[A Little Lament] I cannot escape Office it seems, alas!

[HungarianStan]

Like it says in the title, I've tried various times to use Pages and Numbers exclusively, on the Mac and iPad, and I just can't do it. There are too many little things that I have to do that require me to send or share documents, and that means continuously turning them into Word or Excel documents.

There are other issues as well. Sometimes, iCloud hiccups and I can't open a file on my iPad (it's happened like 10 times now) because the connection was weird or it was updating the version in the browser iCloud App or something. I don't have that problem, because, unless I set it specifically, oneDrive doesn't interact with the online version of a document (and that's important, as I'm not always at a place with wifi). And of course, there are those times I have to post a document to another database or something, and the iPad app for iWork makes this impossible (since it doesn't have a separate app for iCloud as storage on the iPad) but Office does (in the form of OneDrive) that it makes sharing from the iPad to an online database possible.

So, looks like I'm stuck with Office for the foreseeable future... I really do like the iOS aesthetic better (and the Mac as well, obviously) but Office just beats out iWork for functionality (like, why is it in Numbers, that I can't sometimes just sort a field without other fields sorting - Excel let's you do this by deciding to expand the selection or not doing so; Numbers doesn't, gah!).

 

[cerberusss]

I feel your pain...

I'm a software developer and as such, would be fine with using Pages/Numbers. Problem is, I do the work freelance so every now and then I have to exchange timesheet, résumé or some form-inside-a-Word-document with clients. Sure, the iWork stuff has im/exports but it's never really flawless.

I gave it a good try for a year or so, but in the end it wasn't worth the fuss to me and I went back to Office.

 

[nebo1ss]

I remember moving from Lotus 123 and Word Perfect to Office but agree this change to the Apple product is not easy.

I got a new laptop a couple of months ago and have not yet installed office. I have been struggling with Numbers but about ready to give up. Simple things like typing formula into cells not working.

 

[HungarianStan]

I feel your pain...

I'm a software developer and as such, would be fine with using Pages/Numbers. Problem is, I do the work freelance so every now and then I have to exchange timesheet, résumé or some form-inside-a-Word-document with clients. Sure, the iWork stuff has im/exports but it's never really flawless.

I gave it a good try for a year or so, but in the end it wasn't worth the fuss to me and I went back to Office.

As I said in the OP, I keep finding myself having to share something with someone somewhere. I'm a university teacher, so I of course generate a fair amount of documents for my own use, but have to sometimes send stuff to others. Had a case recently where I had a document I had to upload to Moodle. Couldn't do it straight from Pages (since there is no iCloud app, as far as I know), so I had to convert the doc to Word in Pages, download OneDrive, transfer it to OneDrive, then upload from there to Moodle. Pain in the arse.

 

[bensisko]

I used iWork for about two years for personal stuff. For me, there were two advantages of iWork - (1) It was $79 and (2) Pages has nice page layout functionality.

Then came Office 365, followed by a very nice Office for iPad. Been using Office ever since. I actually like the new Office UI - they've improved a lot from even Office 2010.

 

[zachlegomaniac]

I tried to export a Pages doc to my boss. It was a very extensive marketing plan for his firm, and the formatting came out poor (compared to how I had it done in Pages). I enjoyed using Pages extensively for the project, but feel I'll have to stick with Word for my business-related work (unsuprisingly). I think Office still trumps iWork, unfortunately.

 

[Night Spring]

since there is no iCloud app, as far as I know

There is an iCloud Drive app, which you have to enable in Settings>iCloud>iCloud Drive>Show on home screen. However, functionality is limited, so I don't know if it'll do what you want.

I never liked the recent versions of Office, so I'm still using Office 2000 in Windows. I really like working in Pages, but converting to Word is a pain. I find I don't mind saving to Dropbox, as I keep my work files there anyway, and have been doing that from before I started using iPad.

 

[Freyqq]

I tried to export a Pages doc to my boss. It was a very extensive marketing plan for his firm, and the formatting came out poor (compared to how I had it done in Pages). I enjoyed using Pages extensively for the project, but feel I'll have to stick with Word for my business-related work (unsuprisingly). I think Office still trumps iWork, unfortunately.

If you save to PDF, it avoids the formatting issues. I agree though, MS Office is far superior.

 

[zachlegomaniac]

Thanks @Freyqq ! All I would need on the other end is Acrobat to convert it back to Word, I assume?

 

[Mr_Brightside_@]

Thanks @Freyqq ! All I would need on the other end is Acrobat to convert it back to Word, I assume?

No, I think the implication was simply to keep it as a PDF. Pages > PDF > Word is unlikely to go well.

 

[zachlegomaniac]

Ah. That wouldn't work well for my purposes, then, as it was intended to allow for editing as needed. Definitely just going to stick with Word for now. Thanks @Mr_Brightside_@

 

[HungarianStan]

There is an iCloud Drive app, which you have to enable in Settings>iCloud>iCloud Drive>Show on home screen. However, functionality is limited, so I don't know if it'll do what you want.

I just tried it. I DOES solve at least one of my issues. Thanks for that! Didn't know that existed! Apparently if you use iCloud that "app" is already on the iPad. Most fascinating.

 

[richpjr]

I don't have the hatred for MS like a lot of Mac fans do, so using Office never bothered me. I use it because of all of the reasons mention - it's just better than what Apple is offering. I am not real fond of subscription software either, but the family pack of Office 365 regularly goes on sale for around $60, so for 5 computers, 5 tablets and 1 TB of online storage, it's actually a pretty good deal.