Office 2011 Mac vs iWorks?

[butters149]

Hello,

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

Thanks,

[blevins321]

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.

[AbyssImpact]

Both!

[95yjman]

iwork is pretty cool!

[BlindSoul]

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.

[rowley]

Personally, iwork.
Workwise, Office - you never know who's viewing it in what.

[maflynn]

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)

[BornAgainMac]

I think when iCloud comes out, it will be be awesome to use iWork. It will be Google Docs on steroids.

[thatisme]

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]

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.

[miles01110]

Office. No contest, really.

[fc0712]

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

[blevins321]

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.

[fc0712]

do you know what got the best dictionary

[miles01110]

Originally Posted by fc0712

do you know what got the best dictionary

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.

[applefan289]

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]

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.

[Eric Best]

If you want to be a little more creative, check out Scrivener. It will be an advantage when it comes to projects.

[mikeo007]

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]

Originally Posted by mikeo007

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]

Originally Posted by blevins321

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.

Originally Posted by miles01110

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]

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.

[miles01110]

Yes, you can use iWork if you have no need to share Office document types with maximum compatibility between OS X and Windows. If this is an issue, use Office.

[kasakka]

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]

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.