I seem to be spending an awful lot of time staring at the spinning wheel before having to forcibly quit the app. Even cutting and pasting seems to cause it all sorts of problems! Is it just me or is this quite common?

Hmm notice in the latest office update that ms have included some sort of error reporting tool which makes me think it’s very buggy.

It’s fine on my MBA, not quite so fine on my “normal” macbook. It’s a shitty application, truth be told and isn’t a patch on the Windows version.

Pick up a copy of Pages and Numbers, from the app store. Cheap, and work incredibly well with office documents. Alternatively install OpenOffice.

It is a PITA. Seems to work better on my mac mini than the macbook pro too, which is strange.

Tempted to go Pages and Numbers too. Do they work well with the newer docx and xlsx formats?

I’d use that or OpenOffice, but I work on a lot of documents created in Word/Excel so need really good comparability.

Did it work OK pre-Lion? I’m a newbie to OSX and went straight in with Lion. I’ve been surprised disappointed with how much I see the spinning ball (amongst other irritations).

Tempted to go Pages and Numbers too. Do they work well with the newer docx and xlsx formats?

Docx is fine, not tried xlsx – but Apple have worked hard to make them interchangeable, so should be ok.

Did it work OK pre-Lion?

Office on the Mac has always been crap. Always sucked memory, crashed, and generally sucked balls. Like most Microsoft offerings.

Don’t recall it being that bad, but I’m having to use it a lot more now than I did before I upgraded. I’ve not had a problem with anything other than office since upgrading to Lion.

is iPhoto OK? I can’t believe how poor that is. I think the QA department must have been off when that was developed

Office on the Mac has always been crap. Always sucked memory, crashed, and generally sucked balls. Like most Microsoft offerings.

2004 isn’t too bad, but I don’t do much serious work on it, as I’ve a work laptop anyway. I have heard horror stories about later versions so I’ve never upgraded.

Argh, it’s driving me mad, cut…. spinny wheel…

Go word -> preferences -> edit….then turn off use smart cut and paste

Thanks, shall give that a go. Did a fresh install of lion and office last night and things seem a bit better but not used it much yet.

Funny you should mention iPhoto… Had the toughest time yesterday trying to empty the trash (iPhoto trash, not normal trash). In the end, it was one corrupt photo I’d deleted. PITA… No way round it but to crop the corrupt bit out then delete it (and the other photos in the trash) one by one.

Not had a problem with Office 2011 yet, but then all I’ve done is write a couple of presentations and half a short story on it.

Funny you should mention iPhoto

It could be great, but never in my life have I ever used such an irritating bit of software that at every turn surprises me with some other ridiculous ill-designed or badly-tested “feature”. I basically don’t trust it with my photos and keep hoping/waiting for an upgrade. Sadly word on t’interweb is that lots of people find it a pile of carp. Picasa “just works”