Does Office for Mac 2008 work on Mountain Lion?

Office 2008 works on Lion and Mountain Lion. Office versions earlier than 2008 do not work.

One question, as there are only 2 possible answers (it works or it does not work) what was the third answer?

Yes, it will work with Mountain Lion. However, its continuing reliability is waning, so I recommend you might upgrade to Office 2011 or you can consider these options:

You can try the freeware suite, Libre Office, that is functionally similar to Office 2007 for Windows except it works on Lion/Mountain Lion. Note that this and following options are not 100% compatible with Office.

You may want to consider as well:

These two suites are similar to Libre Office but not as current or as well-supported:

NeoOffice

Open Office

And, then there is Apple's iWork suite:

Pages - word processing and layout

Keynote - presentation

Numbers - spreadsheet

Each can open and save Office compatible files. They may be purchased separately via the Mac App Store for $19.99 each.

As for other software, any PPC-based software will not run in Lion or Mountain Lion because Rosetta is no longer part of OS X. You will need to upgrade to Intel versions of the software.

(Access to the Mac App Store requires Snow Leopard 10.6.6 or higher and an Apple ID.)

Kappy wrote:

And, then there is Apple's iWork suite:

Pages - word processing and layout

Keynote - presentation

Numbers - spreadsheet

Each can open and save Office compatible files. They may be purchased separately via the Mac App Store for $19.99 each.

iWorks apps can not save in MS Office formats, they can only save in their native formats. But (with an extra step or 2) they can export to MS Office formats (what a PITA)

🙂

The iWorks apps can export in Office formats.

Allan

Allan Eckert wrote:

The iWorks apps can export in Office formats.

Allan

That would be why I said

But (with an extra step or 2) they can export to MS Office formats (what a PITA)

Missed that by the way you phrased it. I thought you were saying the invert of what you were actually saying.

Allan

In other words, they can "save" in Office formats.

Only by taking additional steps, which makes them waste time, add that to the mediocre compatibiity and the fact that they cost money ...........

There are free alternatives that make better Office substitutes.

This is not to say iWorks is a poor suite, it's very good, just not as a substitute for MS Office 🙂

(About half of my staff use Macs, many use iWorks, I have to constantly remind them that project data must be Office compatible for the other half, most use Libre Office and there is no problem, a small minority insist on sending .numbers files claiming that they forgot to export/were in a hurry etc. So I dock them for the extra time) Actually I dock them for proselytizing on Apples behalf while on my nickel, but you get the point

Just give iWorks the option to select MS Office formats as a default save option.

Csound1 wrote:

Only by taking additional steps, which makes them waste time, add that to the mediocre compatibiity and the fact that they cost money ...........

I'd rather pay for Pages/Numbers/Keynote than clunking around with any of the *Office bundles. None of them impressed me all that much.

I have 20 years investment into Excel, using functions (mainly VBA) that do not exist in Numbers, when Apple give Numbers real 'crunching' ability I would change. Right now it is a toy.

I do use Pages and Keynote but neither of them are in any way superior to Libre or Open Office, except maybe 'prettyness'

If all you do is run the family budget Numbers is fine, unfortunately if you want to monitor and adjust things in realtime Excel still rules the roost (Windows version only, the Mac version of Excel is no better than Numbers)

I would rather pay for something that does what I need in order for me to get paid, not some home spreadsheet with a nice interface.

Add VBA and the ability to save in the most common spreadsheet format in existence and I will buy 22 copies of Numbers instead of just one.

Ignoring the ubiquity of the Office file formats is just posturing.

Liz, there is a good site to see about "compatibility" with Lion and Mountain Lion:

www.roaringapps.com.

Check there whether the apps you have and need are ready for Mountain Lion.

Lex

Liz400 wrote:

Thinking about upgrading from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion on MacBook Pro. Have Office 2008 for Mac running currently. Will it work on the Mountain Lion OS? I went to Apple and have gotten three different answers.

YES!