to monitor this forum to watch for feedback, so please keep it
coming.

Thanks,

Pat

 

[Eric Waldbaum [MSFT]]

I also want to encourage everyone to upgrade to SP1. There have been a lot
of fixes (like custom error bars in charts are now in Office 2008!). More
information on fixes is at: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952331/en-us.
Enjoy and keep sending the helpful feedback!

-Eric
MacOffice Testing
Microsoft

This was a big update

 

[Ed]

Hi,

As many of you may have noticed, today we announced the release of Office
2008 SP1 (as well as an update to Office 2004). Both downloads are available
on the Mactopia site:

Office 2004 for Mac 11.4.2 Update (KB 952332)http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=99F54471-CCF...
A882-A05ECD128ADC

Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 1 (12.1.0) (KB 952331)http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=395D1487-A3A...
A0F8-4D6E1D6D89D2

We're hoping to make both downloads available via Microsoft AutoUpdate soon.
We've addressed a very large number of issues in Excel in the 2008 update
(many of which came to our attention via this newsgroup), so we hope you
will install the update and let us know how it works for you. We will be
continuing to monitor this forum to watch for feedback, so please keep it
coming.

Thanks,

Pat

--
Pat McMillan
Macintosh Business Unit
Microsoft Corp.
This posting is provided ³AS IS² with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Thanks, Pat. A more stable Excel is great. But, I really need Virtual
Basic for Applications pronto. Given the announcement that MS will
reinstate VBA in the next version of Excel, does that mean I'll have
to use Excel 2004 until the next version of Office (Office 2011 or
2012!)? Or, will the Mac BU delight the Mac community by restoring
this critical application in 2008 SP2?

Ed

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Ed -

You can't just stick VBA support into Office 2008 by way of an update

It won't be back until version "Next" (14.0), whenever that arrives in
[guessing here] 2-3 years.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Juergen Fenn]

You can't just stick VBA support into Office 2008 by way of an update

It won't be back until version "Next" (14.0), whenever that arrives in
[guessing here] 2-3 years.

So if someone depends on VBA he will best advised to keep using Office
2004 for a while. Whereas to me the absence of VBA was quite welcome
because VBA malware won't do harm to my machine if there is no
environment available it needs to run on.

Jürgen.

 

[realdiver]

Thanks for the update! I have installed it but am still getting verrrrrrrrry slllllllow performance with any worksheet conaining a chart. Very slow to scroll past the chart, very slow to edit a chart when chart has been clicked upon, and very slow to save/open a worksheet containing a chart. This is very similar behaviour that office2007 (for pc) initialy exhibited b4 its first patch

regards

Steve

 

[Todd Aton]

Hi Ed,

The Mac community should expect that we'll deliver VBA in the next major
release of Office, as announced.

I saw that Neil Ticktin wrote an article for MacTech Magazine that might be
useful to you in helping you determine what you need with respect to VBA and
Office versions.

Here is a link to the article:

http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.24/24.07/OfficeScriptingAdvisor/

Todd Aton
Macintosh Business Unit
Microsoft Corporation

Microsoft makes no warranties, express, implied or statutory, as to the
information in this post.

 

[Pat McMillan]

Hi Ed,

Per our official announcement on the return of VB, we will be bringing it
back in the next major version of Office, not in an update to Office 2008.
I'm sure we would bring it back sooner if we could, but the task is pretty
monumental, so you will have to wait for the next version.

Thanks,

Pat

 

[hank]

Man, do I wish I'd ignored this advice. After applying the update, my
primary spreadsheet crashes Excel. Every. Damn. Time. I update one
field, and notice that nothing else is updating. If I change anything
else, crash! Excel has gone from annoying (a series of inaccurate
"out of memory" and "too many font" popups) to completely useless.
Wish I'd never upgraded from the pre-Intel version.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Man, do I wish I'd ignored this advice. After applying the update, my
primary spreadsheet crashes Excel. Every. Damn. Time. I update one
field, and notice that nothing else is updating. If I change anything
else, crash! Excel has gone from annoying (a series of inaccurate
"out of memory" and "too many font" popups) to completely useless.
Wish I'd never upgraded from the pre-Intel version.

