MS Office 2011 iPad Ed, $49.95? Any Interest?

[WMuntean]

I really don't like flaming but some of the posts on this forum are just completely ignorant to the real world.

All professionals use Microsoft Office because it is THE de facto standard in the business world. It is an absolute joke to send a business contact something made in pages->converted to word and hope that it formats correctly (same for excel and especially powerpoint!). I could list the billions of incompatibilities but most are intuitive - all formatting that is done to a document has to be interpreted correctly on the other end. There are thousands of things that can and will be misinterpreted. iWork is GREAT for personal use, TERRIBLE for professional use. It doesn't support all the many things professionals need - professional endnote applications, scripts, reviewing, collaboration over a network, the list goes on......

Bottom line, professionals use office because it is the standard and it performs its job better than anything else at this time. While I love apple, iwork is terribly inadequate at this point both because of its own inherent weaknesses, but more importantly, because it is not supported by many specialty office add-ins that professionals use.

To the OP: I would LOVE office for iPad to finally view powerpoints correctly on an iPad.

+ 1

I'm really, really glad to see others sharing this view. I would almost say (perhaps at the expense of sounding arrogant), those who do not understand the insufficiencies of Pages probably aren't using it professionally.

 

[anthonymoody]

Given my use case (see my signature...) picking up MS Office is a no brainer. However, to be truly a cut above iWork it'd have to have seamless - and i mean seamless - document compatibility with the desktop versions. Fonts, formatting, etc.

I have imported and exported word and excel docs and found numerous issues (as has the rest of the world). Some are feature incompatibilities, some are bugs.

It could be sort of cool too. Imagine an in app purchase of a font

But I would likely pay $50 for this, sure.

 

[WMuntean]

Ok the conversion may suck but I wasnt talking about that, I was talking about the optionsf for students turning papers in, people making cover letters and resumes, writers, etx. Basically 90% of the population including most business users. Outside the smakl perdent like you mentioned lawyers or maybe court reports that have to be super technical and track everything, it seems you can do everything on iworks and even easier without doing it all yourself because you have templates to guide you.

You can align, do word count, spell check, tabs, etc. Most students only need spell check heh.

Unfortunately, this is incorrect. Students at most universities have to submit electronic copies of their documents that get scanned for plagiarism, and a Papers document will get rejected (plain and rich text work, though). Furthermore, professors (apart from law school) are trending towards grading papers electronically via track changes, comments, feedback, etc. Its unfortunate, but unless students have to submit only hardcopies of papers, Pages is seemingly inadequate at the collegiate level.

 

[Jcoz]

But what about students or those who want to send cover letters to employers. How else can they do it and make it look as good as the letter temlate with all the dolors and suchn on iworks? How do you design your own teplates like that in MS Word? And even if you do I bet its really time consuming and still probably wont look as good. So for certain uses like business ketters iworks is better.

Andnwhy do you need to track changes and all that? Businesses got along fine a few decades back even with pen and pencil why is all that extra crap necessary?

Versioning is a very useful tool used in many programs.

Yah, lets all go back to pen and paper, just because we can.

 

[qtx43]

...Flawless Office compatibility...

Even MS Office doesn't have flawless compatibility with MS Office, unless you have the exact same version. This, obviously, would not be the exact same version. My 'thoughts' are you'll be waiting a long long time for that product, but I agree it would sell.

 

[Jcoz]

Unfortunately, this is incorrect. Students at most universities have to submit electronic copies of their documents that get scanned for plagiarism, and a Papers document will get rejected (plain and rich text work, though). Furthermore, professors (apart from law school) are trending towards grading papers electronically via track changes, comments, feedback, etc. Its unfortunate, but unless students have to submit only hardcopies of papers, Pages is seemingly inadequate at the collegiate level.

Why wouldn't they be trending toward PDF editing for that?

It makes little to no sense to pigeon hole students into HAVING to have MS Office when plenty of PDF editors are available that wouldn't require any particular proprietary software purchased by the students.

 

[fertilized-egg]

Why wouldn't they be trending toward PDF editing for that?

It makes little to no sense to pigeon hole students into HAVING to have MS Office when plenty of PDF editors are available that wouldn't require any particular proprietary software purchased by the students.

It's unfortunate but I don't think most professors care about that unless someone forces them to do otherwise. MS Office is just THE standard accepted there and it's practically impossible to be in a professional environment without it.

 

[notjustjay]

Andnwhy do you need to track changes and all that? Businesses got along fine a few decades back even with pen and pencil why is all that extra crap necessary?

I regularly deal with documents here that are hundreds, if not thousands of pages long. You try taking a document like that, making some minor changes to it to take it from rev F to rev G, and then sending it to your coworkers for review and comments. Do you think they'd appreciate a "track changes" feature so they can instantly see what you've changed? Make annotations on the changes? Cancel the changes and roll them back to the original if they don't think it was correct? Do you think that when you publish rev G to the company's document repository, people might appreciate change bars in the margins to differentiate from the previous version?

Not everyone uses Word just for little piddly reports.

I'm really, really glad to see others sharing this view. I would almost say (perhaps at the expense of sounding arrogant), those who do not understand the insufficiencies of Pages probably aren't using it professionally.

