MS office interoperability

[chipmunk]

Hello -

I am thinking of switching from PC to Mac, but I wanted to check on people's expereince with MS office. I do a lot of creation/editing of office documents (Word and PowerPoint most often) and can't afford to have problems.

Please let me know about your experience!

Thanks -

 

[PlaceofDis]

ive never had a problem sending a word file to any one on a PC or transferring docs between my computer and the computers at schools, which is done on basically a daily basis, you should have fine, plus the newest verion of Office for the Mac includes a compatiblity checker built in, and lets not forget that you can always save as a PDF or in RTF format as well which will work on even more computers besides those that have Office

 

[fitinferno]

Hello -

I am thinking of switching from PC to Mac, but I wanted to check on people's expereince with MS office. I do a lot of creation/editing of office documents (Word and PowerPoint most often) and can't afford to have problems.

Please let me know about your experience!

Thanks -

There's overall no problems with MSoffice on Mac when it comes to transferring things to and from PC. However, I definitely suggest the .rtf save over the .doc save. For me, though it may be a problem I've just not figured out how to fix yet and is fixable, I wind up sending out a .doc via email to people, but then they cannot open it as it comes up all boxy. A .rtf sends just fine, no problems at all. PowerPoint works well overall, though Keynote is by far better if you can use your own computer when presenting

Anyways, when all is said and done, any slight problems you may have with MSoffice are well worth the switch to a Mac! It's just hands down better than a PC.

 

[iSaint]

MacWorld has a complete review on Office 2004 for Mac. They speak of some things you can do on OS X that you can't do on Windows.

 

[kiwi-in-uk]

I use Word and Powerpoint on Mac 8 to 10 hours a day, and exchange all documents with colleagues using Office for Windows.

I have noticed two minor issues, both of which are caused by the ways in which Office is implemented on OS X.

The first is fonts - sometimes a document created on Powerpoint for Windows comes across with incorrectly sized fonts; irritating at times but not a show-stopper for me (it is simply a case of reducing the font size when editing).

The second is graphics. Some Mac graphics features (soft shadows, etc) can not be replicated by Office for Windows, so I need to check that presentations and documents look ok once converted. While most graphics objects are converted without any problems there are still some minor issues when converting high resolution or complex graphics. This has caught me out only once or twice in a year, so it is not a huge problem.

Overall - for me - the advantages of switching have far outweighed the small learning curve and the one or two minor glitches.

 

[twoodcc]

what about taking a windows powerpoint presentation and viewing on a mac?

 

[mkrishnan]

what about taking a windows powerpoint presentation and viewing on a mac?

I have never had problems with going in this direction. Sometimes I have problems going in the other direction, with graphics failing to appear on Windows Office. These problems usually surround the way graphics were pasted in. But I have the same kinds of issues occasionally going PC to PC...so it seems to be more of a Windows Office issue.

I have never had any issue with Word or Excel, except of course for non-overlapping fonts, which can be remedied by copying the appropriate fonts over.

 

[James_C]

I agree with what everyone else has posted. I use a Mac in a Windows based office environment, I have never had any issues with Word and Excel files, but Powerpoint sometimes needs a little tweaking moving from one platform to the other, mainly graphics conversion issues.

 

[Advance The Man]

Has anyone tried to insert an Excel grid into Word, save an transfer to the other operating system?

 

[mkrishnan]

Has anyone tried to insert an Excel grid into Word, save an transfer to the other operating system?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that I have done this, although I usually insert Excel tables as pictures or wmf's so that they're more wysiwyg...