Do you prefer iWork over MS Office or Open Office? If so why?

[chrono1081]

After spending 6 hours trying to format my english paper for turn in I was about to throw not only MS Office which I have to use but Open Office which I normally like out the window. (The formatting turned out to be a glitch in MS Office that transferred itsself via formatting to open office but you cant see a formatting character to tell you that. ANYWAY...)

I downloaded iWork and was all mad and angry, then I was plesantly suprised. Even though I spent 10 min searching for how to double space, I then realized "this is mac, its probably infront of your face" and indeed it was! I found the whole program to be much smoother and easier to use, and easier to find what I needed. Best of all, my paper opened flawlessly in MS Word with all the formatting in tact. My question is how many of you like iWork and why? (I was using pages by the way. I also like how in Numbers a double click gets you inside the cell not the triple click of Excel)

Also does iWork work with Office 2008? I don't have office 2008 to test it : /

 

[GoCubsGo]

I think you should browse through these threads because this is brought up and discussed often.

 

[gatepc]

I used to use MS office and then I switched to open office after MS switched things around in 2008 version and then I tried iWork and I fell in love with it. At first just like you I found it aggravating because I couldn't find anything but now after I have been used to it for a long time I really enjoy it much more Pages is just a lot more clean on the UI and is just a lot easier to use and a lot more powerful it seems. Keynote I absolutely love a LOT more the PowerPoint I have not tried out there equivalent to excel but that's because I don't use it.

 

[jive turkey]

I'm much the same as gatepc. I used Office exclusively until iWork came out (they did work together for the most part; conditional formatting seemed to be the biggest issue). I enjoyed the trial and bought it since it was very reasonably priced, but I kept Office around. I continued to use Excel some but gradually found myself using it less and less. Then, just last week, I realized I never use Excel anymore so I uninstalled Office.

I use iWork for most everything. Pages is good, Numbers is nice (Excel may still be slightly better, but not enough to justify the price difference), and Keynote kicks PowerPoint's behind. I have a copy of the free NeoOffice (a Mac version of OpenOffice) that I use once in a while to handle some MS document types and to make spreadsheets that I need formatted in a way that Numbers just won't do (namely, to have more than 5 header rows frozen).

Overall I would suggest any Mac user try iWork before investing money in Office. It may take a little bit of use to get used to, but I think it is a much better value than Office, and a better product that OpenOffice.

 

[ez4u2sa67]

iWork is a great program. I kinda feel bad for people who use Office and don't even try iWork. I have both but only because my teacher sends out assignments in a template format that iWork doesn't understand. What do you mean by Office and iWork working together. iWork is able to save in the .doc format if thats what you meant.

 

[colourfastt]

I'm one of the, apparently, very few who prefers MSO over iWork. I have both on my computers (and in the docks), but will always choose Word over Pages unless I'm in the mood to just play around.

 

[dmmcintyre3]

I downloaded the iWork 08 trial and then about 30 min later I ordered it. Was that 3 years ago? I know I was on tiger and Leopard was just the beta then.

 

[ravenvii]

Keynote > PowerPoint > OpenOffice Presentation
Pages = Word = OpenOffice Writer
Numbers < Excel > OpenOffice Spreadsheet

That's my take.

 

[SqB]

I make newsletters and due to laziness, I have yet to figure out how to create them in Pages so I am still pretty tied to Office. I imagine if I could force myself to uninstall Office and then go somewhere I couldn't get to the disks, I would probably like Pages better.

Keynote is better than pages for most things, but it lacks some of the animation capabilities like paths. It's easy to quickly create a really nice looking presentation in Keynote and the transitions are awesome.

Excel, again I use what I know. I've never even tried to see if numbers can do pivot tables.

Since I've sworn never to send another dollar to redmond, I will eventually have to learn to adapt.