Office 2004 mainstream support extended to January '12
As you probably recall, Microsoft dropped Visual Basic from Office for the Mac with Office 2008. At the time, I was working for a company that had a huge investment in systems that relied on Visual Basic, and that change was a real blow. In fact, we didn't upgrade past Office 2004 just to avoid trouble and plan our next step.
If anyone else is using Office 2004 for that reason, here's a thin shard of hope for you. This week, Microsoft's Office for Mac Team announced that mainstream support or Office '04, scheduled to end on October 13, 2009, will be extended through January 10, 2012.
Why extend support? As the blog post notes, Visual Basic support will return in the next major release of Office for the Mac, scheduled to hit the stands in 2010. This way, folks reliant on VB will be able to hold on until that new release is available. This is good news for anyone who was wondering how to migrate from a slew of mission-critical scripts.
