Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 2

On July 20, 2009 Microsoft released an update to their Office 2008 for Mac software package. The update is said to make Office for Mac “speedier” and “more reliable”. (read)

One of the most interesting parts of this update was their added “Document Connection” application. This application attempts to provide an interface for accessing documents on Microsoft’s Sharepoint and Live Workspace. Previously, the recommended way to use Sharepoint was via Internet Explorer. On a Mac, of course, you can only access IE in Windows and this has potential to lead to performance issues.

Though Document Connection is far from perfect, it does allow you to do some things that were before difficult or impossible from Mac OS X. With Document Connection you can edit Sharepoint documents without having to download, edit, and then re-upload them. First you must add a Sharepoint document library as a source.

You will then be able to “Edit” the library’s files “in place” as they appear in the library (assuming you have the proper permissions to do so). To edit a document, you must select the document you would like to edit and click the “Edit” button on the toolbar. If you would like to edit the item in a program other than the default you can right click the item and choose “Edit with…” from the context menu.

Document Connection also supports document “Check Out / In”. To do so, you simple choose the document you would like to check and either perform the action from the toolbar or the right click menu.

There is some functionality that you may expect, but for whatever reason is not supported by Document Connection. Firstly, there does not appear to be any way to delete documents from a Sharepoint library. The “Discard” option in the toolbar and right click menu is not used for deleting files. It is a way of essentially “throwing away” changes that you have made to a checked out item. The Edit > Delete menu item, though present, does not seem to function either. I would recommend working with a Safari or Firefox window opened to your document library so that you can delete files as needed.

Next, the “New File” item in the toolbar doesn’t seem to function the way you might expect. It seems to simply open an empty Word document so that you can start writing. There is does not seem to be a way of saving this document directly into Document Connection. To upload a new or existing file to a document library you have connected to, you can choose “Add File” from the toolbar and browse to your file’s location.

Another functionality that Document Control does not support is the editing of regular lists. If you try to add a list as a site source you will see bizarre, uneditable files something like the below screenshot.

Finally, I have found no way to create a new folder in a document library from within Document Connection. Again, my recommendation is to work with a browser window opened to your document library so that you can create and delete items as needed.

If you like to download this update, you can either get the update directly* from Microsoft with “Microsoft AutoUpdate”.

* Click “Finder” on the dock. Choose the menu item “Go > Go to Folder…” and paste “/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/MAU2.0/” into the dialog.