Sounds like your "primary spreadsheet" has significant corruption.

Is your primary spreadsheet a .xls or .xlsx file?

If it's .xls, can you do a Save As to .xlsx (and then Save As back to
..xls if necessary)?

Have you tried (with XL closed) deleting XL preferences (stored in the

com.microsoft.Excel.plist

file in the

~:LIbraryreferences:

folder, where ~ is your home directory)?

 

[Pat McMillan]

This is the first report of this problem, so hopefully, it's not widespread.
Is there any chance you could either 1) send me a copy of the workbook
that's causing the crash or 2) when Excel crashes click More Information...
In the Microsoft Error Reporting window, then copy the entire crash log and
send it to me ([email protected])? I hope we can get to the bottom of
this fast.

Thanks,

Pat

 

[PaulT]

I was using Excel 2008 under Leopard just fine, then I installed the Office SP1 update. Now when I try to start Excel it crashes (during the splash screen). I had it send the error report and also attached it. PowerPoint and Entourage won't open either; Word opens, but crashes when I close it.

 

[MacAllan]

After installing the SP1 update, I am unable to access excel preferences, I am ok for word,powerpoint and entourage.

I have tried unlocking in mac preferences and unlocking excel through the info panel that comes up when you right click on the excel.app icon.

Do I have to uninstall excel 2008 and then start again.

Any help would be appreciated as the improvements made in SP1 appear to solve my concerns from the original set-up

 

[Pat McMillan]

Can you please explain what you mean by unable to access Excel preferences?
What happens when you go to Excel's preferences dialog? Are preferences
there grayed out? Are you able to set them in the dialog but they don't take
effect? Have you tried repairing permissions on your machine?

Thanks,

Pat

 

[allan]

Hi Pat;

I cannot get the preferences to open/load, they are bold as if available.

When you use "apple," to attempt to open, the certain words on the task bar flash bright and then back to normal.

How do you repair permissions?

Thanks

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Do I have to uninstall excel 2008 and then start again.

Absolutely not - reinstalling almost never solves anything. Applications
just don't corrupt.

Any help would be appreciated as the improvements made in SP1 appear to solve
my concerns from the original set-up

Instead, with XL closed, try deleting the XL prefs

~:Libraryreferences:com.microsoft.Excel.plist

where ~ is your home directory.

 

[Pat McMillan]

If John's suggestion to delete the Excel preferences doesn't help, you can
try repairing permissions on your machine by launching Disk Utility in the
Applications/Utilities folder, selecting the active drive, and selecting
"Verify Disk Permissions" to verify or "Repair Disk Permissions" to repair.

 

[allan]

I tried deleting the .plist as suggested and the problem continues.

Just to be clear, when in excel I hold apple+, I am not able to access the various preference choices and certain items in various task bars at top and bottom of the page go bold for the second that I hit apple+,

Yo ask, where is my home directory, could you please e more specific?

 

[allan]

Hi Pat;

I took your suggestion and verified and repaired disc permissions, no change in my ability to access Preferences in Excel.

Any other ideas?

As a former windows guy, I found it necessary to un-install and re-install several applications.

Thanks for your help
Allan

 

[Joe_LeBlanc]

I was using Excel 2008 under Leopard just fine, then I installed the Office SP1 update. Now when I try to start Excel it crashes (during the splash screen). I had it send the error report and also attached it. PowerPoint and Entourage won't open either; Word opens, but crashes when I close it.

Paul: If this is still happening, you can try the steps listed here for troubleshooting crashes on launch due to preference problems: <http://word.mvps.org/mac/Word2008Issues.html#LaunchCrash> Just apply the same steps to the preferences for Excel

-Joe LeBlanc
MacBU Excel team