Lion/iCloud prep re: MS Office 2004 and other software

I have the same question 🙂

- Am I understanding correctly that MS Office 2004 will not work in Lion? So I have to buy Office 2011 or download OpenOffice, is that correct?

Correct. Office 2004 is PowerPC code only. Anything written that way will not run under Lion as all PPC support has been eliminated. Intel code or no workee.

Sorry, can't help on any of the other questions.

To address some of your concerns...

A newer version of Office (2008 or 2011), the iWork apps, or one of the free open source suites like OpenOffice or LibreOffice are all that you would need to be able to continue accessing your files. Depending on the file, though, if you open it with a non-Office app, some formatting may not be preserved. If Office-to-Office sharing is of the utmost importance, I'd recommend spending the dough on the real thing.

Contact and calendar sharing works seamlessly between my MacBook Pro and my iPhone using iCloud. I don't have a ".mac" email account so I can't comment on the email aspect of iCloud. And, yes, the calendar synching won't work between Lion and an older OS. One option to consider is that your husband could access iCloud via a web browser and manage calendars there. He just wouldn't be able to sync directly with his iCal app.

This link may be helpful:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4929?viewlocale=en_US

Nashwgrrl, I'm still working through the conversion question also, same basic reasons. By now you've probably been searching the discussions and gotten more details, but it's still useful to collect them.

1. If you run system profiler (you can get there from "about this mac" and then "more info") and choose applications it will create a list of all the applications you've got, and there's a column for "kind" -- anything that says PowerPC is from the old processors and only works through Snow Leopard by way of the translator Rosetta. All of Office 2004 will show up in your list but you might discover other software as well, Rosetta has clearly been an amazingly clean and quiet piece of work and we never had to think about it. Some applications have come out with Lion versions by now (Quicken was a biggie for many people), others haven't.

2. About iCloud, Roger Wilmut has posted at various locations in these discussions and he has a tremendously helpful website here: http://www.wilmut.webspace.virginmedia.com/notes/icloudSL.html (and browse around for other tips). If you want apple-supported syncs, you need to follow the apple-pied-piper and upgrade everything... but your husband might be able to use the workarounds.

3. Your actual files from Office 2004 should be OK in Office 2011, but if you relied on any more arcane features you should check the discussions on microsoft's support site (there's a mac section). On the other hand remember that nothing from 2004 will run once you're on Lion (including the program that removes Office 2004). It looks to me as though upgrading Office while you're still on SL is the best plan. (It's worth noting anyway that for ordinary-ish files, the iWork programs will open and also export in solid microsoft format. But iWork doesn't do everything Office does.)

4. Things on Mobile Me you will lose: web site, photo gallery albums from iPhoto, iDisk... the services are not parallel. If you used iDisk (etc) make sure you've copied everything before you switch to iCloud. Apple has conversion instructions for the things that do happen on iCloud, just not so much on the disappearing features.

5. I haven't yet read through the discussions of wiping the disk and doing a clean install of Lion (vs just upgrading) but it seems some people are recommending it more strongly than in an average upgrade (it's never a bad idea).

Any other collected wisdom out there?