Further to our previous discussion on FMP8.5 and MS Word
compatibility, today the MacFixIt site (http://www.macfixit.com)
reports the following:
As previously reported,Microsoft will drop support for Visual Basic
macros in Office 2008 for Mac OS X. We subsequently reported that
this state of affairs means that Office 2004 with the addition of an
official converter for Open XML documents (due in beta form for Mac
OS X this Spring) may remain the most cross-platform compatible
version of Office in existence.
We have now confirmed with Microsoft representatives that macros will
indeed survive the translation process offered by the converter. In
other words, users will be able to run an Office 2007 for Windows
documents with Visual Basic macros through the Mac OS X translator
then open the documents in Office 2004 for Mac OS X and retain the
macros.
As such, albeit far from ideal, running Office 2004 (either under
Rosetta on Intel-based Macs or natively on PowerPC-based Macs) in
tandem with the forthcoming translators will be the only option for
users who absolutely need to retain compatibility with Visual Basic
macros.
Saludos,
Patricio Mason
Santiago, Chile
www.ics.cl
