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iWork 09 Compared to Microsoft Office Compared to AbiWord

G

GovtLawyer

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 6, 2008
301
9
I'm getting my first Mac tomorrow, an iMac 24" 2.8. After 20 years on PCs, I'm fed up with Windows. I've been fairly methodical in going over the PC, inch by inch and file by file, to make sure everything I need is brought over and can be used on the iMac. One of the biggest problems is 15 years of documents which were prepared in WordPerfect. I understand that neither iWork or MS Office can convert them. I also heard of AbiWord, a freeware program which can view and convert almost anything.

So, I have a few choices. Since I'm going through each doc to see if I even need it or want it, I can convert each one in WordPerfect after I make the decision, to an MS Doc file (MS WORD 2003, RTF, ANSI, ASCII, or other files. If I do that, will iWork be able to read the file? What would be the best format to convert it too?

Or, I can decide what to keep and bring it over in WordPerfect format. When and if I need it, I can use AbiWord to convert at that time. Of course, this means adding an application to my computer.

Does iWork/Pages emulate MS Word in the ability to read and convert other formats? What is the native format for saving in iWork? Is it a .DOC file?

Any suggestions for the best method for me to transfer the files to the new computer and eventually use them? Does any program Batch process the conversions?

BTW: I already purchased iWork, because of my belief that its 100% compatible with MS Office, and because it appears that any type of document I want to produce can be accomplished in iWork.
 
AbiWord does a beautiful job with WordPerfect files, but the Mac version has not been updated since 2006. The major consequence of this is that the app has not been updated to Universal Binary. On your Intel-based Mac, AbiWord will run in the Rosetta PPC emulator.

I have not opened WordPerfect in it, NeoOffice the Java-based version of OpenOffice, supports WordPerfect files.

Advice: Don't be afraid of applications. This is not Windows. Download and install both AbiWord and NeoOffice. Test both for yourself. Pick the one that works best for you. Or don't pick. Use whichever one you want when you want. One of the wonderful things about the Mac is that you are not forced to make a choice.
 
MisterMe said:
Advice: Don't be afraid of applications. This is not Windows. Download and install both AbiWord and NeoOffice. Test both for yourself. Pick the one that works best for you. Or don't pick. Use whichever one you want when you want. One of the wonderful things about the Mac is that you are not forced to make a choice.
Click to expand...

What about converting the files in Windows, in Wordperfect, before transferring them to the iMac? Would saving in an MS 2003 .doc file be easy for iWork to open? It may be worth the trouble to do the conversions before going over. However, if I'm not able to convert it to anything iWork is comforatble with, that would require I got AbiWord or NeoOffice.
 
NeoOffice (especially 3.0 Early Access) and iWork make a good combination in terms of finding a replacement for Word. I use both programs and no one has noticed that I don't have MS Word. AbiWord should satisfy whatever other needs from Word Perfect you have.
 
I get along with OpenOffice very well. It should be able to handle those WordPerfect files just fine. It's fairly compatible with Word docs except when the formatting gets really fancy like some companies use.
 
GovtLawyer said:
What about converting the files in Windows, in Wordperfect, before transferring them to the iMac? Would saving in an MS 2003 .doc file be easy for iWork to open? It may be worth the trouble to do the conversions before going over. However, if I'm not able to convert it to anything iWork is comforatble with, that would require I got AbiWord or NeoOffice.
Click to expand...

Will converting them one by one in the native XP Wordperfect to a .doc Word file, before transferring them to the Mac work? If so, would iWork properly open them?
 
GovtLawyer said:
Will converting them one by one in the native XP Wordperfect to a .doc Word file, before transferring them to the Mac work? If so, would iWork properly open them?
Click to expand...
It should work, but it is a waste of time. Either NeoOffice or AbiWord will open the files in WP format. Unless you have a lot of free time on your hands, there is nothing to be gained by preconverting your files.
 
I've played with them all, it depends!

iWork: Keynote is great, Pages is pretty decent .. just not perfect, and Numbers is great for tables but horrible for graphs/charts.

Office 08: Just as unstable as Office 2001 - I've had it crash multiple times doing a save. Hell, I've had it crash for no reason at all! It's laggy at times, they didn't quite think things out (for example, 'center and resize columns' is not in any of the menus, only in the 2nd toolbar that isn't up on the screen unless you tell it to be there). Likewise, if you mess with tables in Word, you'll find that there's actually *gag* more options than there are in excel (like auto resizing a group of cells to take up the same amount of space equally).

Oh yeah, and if you use VBscripts, you'll want to use Office 2004 since 2008 doesn't support those.

OpenOffice: It's getting better, used to be slow at startup. This would be my first step, because OpenOffice is free - try it for a while and see how well it works for you.
 
You've Convinced Me

striatedglutes said:
Besides not having to install another application, which the OP seems averse to for some reason.
Click to expand...

I started to convert some old files in WordPerfect to .doc Word files. After a half dozen of at least a couple of hundred files, I understood what is meant by "LABOR INTENSIVE." I asked myself, "what the H**L am I doing?" So, everything will go over exactly as is. I'll look at both ABI WORD and NEO OFFICE and figure out which does the best job with my old files.

Do either one of them do BATCH converting? That would be fantastic. Otherwise, I'll use them to open stuff up when needed, and I'll convert it at that time for use in iPages 09.

Thanks.
 
NeoOffice opens Word Perfect files. I can't say the same thing about AbiWord.

You should be able to batch convert on the Mac with the OS/X Automator/AppleScript. Perhaps you can find a script on the internet for that purpose.
 
One thing I would point out regarding NeoOffice: NeoOffice is a port of OpenOffice.org to native OS X. It had the advantage of being working more like a standard OS X app compared to OpenOffice.org, but had the disadvantage of always being a little behind the latest OpenOffice.org release in features. However OpenOffice.or 3.0 now supports native OS X very nicely itself. So there is really no need to use NeoOffice any more. Just get the latest OpenOffice.org from their website.
 
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