It sounds like with microsoft word 2008 vba will be limited....

Why not side step this issue altogether?

Is it possible to create a word editor within the archioffice framework? I believe other similar database programs have already implemented something similar.

In our original version of ArchiOffice (v1), we had all documents created within ArchiOffice. However, many customers asked that we not do this since the editing ability within FileMaker Pro is limited and not as robust as MSWord. Also, many firms had existing documents that they wanted to continue to use.MSWord also allowed them to email a document to someone outside the company for their editing and then return it to ArchiOffice. So we decided to give in and let MSWord be the standard.

However, it appears that Microsoft is not being friendly to the Mac's anymore with their decision to remove VBA from Word 2008 which means we will need to find another solution to documents with ArchiOffice v9 (in development).

How about Open Office/Star Office?...

Thanks for suggesting this. A number of users of the past couple of years have also asked us to use Open Office. We are indeed looking into this now.
Thanks again.
Steve

We have just recently upgraded from Office X to Office 2008 for the Mac and we are running into this very issue. Word 2008 recommends AppleScript as a potential replacement for VBA.

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/developers/default.mspx

AppleScript seems to doing duty syncing emails and events with Entourage. Would you not be able to accomplish the same with Word 2008?

Although I don't think supporting an open suite is a bad idea, I should think continued support for MS Word is pretty key and achievable. I'm also skeptical that a built-in solution would be adequate. This is database software.

Finally, I apologize if this critique is unjustified and all efforts were made on the part of Orange Loft, but I believe an email or a bulletin to your customers regarding this issue would have been appreciated as soon as it was known by Orange Loft. You have our contact info. It's in the database? ;)

Macro driven document creation is a fairly large subset of AO's tools. Maybe even part of one's justification for purchase. And it's suddenly gone. With nary a word. I'm not sure how Jim Davis became aware of it, but we only became aware after the fact.

Thanks for the opportunity to communicate.

Ben

Our office was talking about this yesterday, heres our take on it.
1.Integrated data base is theoretically better but we don't think it there yet. Legacy is our big issue, what if your database system of choice goes bust in 5 years, not a nice scenario. Integration is fraught with danger if you can not easily export to another format.External files allow for easy change down the track.
2. Word + excel files are easy for us to customise.
3. You are always going to have external data, ie/ Revit files.
4.We changed our practice over to open office. Its free, its open source and in my opinion better + its not part of MS.

Ben's comments and criticisms are right-on. You are correct that we should have sent an announcement as soon as we learned of the problem with Office 2008. We did finally get around to mass emailing our customers only this morning. No excuse, but we were moving our CRM database from one application to another and had not yet set up our ability to mass email until last night. From now on, we'll be more on the ball.

We also believe that ArchiOffice will need to use AppleScript to handle the MSWord/Excel integration. We have no plans to abandon them since they are the industry standards. We expect this to be included in ArchiOffice v9. We are also looking into Open Office.

Steve
We received your newsletter today that listed features you expect to include in the next version of AO. It did not list anything about applescript support for MS Office 2008. You indicated in earlier posts in this blog that this was something that will be worked on. Can you clarify your progress on this issue. It is a very critical one for our firm.
I was very relieved to see that you plan on providing the ability to work in AO over the internet. That is one of the steps backward that we have taken by implementing AO at our firm. Previously it was very easy to connect to the firm's server via a wifi hotspot or a client's office network to retrieve documents that one forgot to bring along to a meeting OR to work from home or a hotel room.
Looking forward to these key improvements.

Steve,

As a potential buyer of AO, I wondered if you have considered creating a "lite" version for support staff/receptionist type employees.

Thanks.

Darren,

We are plqnning two widgets. One will allow employees to track time and expenses and the other will allow employees to access the contacts module. These widgets will read data from the full version of ArchiOffice as well as allow you to add new data to these modules. These widgets are not expected to be ready until 2009.

Steve