Pages for University?

Hello!

I go to a University that requires all work be in Microsoft Word, meaning that I can not send a professor a Pages document or complicate things by fighting with compatibility and cross formatting.

When I use MS Word at school, I find the functioning pretty solid, however on the Mac I find it clunky and uncomfortable. Slowly I have been loving Mac and OSX more and anything Microsoft less. I want to try Pages, but there is no demo any longer. $20 is inconvenient in expense for something not working right from the start.

I know you have specifically export Pages as a Word document, but will the constant conversion create ill documents?

The question simply is, how is Pages, or iWorks, in compatibility with MS Office/Word? Has anyone else used iWork knowing it will end up in MS Office format?

Thanks, all!


UPDATE: I ended up getting to use Pages and Word together and found out a couple of things. Pages can be a viable tool for those not interested in Apple only products, or just don't like Word. However, this information may be unclear for a computer that does not have MS Word AND Pages.
-You can work in Pages then make the final copy into Word .docx via the Export function. You will then save Pages and have one Pages document and one Word document.
-You can save both Pages and Word documents to iCloud, however Word requires manual click and drag to do so. (Go to iCloud's website and drag .docx into iWork folder)
-Word cannot open Pages.
-Pages can open both .docx and .pages documents simply. (Right click to choose method)
-When opening cross files, the formatting is minutely different in complex formations. Nothing heart breaking, but should be considered if you create many precisely designed documents.

Now, the most notable for me.
-When using pages to work a Word document, you cannot SAVE OVER the document you're working on. You can save as .pages until you have completed your work, then export. If you choose to export the file to word, it will create another document with the same name and all, it will not save over the .docx file. This can be a pain because if you forget to convert your work, you can run into a problem.

That's what I know so far. I found pages to be pretty and easy to use. Once you have familiarized yourself with Pages, it sings for you.

jojoba said:

I am in a similar situation, I work at a university which is all Windows based, but prefer Scrivener and Pages for my writing.

Whenever I do collaborative writing or share documents for other reasons, I always stick to Word. It's not my preferred Word processor, but it gives me piece of mind in terms of compatibility issues and so on. Sometimes I also use pdf. Havind said that, I have had students submit documents to me in what I think were originally Pages files. Most of the time that worked well and just once I've had to ask a student resubmit when I couldn't open her file (that could also have been caused by something else, for all I know). I also think it depends on what kind of papers you are submitting. If it is mainly text with simple formatting, I don't think you should have many issues. If you are using a lot of tables and images and so on, you might face more compatibility issues.

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That would be great. As of right now I only write long papers, however who knows what kind of work a teacher may want in the future. I suppose as an English major I should be open to the idea of utilizing images in documents.

Zauberer said:

Exporting as a Word document shouldn't be a problem for almost anything you would do, especially if you are mainly writing conventional essays. I actually like Word for Mac, so maybe you just need to get used to it?

Don't underestimate GoogleDocs as well as a nice free alternative. I find it serves my needs.

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I have used it for a couple semesters and just never really was a fan. I use it on a near daily basis. I think my issue is comparing it to the MS version that I have known for so long. I'm sure if I got past that comparison it would be ok, but then it comes down to price; I would love not to buy the next $80 edition of Office (university pricing). I would love to spend $40 for Pages and Keynote because I don't need that Outlook or Excel garbage.

I will be taking a look at GoogleDocs! Thank you!