Office 2013 for mac.

"If for example we needed to communicate for whatever reason and I sent you a file in .docx format, Microsoft Word 2008, wouldn't be able to open it."

Yes, it can. It is native in 2008.

JayTelford wrote:

If for example we needed to communicate for whatever reason and I sent you a file in .docx format, Microsoft Word 2008, wouldn't be able to open it.

That (as barney said) is incorrect, O2008 suppurts .docx, xlsx etc.

You would then have to e-mail me asking for the document in a different format. I would then have to recreate the document in a format that you were able to open and send it back to you. This would all have to be done by e-mail because Office 2008 cant integrate with SkyDrive and although it does have some collaboration tools, the tools it possesses (in my opinion) are now antiquated because the technology has moved on so much.

Skydrive can be mounted as a drive, and Office 2008 can save, open and edit ffiles on it.

I was never able to open .docx files in 2008. Whenever I created something and saved it, it saved as a .doc and if I did something in Office 2007 on a windows machine and saved it as .docx, it wouldn't open on my Mac. That problem was solved when I upgraded to Office 2011 for Mac. I just assumed all this time that it was a shortcoming of Office 2008 and now you tell me that I should have been able to do this all along.

That means I must have had a corrupted install or something and I was obviously not getting the best out of Office 2008. Clearly my judgement was clouded because of this and most probably more so because at the time of installing 2008 (when it was first released) I didn't have much Mac experience. I've have a lot more experience now and a new Mac with a properly installed Office 2011, which I don't like.

Anyway although I stand by what I said about a subscription being better value for money, I will bow out of the comments about Office 2008 because it seems that I hadn't installed it properly, or did something to it during my early explorations of the Mac ecosystem.

JayTelford wrote:

I was never able to open .docx files in 2008.

Works for me no problem. .docx is Word 2008's natiive format, just as .xslx is Excel 2008's

I can confirm:

Word 2008 will open .docx files and will also save them as .docx files. Same goes for Excel.

I’m confused. If you buy Office 365 are you getting a local client like Mac office 2011 which I have and Outlook doesn’t work with the Apple ecosystem for sync or do you get a web based client.

And doe it include Outlook and does Outlook sync with the Mac ecosystem.

You get both. Local apps to install on your Mac and web based access through Skydrive.

The local app is Outlook 2011, the webapps are not compatible with iCloud.

OK. In some ways it’s a deal however, Outlook is using the old Activesync tech which Apple doesn’t support. Bottom line - you can’t sync Outlook to Calendars and Contacts which is essential.

I look at a product call Sync Mate and it sounded perfect. But it didn’t work and really messed up my system for the first time in three years.

I don’t know why Microsoft isn’t supporting Cardav and Caldav. They’re doing it so old school.

I got my money back on 2011 as it was expensive for something that didn’t work.

I receive my iCloud mail using Outlook, the sync is not working with my Contacts.

Yeah. Mail is fine. However, Contacts, Calendars and Reminders - nope. I haven’t found a way.

Kerry

Microsoft do support CalDav and CardDav, but only on Windows.

Yeah however that’s not of much use to us Mac folk. They’re really slow in adopting this. Apple outlined this direction I think at least 3 years ago. That’s pretty slow. I can think of a few companies that didn’t adapt and they are no more. Microsoft has such deep pockets they can do this.

However, thank God the board finally got rid of Ballmer. Could there be hope for us after all.

I'm not syncing Outlook contacts, but I can guarantee you that Outlook calendar does sync with OSX/iOS Calendar. I use it for work everyday and everything I input into Outlook calendar shows up on my MacBook and iPhone/iPad Calendar.

I'm guessing you have to be doing this through Exchange. That works. Not icloud though. Very few people have access to an Exchange server.