I like Office 2008 for the Mac much better than 2004, but the idiosyncrasies still crop up. To change the default view from Page Layout to Normal, goto the menu Excel->Preferences… then under Authoring select View, Preferred new sheets, set to normal.
You can also change the default font and size here too. You will have to exit Excel and restart for the changes to take effect. Solution found at MacKB.
