Those of you who are upgrading from Office 2004 have a treat in store! Office 2008 is more powerful than its predecessor, as well as easier and more intuitive to use. Here are lists of the new features of Office 2008 that you will learn about in Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Step by Step or its accompanying Web articles.
Office Toolbox. Common to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, the Toolbox contains most of the tools you will use for tasks such as formatting and inserting graphics.
Elements Gallery. Another common feature, you use this gallery to perform many tasks in all three programs.
Themes. These enable you to create documents, worksheets, and presentations with a common look.
SmartArt graphics. With the new SmartArt feature, you can create professional-looking diagrams of processes and relationships in any document, worksheet, or presentation.
New file formats (Office Open XML Formats). These file formats make it easy to share files with Windows-based computers, as well as reduce file sizes and improve data recovery.
Publishing Layout view. In this new environment for desktop publishing, you can use professionally designed templates and powerful layout tools to create sophisticated Word publications.
Notebook Layout view. This view has been enhanced so that you can personalize your Word notebooks.
Document elements. You can quickly add preformatted elements, such as cover pages, headers and footers, and tables of contents to your documents.
Mail merge. An improved and streamlined Mail Merge Manager now makes it easy to quickly merge documents and data to produce customized mass mailings.
Bigger sheets. You have more than 1 million rows and more than 16 thousand columns to play with!
New charting features. Now you can use advanced formatting options to create precisely the effect you want.
Formula Builder. This powerful tool helps you create formulas without stressing about function names and syntax.
Formula AutoComplete. You type the beginning of a formula and then choose from valid options. It’s that simple!
New themes, layouts, and Quick Styles. With these professionally designed formatting options, you can quickly produce visually exciting slides that will catch your audience’s attention.
Special effects. When you need to add even more pizzazz, you can add effects such as 3-D, bevels, gradients, reflections, shadows, and glows.
Table styles. You can use dynamic, built-in table styles to instantly format table headings, columns, and rows so that the information displayed in the table is easier to read and interpret.
Custom slide layouts. If none of the existing slide layouts precisely fits your needs, you can easily create your own and specify the content placeholders, background, color scheme, and graphics you want.
Information management. Spotlight search, categories, and the Favorites Bar are among the many features you can use to find, organize, and filter Entourage items.
Meeting management. Setting up and updating meetings, accepting or declining meeting invitations, and communicating with participants is now easier with the new Calendar interface.
Out of Office messages. You can schedule internal and external messages to occur automatically without having to specifically turn them on and off. (Available only for Exchange accounts.)
Junk and phishing message protection. New detection capabilities and protection levels help you make your e-mail more secure than in earlier Entourage versions.