MS office to pages and numbers
Hello I have a customer that purchased a mac book and not sure if they are going to invest in MS office but they are coming from a windows system and all doc and everything was created using office. What issues could they run into or should the transition work easily just learning the new interface and tools I don't have enough experience with the free office apps that come with the mac's. Any feedback will definitely be appreciated
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+Experienced Member the users do have a few years of docs, spreadsheets from as far back as 2005 I am just not sure if the savings of not going with Office is worth it or should I allow them to test it and see how bad it gets
Hi Experienced Member,
When you say, "...they would just open in Windows Word, whatever, but they don't." is slightly misleading because the exported documents will open in Word, Excel, and PPT. I'll conceed the fact that sometimes there are issues with formatting but none of the data is gone or unreadable.
In brief, iWork will open and export all MS documents but I would keep the standard formatting (Times New Roman, etc...) when sending out exported documents to Windows users. I've found that the fancy formatting you can do with iWork isn't really appreciated by MS users and will cause some hiccups when being displayed on their screens (despite it looking great on the Mac). If things do get too far gone, when trying to display a document (usually Word), I would recommend saving it to a universal format like a PDF where all formatting is retained.
All of that said, if this customer needs to save money and wants to be able to create professional looking documents, then iWork will do the job.
When you say, "...they would just open in Windows Word, whatever, but they don't." is slightly misleading because the exported documents will open in Word, Excel, and PPT. I'll conceed the fact that sometimes there are issues with formatting but none of the data is gone or unreadable.
In brief, iWork will open and export all MS documents but I would keep the standard formatting (Times New Roman, etc...) when sending out exported documents to Windows users. I've found that the fancy formatting you can do with iWork isn't really appreciated by MS users and will cause some hiccups when being displayed on their screens (despite it looking great on the Mac). If things do get too far gone, when trying to display a document (usually Word), I would recommend saving it to a universal format like a PDF where all formatting is retained.
All of that said, if this customer needs to save money and wants to be able to create professional looking documents, then iWork will do the job.
My observations are based on Pages documents sent to me in Email and they come up empty. I have to go to an online converter service to convert.
My experience with Pages (and the suite) is very bad; my experience with Microsoft Office for Apple, Windows is very good. I get a lot of MAC Word documents that open fine.
This is how it works (or doesn't depending on our point of view) for me.
My experience with Pages (and the suite) is very bad; my experience with Microsoft Office for Apple, Windows is very good. I get a lot of MAC Word documents that open fine.
This is how it works (or doesn't depending on our point of view) for me.
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Longer explanation than mine, but go for the real thing. Office just works.
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Hey, Jess. Libre Office, like MS Office, uses the industry standard XML formatting. Considering that Apple never uses anything that is not uniquely theirs, they have to have their own unique document formatting too.
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Serialband, your information is not quite current. With the introduction of Office 2016 for Mac and Windows, they are essentially identical. You can record macros in Microsoft Office apps for Mac, though I discourage my clients to use them. Between IT managers concerned with internal security issues and collaborating with external users who may or may not have tight security on their computers, macros are often disabled.
There are some additional considerations... cloud storage. Microsoft Office subscriptions include 1TB of OneDrive storage (which will cost $8-10/mo on Dropbox or Google), and license to install Office on 5 devices. So if you have a tablet and cell phone, it might be worthwhile to have Office on those devices as well. I'm not suggesting creating documents or spreadsheets on a smartphone, but being able to review files and have Outlook? Worth the price of admission.
There are some additional considerations... cloud storage. Microsoft Office subscriptions include 1TB of OneDrive storage (which will cost $8-10/mo on Dropbox or Google), and license to install Office on 5 devices. So if you have a tablet and cell phone, it might be worthwhile to have Office on those devices as well. I'm not suggesting creating documents or spreadsheets on a smartphone, but being able to review files and have Outlook? Worth the price of admission.
While they have improved tremendously since Mac Office 2011, they are still not identical. Office365 or Office 2016 still has issues with certain special Macos and advanced features.. They cause a lot of problems in offices that use them. If you don't use these features, then, yes, you won't have a problem.
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Outlook is not the only problem. I've seen the issue with word and excel when you have change tracking. I've also seen some Macros mess up. If you don't use those, you're mostly ok, but the Mac versions are still definitely not as full featured as the Windows versions.
True. Getting them back is the challenge. Would that they would just open in Windows Word, whatever, but they don't.