No computer is properly complete without its own Office package. Office assists in the compilation of texts of all kinds, in the completion of spreadsheet calculations and in the preparation of expressive presentations. In these tasks, Microsoft Office is the generally accepted standard, as its formats are established and the functions it offers are continually required. However: many users are unable to afford the Office suite.

This is where the Ashampoo Office 2008 steps in. The program only occupies a limited amount of storage space on the hard drive, is very stable and still offers all of those Office functions which genuinely need to be used in private or in business environments. A fair price that all users can afford without problem also ensures that the Ashampoo Office 2008 is rapidly winning new friends. Its simple menu prompting and ease of use allows users of other Office solutions a problem-free switchover.

It goes without saying that the most important thing is the fact that reading and writing in the original Word, Excel and PowerPoint files without losses of content or in terms of formatting presents no problem for the Ashampoo Office 2008. That means that every user of the Ashampoo Office is able to open, modify and then save a Word file in exactly the same way as if the work had been done in Word itself.

Ashampoo Office 2008 is supplied with the word processing tool Ashampoo TextMarker, the spreadsheet program Ashampoo PlanMaker and – brand new in the current version – the presentations software Ashampoo Presentations.

Ashampoo TextMaker, PlanMaker and Presentations
As a word processing program, Ashampoo TextMaker is able to cope both with long and short texts. The program is able to lay out a table of contents, an index and tables, can import graphics and is also able to place 3D texts. Thanks to the integrated addresses database, drafting serial letters presents no problem. Web pages are also easy to create using the program. The program has also won considerable praise thanks to its very high quality spell check system.

With Ashampoo PlanMaker, number games of all kind no longer present any problems. The spreadsheets offer countless formulae which are a great help with automatic calculations. Its implementation of highlighted columns of figures in expressive 2D and 3D diagrams is particularly effective.

Ashampoo Presentations is a new product. The presentations program brings images and texts together, and using the pre-sets, can easily generate a visual presentation which can then be played back on the PC monitor and can also easily be exported or printed out.

Ashampoo Office 2008: Now with PDF Export and Mailing Assistant
Lots of things have changed in the new Ashampoo Office 2008. And it isn’t just down to the presentation program Ashampoo Presentations, which is a completely new addition to Office.

A particular wish of users was PDF export, something which is now available in all three programs. This means exporting content so that users can open it and print it out is no longer a problem, as long as s/he has installed the free Adobe Reader on their computer.

The object-based exchange of data between the three Office applications is also brand new. This means PlanMaker tables can be easily integrated into an Ashampoo TextMaker document, for instance. A single mouse click on the object is enough at any time to be able to work on it in the original application.

One great extra is the new mailing assistant which is immediately available in Ashampoo TextMaker 2008. This helps in the printing of envelopes and spares its owner the annoying sizing and positioning of address fields.