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I use iWork for my documents, but everyone else uses Office. How should I organize?

A

applefan289

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 20, 2010
1,705
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USA
I use Pages, Keynote, and Numbers for all my documents. I have to export to or "Save Copy as" Word/PowerPoint/Excel. This creates a separate document.

I'm doing something in which I send the person a Word document, they edit, send it back to me, and I have to keep adding to it. This can get hectic, not only because of the new file sent back to me, but because of the iWork/Office conversion.

I currently have iWork '09. Do you recommend buying Microsoft Office as well? The last thing I want to do is buy Microsoft stuff, but this compatibility thing sometimes gets on my nerves.

Any ideas for the organization of iWork files and Office files would be appreciated.

Thanks.
 
This is one of the reasons I prefer MS Office: compatibility. For some, that's not a problem, as they rarely/never share docs with Windows users. For me, it would be a deal-breaker. I'm very pleased with MS Office for Mac. And remember, MS Office was released for Mac before it was ever available for Windows.

As far as organizing files, it depends greatly on how your work is organized. It could be something as simple as having folders for Excel, Word, PowerPoint... or folders for projects/clients/etc. One thing I'd recommend is to not get too elaborate on folder structure, but have some methodology on file naming, so you can use search to find documents, rather than drilling down through a hierarchy of folders.
 
GGJstudios said:
This is one of the reasons I prefer MS Office: compatibility. For some, that's not a problem, as they rarely/never share docs with Windows users. For me, it would be a deal-breaker. I'm very pleased with MS Office for Mac. And remember, MS Office was released for Mac before it was ever available for Windows.

As far as organizing files, it depends greatly on how your work is organized. It could be something as simple as having folders for Excel, Word, PowerPoint... or folders for projects/clients/etc. One thing I'd recommend is to not get too elaborate on folder structure, but have some methodology on file naming, so you can use search to find documents, rather than drilling down through a hierarchy of folders.
Click to expand...

Great advice, thanks.
 
Not sure about Keynote, but Pages and Numbers should happily open the Word and Excel versions of the files. In other words, you should only have to do the Save As operation once, then just work form the .doc or .xls versions. That's assuming that you and your collaborators never do things (like macros) that won't convert between programs.

You might also take a look at Office360 (the web version of Office) rather than the full Office Mac 2011.
 
GGJstudios said:
remember, MS Office was released for Mac before it was ever available for Windows..
Click to expand...

I would think MS would put Office into their own OS 1st. I know MS Word has been around as a single program for Apple for some time. Prior to packaging its various office-type Macintosh software applications into Office, Microsoft released Mac versions of Word 1.0 in 1984, the first year of the Macintosh computer but as to when the 1st Office package came along and if it was given to Apple 1st I don't have any place that tells me that. Would like to read where MS developed Office for Mac before they used in on their platform.



.
 
Panch0 said:
In other words, you should only have to do the Save As operation once, then just work form the .doc or .xls versions.
Click to expand...

You can't do this. Once it's saved as a Word document, it's saved as a Word document and you can't edit and just update the saved file. If you edit it and want to save it as a Word file again, you have to replace the old file with the new Word file.

http://guides.macrumors.com/Comparison_of_iWork_and_Microsoft_Office

Although iWork can open and save Office files, file management can be inconvenient. iWork automatically converts Office files to iWork formats upon opening, so when saving, users must "export" files to Office format, even if they were in Office format to begin with.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
applefan289 said:
I use Pages, Keynote, and Numbers for all my documents. I have to export to or "Save Copy as" Word/PowerPoint/Excel. This creates a separate document.

...
Click to expand...
This is an incredibly bad idea. You should never ever send an unopened converted document to the final recipient. The purpose of file conversion is to save the user from having to retype the document. It is not the final step before distribution. Pages does a fantastic job of converting Word documents. However, there is no such thing as perfect Office-compatibility--not even among different versions of Office. Make your conversion and then edit using the converted format's native application. The chances are very high that you will have to correct at least one formatting glitch.
 
I bought MS Office just for this reason. We use MS Office on PC's at work and therefore I find it easier using Office on my Mac for work related stuff. I prefer using iWork, but the compatibility issues were too much. With that said, I use iWork for personal stuff and Office for work stuff. Since getting Office '11 for the Mac I have had no issues with documents that I may create or edit on my own Mac.

At work we are using Office 2007 on some computers and Office 2010 on others.
 
