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butters149

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 22, 2009
296
0
Hello,

Just wondering which would be better? Office 2011 or iWorks? for Macbook air 2011.

Thanks,
 

blevins321

macrumors 68030
Dec 24, 2010
2,768
96
Detroit, MI
One big determining factor is will you be sharing files with non-Mac/Office users? If so, Office would be the most compatible. If you're just using it for yourself, iWork is pretty great.
 

BlindSoul

macrumors 6502
May 30, 2010
466
0
Israel
I prefer iWork much more, because it supports Hebrew and It's very needed for me right now with school stuff. and it has really really great templates. I must say I think the Office 2011 templates are quite ugly.
 

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,489
43,414
I'm used to office, but gave iWork a chance. I give apple a lot of credit with numbers and pages but I still find excel and word easier and more powerful to use. Too often I open an excel spreadsheet and get warnings that some of the stuff could not be imported because it does not support that functionality (note: I'm using an older copy of iWork)
 

thatisme

macrumors 6502
Mar 23, 2010
485
106
United States
Pages and Keynote are better IMO than Word and Powerpoint, but Excel is much better than numbers.

With that said, I still like Numbers better, but it is simply too limited to use in an everyday environment. Also, there is a learning curve, as it does some formula and worksheets differently than Excel.
 

ScottNWDW

macrumors 65816
Jul 10, 2008
1,231
315
Orlando, Florida
I agree with many of the others. I use both iWork and Office.

For my personal stuff I prefer to use iWork, but when I know I need to share items with others then Office is the better choice. At first Word and Excel seemed a lot easier, but once I got used to Pages and Numbers I do find them a little easier and a lot more flexible than their Microsoft counterparts.
 

fc0712

macrumors regular
Jun 19, 2010
140
0
Iwork or Microsoft office 2011

i was wondering what is best iwork or microsoft office.
it is mostly for school:)
 

blevins321

macrumors 68030
Dec 24, 2010
2,768
96
Detroit, MI
I'd suggest Office because you'll probably be needing to share your files with others. iWork can convert but the results are sometimes not the greatest. Don't buy office from a store- you can probably get it from your school for cheap.
 

applefan289

macrumors 68000
Aug 20, 2010
1,705
8
USA
iWork for enjoyment, home use, or if you won't be having to constantly send files in Office format. iWork is a better program in my opinion, but can be frustrating when dealing with Office users.
 

swedefish

macrumors 6502
Feb 12, 2008
387
41
For school I definitely recomment Office. With Office you have the commentary function which many instructors use, and it also integrates really well with citation software such as EndNote and RefWorks.
 

mikeo007

macrumors 65816
Mar 18, 2010
1,373
122
Office hands down. If you're doing word processing or spreadsheets, nothing beats office. If you have a few dollars extra, I'd suggeset grabbing Keynote from the App store as well though, it's great for presentations.
 

klover

macrumors 6502a
Jun 7, 2009
799
90
Office hands down. If you're doing word processing or spreadsheets, nothing beats office. If you have a few dollars extra, I'd suggeset grabbing Keynote from the App store as well though, it's great for presentations.

+1

I run Office 2011 for Word and Excel but continue to use iWork for Keynote. While Powerpoint (2011) is more feature-rich, I find Keynote is a lot easier to use and the presentations have a more professional look.
 

Lurchdubious

macrumors 65816
Oct 15, 2008
1,150
19
Texas
I'd suggest Office because you'll probably be needing to share your files with others. iWork can convert but the results are sometimes not the greatest. Don't buy office from a store- you can probably get it from your school for cheap.

This.

I tried to use iWork at school as my main productivity suite and it was great until I tried exporting .doc and .ppt files - jacked up the formatting more often than not.

Based on the above sentence it probably won't matter which dictionary is better.

Just go with Office. In the educational/business environment it's the standard, for better or for worse.

LOL. I just choked on my orange juice.


OP, get Office and then pick up Pages and maybe Keynote individually from the mac app store later on. I use Office for all school stuff, but I still like using Pages to type up personal documents or things I won't have to send to other people.
 

guvna

macrumors newbie
Jun 11, 2011
17
0
Using iWork instead of Office

Has anybody made this switch? How do you find it?

Just got a new mac and my old version of Office is no longer supported. iWork is much cheaper than Office for Mac.. is it possible to use iWork instead of office for spreadsheets, presentations and documents? Has anybody come across any major restrictions/differences? iWork does seem much more logical.
 

kasakka

macrumors 68020
Oct 25, 2008
2,361
1,060
The only problems I've seen are formatting issues. Obviously if you use Excel that has macros and whatnot those are not going to work.

All I know is that iWork doesn't make me want to kill myself like Office does.
 

makinao

macrumors 6502
Dec 27, 2009
296
116
If you work in/with a company that is standardized on MS Office, and will be constantly exchanging documents/spreadsheets/presentations with the rest of your co-workers, then MS Office is the way to go. But if your mac will be a "personal" computer, and your work needs only occasional import/export of MS Office stuff, by all means try iWork.

I wrote my PhD Dissertation using Pages. 200+ pages, 164 footnotes, 10 tables. It did just fine. And the page layout templates are gorgeous.

I'm not a power spreadsheet user. I use it mainly as a class record book, and for keeping track of my research project budgets. So Numbers is OK for my simple needs.

If you do lots of presentations, Keynote is the bomb. Its worth the price of the whole suite. My wife and I use at lectures and conferences, and we always get rave compliments.

Right now, I've got iWork, MS Office, and LibreOffice. Frankly, I can't remember the last time I used the latter two.
 
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