Good to see someone like Kelly talking completely out of her backside.

Lest she forget, Microsoft actually created Word for use on Apple computers in the days when other PCs were either IBM or Atari, Amiga Commodore.

Er... isn't the Mac BU very profitable for Microsoft? So annoying Mac Office users is a good idea?

OK, a simple 40 page document and when I print it the "Page x of y" in the header shows "Page 1 of 1", "2 of 2", "3 of 3" instead of "1 of 40", "2 of 40" etc.

This bug has been around since at least Office 2000.

Normally it doesn't rear its ugly head until you hit say a 400 page monster.

We write large technical documents with lots of figures and tables. Word ALWAYS screws up eventually. Even if you use sub-documents.

Not to mention crashing, crashing and crashing again loading simple DOT templates that work fine for Office 2000, XP and 2003. I have to find someone with an old copy, have them save it to DOC and then re-create the DOT.

Of course, not one customer will accept the "Open" XML format.

Micro$soft, still working hard!

Microsoft Office? ... before handing over the dosh, try http://www.neooffice.org

'nuff said

i knew there was something missing on my mac...thanks bill and steve and all the hard working staff at microsoft, now i can use my mac for what it was invented for...writing letters and creating spreadsheets. yippee!

no, that's it, i can't keep it up...i detest them and all that microshite produces, may they rot in a mercury cesspit with their beige jumpers and 'hilarious' gates' leaving video....wankers.

>The first thing that any sane person forced to use Office 2008 does is to switch on "Always use [Office 2004] Compatability Mode", which means all your docs are saved in good old .doc format, which everyone can read. Why would anyone do differently?

yes - but - even on the Mac most people dont know their heads from.....

and MS sets the default to OXML (they do this on the trial versions too - both platforms)

So... until you actually send one of these to someone else you may not realize that it is indeed OXML, and if your running the trial version - which has expired..

Creek, boat - no paddle

Anonymous Coward, I just fixed this for a client. Try preferences - print - update fields. It's off for some reason by default.

WHAT is WRONG with RTF? Its open. Its an open standard. It ignores markup it hasn't been programmed to deal with. Its ASCII with markup and ANYTHING can be programmed to output it,

S A D.

Well, anyone writing such long documents in Word deserves what they get <shudder>

Anyway, who needs this thing on a Mac? Does any one work using one? C'mon! From the marketing I see all a Mac is good for is creating movies, editing pictures, music... Just look at that trendy yuff of the PC x Mac ads! Case closed.

RTF is NOT controlled by Microsoft. It is derived from Navy DIF markup and RTF allows ANYONE to add their own custom tags and markup. A bit like XML?

How your read, write and process this RTF markup is entirely up to you in the software you implement and like all text-based file formats you can apply substitution for the markup (\i could switch on bold instead of italic if you really wanted it to for example).

There is a core set of RTF markup commands which is added to and updated periodically (like every 5-10 years) but the rest of it is entirely up to you to play with.

It's incredibly simple, versatile and quite forgiving and has been a successful universal interchange format now for over 25 years.

You can store binary data in it too and it supports direct insertion or linking of external references and objects. In Base 64.

RTF is NOT controlled by Microsoft. It is derived from Navy DIF markup and RTF allows ANYONE to add thier own custom tags and markup. A bit like XML?

How your read, write and process this RTF markup is entirely up to you in the software you implement and like all text-based file formats you can apply substitution for the markup (\i could switch on bold instead of italic if you really wanted it to for example).

There is a core set of RTF markup commands which is added to and updated periodically (like every 5-10 years) but the rest of it is entirely up to you to play with.

It's incredibly simple, versatile and quite forgiving and has been a successful universal interchange format now for over 25 years.

You can store binary data in it too and it supports direct insertion or linking of external references and objects. In Base 64.