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May 13, 2008

software

Microsoft services Office 2008, promises return of Visual Basic

Posted May. 13, ’08, 8:04 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Software

Office 2008Hold onto your hats, folks: here comes the first update for Microsoft Office 2008. The folks in Redmond have shipped out Service Pack 1, featuring bug fixes and performance improvements for all the apps in the suite. The update will be available for download from Microsoft’s site later today.

Here’s just a taste of the kind of sexiness you can expect from SP1: “Microsoft says the service pack will improve performance when you type text into a text box, shape, or chart element.” That’s right, baby. After almost twenty years of Microsoft Office, they’ve finally got that typing thing licked.

Microsoft also fixed an issue with removing copies of Office from Time Machine backups, a layer bug with inserted PSD files, and a crashing issue when you tried to copy data from Office 2008 into Office 2004. And there was also a veritable encyclopedia of fixes for all the individual apps: fixing problems with Notebook view in Word, improved support for secondary displays in Excel, speed and stability fixes for printing in PowerPoint, and better junk filtering for Entourage. For a more in-depth list of changes, check out the mothership.

But that’s not the only big news to come out of MS today. The company also announced that they’ve changed their corporate hive mind and decided to restore support for Visual Basic in Office. Well, the next major version anyway. Which probably won’t be until 2010 or 2011. If you’re looking to cope in the meantime, our colleague Rob Griffiths has some tips on how to get by.


1 Comments

Dave-O said:

Like I said, they dropped VBA because they're a bunch of whiny fourth graders who don't want to do their homework. Now they're going to turn their work in 3 years late.

May 13, 2008 2:17 PM

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