First Looks at Mac Microsoft Office 2008

Microsoft has given some websites the opportunity to test drive the upcoming Mac Office 2008 suite ahead of its official launch at Macworld Expo. Aside from Intel compatibility, Office 2008 also tries to reorganize the Office experience:

One of the goals for this release was to allow people to rediscover the power of Office, said Microsofts Han-Yi Shaw, lead program manager for Word, Compatibility, and User Experience. Sometimes we get requests from power users for features we already have.

APCMag explores some of the new features in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage.

- Word offers more desktop-publishing features, allowing easy document formatting
- Excel adds a new formula builder, increases max sizes of spreadsheets, but drops macro and Visual Basic support
- Powerpoint can create diagrams easily, Send to iPhoto which can be viewed on your iPod
- Entourage with improved Exchange connectivity, but still no encrypted MAPI mode

Macworld also has brief looks at Word 2008 and Excel 2008 with similar notes. Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac will officially launch during Macworld Expo which starts on January 14th, 2008.