Office for MAC now iWorks

Yes - you can convert - Word to Pages, Excel to Numbers, Powerpoint to Keynote - just by opening them from within the iWorks application. Most of the time, it is a simple conversion except that Numbers does not read Excel Macros and not all Powerpoint transitions and features work in Keynote.

When sending Pages docs to others who may only have Office, I typically send them as PDFs. Pages docs may also be exported as Word docs, Numbers as Excel and Keynotes as Powerpoints, but, again, especially with Keynotes, the transitions may not map over correctly.

Personally, I find Keynote presentations much more satisfying to create and deliver than Powerpoint (still comparatively clunky). Pages does everything for me that I need although not everything that Word does. The weakest link is Numbers - without macros, diagonal or vertical text and some functions it is more limiting as an "Office equivalent" than Pages and Keynote. that being said, the charts are easier to create and edit.

Communicating with other Apple devices is a no-brainer if you Pages, Numbers and Keynote for iPhone/iPad. Even better yet, once iWork in the Cloud is out of beta it will be even easier.

While the iWork apps can import/export office docs, I found the translation lacking at times. My spreadsheets that come from excel usually have some function or setting removed, because Numbers lacks them, or when saving to xls and opening up in excel the formatting is not what I wanted.

Overall I find Numbers and Pages to be a great app, but I prefer office when dealing with work documents that go out to my team.

iWork lacks a lot of the complexity within Office.

You will often find formatting can be messed up in iWorks from a a .doc file. As the others have said, compared to excel, numbers is like a blackboard and chalk.

Keynote is good and on par with powerpoint for 99% of things.

Over all Office is a better choice if you will be sending things to none apple users. If everything is staying within a iWorks environment then there is no reason to not get it.

maflynn said:

While the iWork apps can import/export office docs, I found the translation lacking at times. My spreadsheets that come from excel usually have some function or setting removed, because Numbers lacks them, or when saving to xls and opening up in excel the formatting is not what I wanted.

Overall I find Numbers and Pages to be a great app, but I prefer office when dealing with work documents that go out to my team.

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Agreed. OP keep in mind that Numbers does not support pivot tables so if you or your team rely heavily on then, you will run into issues.