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Which office suite do you use on your Mac?

  • MS Office for Mac

    Votes: 121 70.3%
  • iWork

    Votes: 51 29.7%

  • Total voters
    172

saintforlife

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 25, 2011
1,045
329
Which one do you use? Which is better and more user friendly? When you compare Pages, Numbers and Keynote to Word, Excel and PowerPoint do all three of them stack up well against the respective MS applications? Is the learning curve for iWork steep if you have never used it? Who has made a switch to iWork and been completely happy with it?
 

miles01110

macrumors Core
Jul 24, 2006
19,260
36
The Ivory Tower (I'm not coming down)
iWork is probably more "user friendly" if all you need are basic documents and spreadsheets. Office is much better if you need as much of a guarantee of compatibility as one can expect with others using Office.

The learning curve for Office and iWork is not particularly steep for basic documents.
 

Ice-Cube

macrumors 6502a
Jul 27, 2006
749
319
Somewhere over the rainbow
I use Pages and Keynote from iWork a lot for my work, however occasionally I would need to export them to ppt/doc for my colleagues to edit and that usually causes problem during the conversion. Other than that, really happy with iWork. Hope they launch a new version soon.
 

Risasi

macrumors 6502
Sep 16, 2011
338
0
I use a combination of Google Docs (multi-user collaboration is used in the office frequently) + LibreOffice, my only point being I don't think you should limit yourself to these two choice.

If you held a gun to my head I would choose MS Office...
 

molala

macrumors 6502a
Oct 25, 2008
620
3
Cambridge, UK
iWork for me. But it does get frustrating that I have to have to export to doc or xls or ppt for my Windows-using colleagues. Sometimes, I even have to open a powerpoint file again in Office and save as pptx otherwise they don't see some graphics.
 

glen e

macrumors 68030
Jun 19, 2010
2,619
2
Ft Lauderdale
I use keynote - on an ipad and an MBA, it's more robust and faster to create general business presentations.

For spreadsheets and docs though I use word and excel.
 

Xikum

macrumors 6502
Oct 19, 2011
281
1
Office for me. Mainly because I need to submit documents for my university essays, and so compatibility is key.
 

pollaxe

macrumors 6502
Aug 13, 2010
271
61
West of England
Office for me, I had iWork on there but I was getting too many Excel spreadsheets from work that wouldn't open so I had to go with the alternative.
 

Abazigal

Contributor
Jul 18, 2011
19,454
21,841
Singapore
Office, as it is used very extensively in my workplace and I cannot risk the inconvenience of possible incompatibility issues.

That said, I am not very happy with office for mac, as it seems to have some memory management issues (eg: word has a tendency to hang when editing 50+ page documents, not sure what I pressed though, but closing it means all unsaved work is lost). Given an opportunity, I would probably jump ship to iworks right away.
 

Jordan9

macrumors member
Aug 30, 2011
95
10
Texas
I have both but use Microsoft Office for Mac the most. Not having to convert to .doc or .ppt is key, and knowing my teachers can open it and have a better chance of it opening fine is good.
 

tills24

macrumors regular
May 10, 2010
114
89
Same as most, I use Office because of compatibility with Windows users. Between work and school, I need to be able to end .doc's. Although I really do like Google Docs. We use it a lot at work within my group, because we can share them with one another easily.
 

erasr

macrumors 6502a
Sep 18, 2007
616
410
Pages and Keynote are TOTALLY doing my head in with their exporting to Word and PPT.

They don't convert well when I'm sending to my manager/colleagues.

Everything about the 'Duplicate' and not having a 'Save as' features is doing my head in arrrrrrghhh!! Rant.
 

Kendo

macrumors 68020
Apr 4, 2011
2,275
760
MS Office. It is also a very valuable skill if you work in a corporate environment to be an expert in MS Excel and PowerPoint. You get noticed a lot quicker than your peers.
 

johnhurley

macrumors 6502a
Aug 29, 2011
777
56
It is also a very valuable skill if you work in a corporate environment to be an expert in MS Excel and PowerPoint.

That is right on target ... not sure about the getting noticed part though ( varies a lot probably ) that you followed it up with.
 

Kendo

macrumors 68020
Apr 4, 2011
2,275
760
That is right on target ... not sure about the getting noticed part though ( varies a lot probably ) that you followed it up with.

When you're the only individual on your team that knows how to do VLOOKUP and pivot tables, you'd be surprised how often your manager comes up to you. I pretty much now only handle special projects assigned to me by my manager and don't do the day to day peon stuff.

Being an expert in Excel is key in finance. So much so that as much as I love Apple products, I wouldn't waste my time trying to learn Numbers. I'd use that time to get better at Excel.
 

soulreaver99

macrumors 68040
Aug 15, 2010
3,640
5,763
Southern California
I use Office for compatibility reasons like everyone else. I work with a lot of ROI excel spreadsheets and can't risk any formula glitches when jumping from one software program to another.
 

jmgregory1

macrumors 68030
Funny how so many people seem to talk about compatibility issues between iWork and Office. I agree that years ago there were issues, but frankly I've seen more issues with Office just not working. One example was a complex ppt presentation that my colleague couldn't get to run on Office. He sent me the file and I ran it perfectly with Keynote.

I've not had any colleagues mention issues with any exported iWork files I've sent them.

I also second the suggestion for using other options - as I'm constantly using Google Docs to collaborate with other office colleagues.
 
Last edited:

Hey Jude

macrumors 6502a
May 9, 2008
708
168
Florida
I use Office 2004, so I shouldn't have voted in this poll. However, for what it is worth I use Office, and have zero experience with iWork.

Carry on.....;)
 

szolr

macrumors 6502
Jul 27, 2011
376
0
London, UK
With Auto Save, Versions, full screen and stuff iWork is now a lot slicker. What I'd really like is for Office and iWork to use the same document formats-so all dock, xlsx and pptx. Then I'd probably switch back to iWork. But while there's compatibility issues, I'll stick with Office. I can save it in the default format and it'll open in Office 2007 or 2010 on Windows at university.
 

PlaceofDis

macrumors Core
Jan 6, 2004
19,241
6
i typically use Office due to compatibility issues but i use iWork on my iPad when i'm on the go when needed.
 
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