How good is Office compatibility with the latest iWork?

[Jamie0003]

Back when I was at college, I used to use Office 2008 as my primary word processor, mainly for cross-compatability. However, nowadays I very rarely use it at all.

I also have a copy of the latest iWork, and would like to move to using it as my only productivity suite instead of office as it's buggy as hell and iWork is much nicer imo. I'm just a little worried about compatibility.

The only thing I actually use office for at the moment is when i'm updating my CV, and don't use much formatting at all on it. Obviously, I need it to look exactly the same on Windows as sending a CV off to someone would almost guarantee they will be running office of some kind.

How good is it when you edit a word document and save it as a word document using iWork? If I don't have office installed, is there a way to preview it to see how it would look on Windows computers running office?

I may also start using the iPhone version of iWork, but again don't know how good cross compatibility is.

 

[MisterMe]

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How good is it when you edit a word document and save it as a word document using iWork? If I don't have office installed, is there a way to preview it to see how it would look on Windows computers running office?

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It is a very bad idea to treat a file that has been converted from one format to another format as the final product without first reviewing it. The only way to preview a Word file for its appearance on a Windows computer is to open the file in Word on a Windows computer. If you want to send a file from your Mac to a Word user on Windows, then you should use Word for the Mac. Use sound formatting practices and then hope for the best. This is not a 100% guarantee, but it is your best chance of avoiding a Microsoft gotcha.

 

[interrobang]

For something like a resume, that's an awful idea.

Pages-to-word compatibility is very, very good, but the small chance of a formatting error is not worth the risk. Just find a copy of Word and check things out first.

Also, send PDFs wherever it's practical to do so.

 

[ScottNWDW]

We use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint extensively at work on PC's. When I recently decided to go all Mac at home I tried using Pages and Numbers on some stuff that I brought home from work to work on in both Excel and Word.

I then downloaded a 30 day trial of MS Office 2011 for Mac and it was seemless. Enough so that I bought a single user copy of the Home & Student version. Now that I have Office on my Mac at home I have no formatting issues at all except for maybe a font issue that may not be on one of the two machines.

For my personal stuff tough, I prefer using iWork programs. A lot easier and more fun to use.