Help? Will Office 2008 Mac ever be back to “normal” productivity?
7 February 20082 days into the upgrade. I’m still not finished getting “up to speed”. There are a few features that, as with many upgrades of Microsoft, just didn’t jive. While I never want to bash a software, company, or anyone on my blog, I do want to share my experience, since, it’s only been 2 days to get the upgrade straightened out…. and I’m still stumbling….
The system…. Powerbook G4, 17″, 3-4 years ago Mac, Upgraded Ram, Old enough that only one USB port is USB 2 (and of course it’s the one my iphone and mouse fight over)… Office 2004, previously used - the whole system was previously used. Which, being a girl of adaptability - hey if Adobe CS3 products that I use daily (illustrator, InDesign & Photoshop) work, then I won’t complain…. ahem… so basically this is your off the shelf system with OS X jaguar.
The Email… Microsoft Exchange Server (x2 accounts, 4 pop accounts, and some older out dated pop accounts) grand total 4G…
A bit about me.. software savvy, heavy internet user, cmd+p heavy hitter, not afraid to press that button… or try that sript… oops.. did i do that, it’s ok, i’ll just reboot.. it’s a mac… disorganized desktop, with multiple folders labeled: crap on desktop1, 2, 3… and heavy on the screen shots… what was that dialog again? oh let me pull up the natural reaction screen shot I took… mmm.. lovin Snap Z….
The upgrade… So after a long hard day of work, I decided to upgrade. Upgrading shouldn’t be too bad, I backed up my email, prayed my MS office documents didn’t corrupt and pressed the install button… clicked through some dialogs… whew my machine is upgradeable…. and waited…. installer run time… 10 minutes. Once finished, I noticed that it conveniently put the application icons on my doc for me. Awe, I’m a happy girl! One less thing to do!
Then, I actually tried to use Entourage. This is where my biggest fear lies… Will it rememeber all my calendar notices? Will it behave properly with the exchange server calendars, will it remember my rules, my projects, color schema, and most importantly… will it still read ALL my emails? will I be able to find all my emails at the click of search bar?
Wait.. There’s a dialog.. it says… converting email… comforting… 45 minutes later… it’s still converting…..
Then sometime over night, it decides to say my email is corrupt and cannot be fixed without running the database recovery tool…. So i’m thinking… well it can’t hurt to try it…. 3 hours, some interesting dialogs later… my entourage is up and running…. mostly….oh, but of my measly 10GB left, I only have 2GB after this stuff… so my 4GB email, is now, 16?
But you see, I’m a big believer in - if it’s not broke don’t fix it… so… then I look at my inboxes… there’s only 3, and about 40 folders that automatically filter my email for me… yeah um… something didn’t happen here… my inboxes are full of emails…. that should have been applied to rules…. ACK! my rules didn’t convert! oh man… ok, my IT dept confirms that this is a normal problem… but with time fixable… (with time!)
Then, I opened Excel…And Powerpoint…. and Crashed them both, while actually admitting I thought they opened up faster than ever…. And that is as far as I’ve gotten. I depend on these softwares…
So, can anyone tell me how long it took them to get “back to normal” after their Mac 2008 Office Upgrade?