With rare exceptions, the only Microsoft application I use is Excel, and I use it a lot. I’ve been using Office '98, and it’s sufficient for what I do.
Since I work on a G5 Mac with OS 10.4, I decided to upgrade all my software, including the new Office. What I’m experiencing is:
Text looks blurry, regardless of my screen resolution or font.
I’ve lost the ability for fractional text sizes.
Really bizarre kerning in almost every font (like the equivalent of a word space after lower-case r’s).
Is there any way to resolve these issues, other than going back to '98?
Is your standard font set as verdana? It should be, but just checking. I use Excel 2004 all day long (in fact most folks here do) on Macs without the problems you described.
Even at home where I upgraded from Office 98 to Office X to Office 2004 on an old G4 tower, I don’t have any problems.
It sounds like ClearType is turned on. See if you can dig around in Excel or Windows and turn it off (assuming it’s an option, I know it is in the new IE7)
I haven’t had any problems with Excel (as with the OP, it represents my sole Microsoft product in my Applications folder); I’m running 10.4.8 and my Excel is “v.x, Service Pack 1”; yours is probably more recent than that, and it’s always possible they screwed something up, but the Mac business unit is actually pretty good. I suspect I’d have heard some screaming on the Mac boards if they’d messed Excel up.