As with GGJstudios and ScottNWDW, for me, this was a deal-breaker when I switched to Mac. Everyone in my work universe uses Word - even those who have a privately owned Mac at home and it is an absolutely vital tool for me for work purposes.

The very day I bought my MBP, in 2008, I also bought Office for Mac for that very reason. Office for Mac was also the first software added to my MBA when I bought it, last September. So, yes, I do recommend buying Office for Mac.

Cheers
 
Apologies in advance for this lengthy post. It hope my Pages/Word experience is of interest and perhaps useful to you.

I work as an editor for a bi-monthly music magazine. I used to work using AppleWorks (Pages' predecessor) in tandem with Word for Mac. It was a good compromise solution (and my thus avoiding Word-only usage).

Since AppleWorks became Pages, and my recently installing it on my latest Mac, I have experienced compatibility issues between Pages and Word (Office 2011). I actually bought Mac Office 2011 hoping that using Pages and Word 2011 would prove a similar satisfactory way of working (with Windows-generated text and interfacing with Windows machines throughout the editing process), just as things had once worked nicely using AppleWorks and Word for Mac for all those years ago (I think I used to have Office for Mac 2004).

I would prefer to use Pages only, but I don't think that's going to be a viable solution. What I do know is that there are all sorts of weird things that currently happen when I use Pages and copy into Word for Mac documents for forwarding to Windows users.

For example, I can make edits in Pages but when I paste the text into a Word document, some of those edits can be lost (it reverts back to the pre-edited text). An example of this is lower-case text that has arrived in a Word document from a Windows PC: I copy that text into Pages, capitalise the offending text (amongst other edits) and when done, paste into Word for Mac. Oops! Caps are gone. What happened there?

Other anomalies occur, and sometimes even basic pasting of text from Pages into the Word for Mac document fails – the text occasionally (but regularly) loses its spacing formats, so that there might be a gap before an apostrophe, (like this: Word 's fault?) and similar errors repeated throughout the text. When that occurs I have to quit Word, start it up again and then try pasting again. It will invariably be fine, with the pasted text as it should appear … until the next time it happens, that is.

I hope I am able to refine my working practice to use both Pages and Word 'collaboratively' without such issues as I really don't want to rely on Word alone. I just don't like it.
 
V.M Friends

If file integrity and compatibility are paramount then you could always just run the windows version of office in a v.m such as 'parallels'. I often do this when either, no mac alternative exists for an application I need to use, or if the Windows version is simply better than it's mac counterpart.

The benefit of this would be that you see the file as it would be presented to the recipient
 
gaz617 said:
If file integrity and compatibility are paramount then you could always just run the windows version of office in a v.m such as 'parallels'. I often do this when either, no mac alternative exists for an application I need to use, or if the Windows version is simply better than it's mac counterpart.

The benefit of this would be that you see the file as it would be presented to the recipient
Click to expand...

But then wouldn't you have to buy Parallels, Windows and Office? If I wanted a windows machine I would have not bought the Mac. After seeing the prices of Parallels and Windows, it's cheaper to buy a Windows laptop.
 
No way am I putting Windows on my MacBook! I've just never understood doing that, if I wanted to keep using Windows then I wouldn't have spent so much on my MacBook Pro.

For me, I had to buy Office for Mac. I have to submit my assignments for school in .docx and .xlsx format and converting every single assignment just wasn't a practical solution. Plus, at least for me, I was used to using Word and Excel and didn't want to learning curve of having to get used to Pages and Numbers in addition to getting used to the Mac OS. I LOVE my new Mac, but it is taking some getting use to! I wish I had a local Apple Store so I could take some of their classes. I think I am going to have to settle for classes at the local Authorized Reseller as an hour + drive just isn't an efficient use of my time. I might eventually go down and take some classes at the closest Apple Store, but in the mean time I really need a refresher course in using this machine! LOL! :eek:
 
ladytonya said:
No way am I putting Windows on my MacBook! I've just never understood doing that, if I wanted to keep using Windows then I wouldn't have spent so much on my MacBook Pro
Click to expand...
I have windows on my Mac as it saves me from needing to buy a second machine. I use windows for work and as the treasurer of my church. The church runs on quickbooks non profit edition and that's a windows only flavor.

Many people have requirements to run windows but do not want to buy a windows machine because their macs can run windows and OSX extremely efficiently :)
 
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