I've never used iWorks and I'm excited that I can download it for free. I'm currently at work so I haven't been able to download and install the apps, but how does it compare to MS Office? In the past few years, I have used MS Office and Open Office. But mainly the latter. I had been looking for a replacement for OpenOffice because and luckily for me, I can download iWorks as a new iMac owner.
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How does iWorks compare to MS Office?
- Thread starter ChitoCrisis
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It's pretty but..
The parts of iWork I use are Pages and Numbers. They are ok for general purposes, but if you're a moderate to heavy user of Excel, for instance, you probably will miss several important features. Things like pivot tables, etc.
But free is good!
The parts of iWork I use are Pages and Numbers. They are ok for general purposes, but if you're a moderate to heavy user of Excel, for instance, you probably will miss several important features. Things like pivot tables, etc.
But free is good!
Excel and Access are the tools that are toughest to replace. IWorks is getting better and does a nice job, but heavy data crunchers still need Excel and Access. Apart from this type of user, the iWorks suite is easy to use and ever more compatible with office applications.
Personally, any word processor works for me and my company. We need Excel to continue to use legacy macros and vba automation in our more complicated spreadsheets, but for everyday spreadsheets or for executive reports or Board reporting, the spreadsheets are typically more straightforward with simple cross tabs of data and a chart or two along with some narrative. Numbers can generate these and output to Excel or .pdf. Keynote is an excellent PowerPoint replacement. Again, nothing can replace Access and that's probably the reason MS won't make a Mac version.
Personally, any word processor works for me and my company. We need Excel to continue to use legacy macros and vba automation in our more complicated spreadsheets, but for everyday spreadsheets or for executive reports or Board reporting, the spreadsheets are typically more straightforward with simple cross tabs of data and a chart or two along with some narrative. Numbers can generate these and output to Excel or .pdf. Keynote is an excellent PowerPoint replacement. Again, nothing can replace Access and that's probably the reason MS won't make a Mac version.
I've been using Pages and Numbers since version 2 and have not had to use MS Office since. I especially like Pages. I'm not sure why some people don't like the current version 5.0 but I really do like it.
They took out a ton of features so documents could have full parity on iOS. And they made several questionable interface design decisions.
See this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5468056?tstart=0