You're not the one who sounds arrogant, it's the folks who think "Pages does everything I need it to, therefore it is better than Microsoft Office and all of you folks who think you need Office are deluded or stupid!"

Pages is a great program, and I use it all the time for one-off documents that have no specific recipient, for example newsletters and flyers. It is very appropriate to use Pages for this because you can make documents that look really good and then publish to PDF easily for sharing. You don't generally need to go back and edit an old newsletter (other than to use it as the basis for the next one).

But for any kind of document that will have some sort of life cycle, e.g. stick around for years, be edited or shared between other people, that may be handed down to people other than yourself (e.g. legal or policy documents for a small business or charity) then you definitely want to use the common denominator, which is Office.

 

[WMuntean]

Why wouldn't they be trending toward PDF editing for that?

It makes little to no sense to pigeon hole students into HAVING to have MS Office when plenty of PDF editors are available that wouldn't require any particular proprietary software purchased by the students.

Although you make a good point, keep in mind that the plagiarism software determines the compatibility (I don't believe they can OCR PDFs, but I'll have to check on that). Secondly, most universities also offer MS Office to students (for both Mac and Windows) for free or at an extremely discounted price.

I also do mark-ups on PDFs but Word had the added ability to accept changes, whereas PDFs require additional steps.

I will say, though, in my experience, action editors send feedback via marked-up PDFs.

 

[redman042]

Whether Pages or an alternative (Quickoffice, Documents to Go) is good enough (or even better) depends ENTIRELY on what you need. For some here, the alternatives are just fine. For others, they will never, ever do.

Like many others, I simply cannot use any iPad app for 90% of my word processing needs. Lack of track changes is the #1 reason. Formatting incompatibilities is the second.

If I'm writing something new for someone else to use and format, Quickoffice (my current choice) is fine. But most of the time I'm reviewing another long, highly formatted document. Nothing but Office will do. I would seriously piss off a coworker or client by throwing them a curve ball at this stage and sending them a hosed document that's been through conversion.

The alternative which does work well for me is to have them PDF it, and then I can mark up using Goodreader. Goodreader markups are fully compatible with Acrobat and they work GREAT! But I can't always ask the person on the other end to PDF it. This only works for certain needs.

I can also remote in to my PC using a VNC app, and do it that way, but again this is limited and often very slow.

Final comment: As much as I'm waiting for Office on the iPad (and I do think it will eventually come), I'm not expecting this to answer all my needs. It is almost certain that Microsoft will provide a stripped-down version not unlike what they offer on their Windows Phones, and it will also not have track changes and other enterprise-level features. So we'll be back to Square 1.

 

[DNAppleGold]

Add me to the list of those who would buy the app. The relevant merits of MS Office v Iwork and other programs don't matter. For most people Office is what they HAVE to use at work. Thus, having seamless integration would be huge. I saw some one with with a Windows 7 phone and such integration was pretty impressive.

 

[Stirolak123]

I hate that people are even using docx, microsoft's not so subtle "you should upgrade" bs file format change

Why even use it. No one at my journalism xhool used it or turned assignments in with it. Even the professors said to save it in .doc.

 

[Stirolak123]

Add me to the list of those who would buy the app. The relevant merits of MS Office v Iwork and other programs don't matter. For most people Office is what they HAVE to use at work. Thus, having seamless integration would be huge. I saw some one with with a Windows 7 phone and such integration was pretty impressive.

Thats why jobs is changing the mentality of business wners by integrating ipads in the workplace and in the medical field. He is doing what gates did a decade and a half ago. It will change trust me, jobs is thhe new gates and mac os and ios will be the new windows.

 

[Stirolak123]

Whether Pages or an alternative (Quickoffice, Documents to Go) is good enough (or even better) depends ENTIRELY on what you need. For some here, the alternatives are just fine. For others, they will never, ever do.

Like many others, I simply cannot use any iPad app for 90% of my word processing needs. Lack of track changes is the #1 reason. Formatting incompatibilities is the second.

If I'm writing something new for someone else to use and format, Quickoffice (my current choice) is fine. But most of the time I'm reviewing another long, highly formatted document. Nothing but Office will do. I would seriously piss off a coworker or client by throwing them a curve ball at this stage and sending them a hosed document that's been through conversion.

The alternative which does work well for me is to have them PDF it, and then I can mark up using Goodreader. Goodreader markups are fully compatible with Acrobat and they work GREAT! But I can't always ask the person on the other end to PDF it. This only works for certain needs.

I can also remote in to my PC using a VNC app, and do it that way, but again this is limited and often very slow.

Final comment: As much as I'm waiting for Office on the iPad (and I do think it will eventually come), I'm not expecting this to answer all my needs. It is almost certain that Microsoft will provide a stripped-down version not unlike what they offer on their Windows Phones, and it will also not have track changes and other enterprise-level features. So we'll be back to Square 1.

You need to get ahold of this app than:
http://appmodo.com/46024/pdf-expert-2-2-one-more-reason-to-replace-a-laptop-with-the-ipad/

You can even flstten and type inside pdf files with it or use a stylus:

 

[bwrairen]

I absolutely agree that MS Office is a MUST for any professional environment, but really, I've seen so many amateurish-looking documents created in any word processor or even Illustrator. The choice of word processor usually has very little bearing in the layout quality of the document. Where MS Word really shines is the file compatibility, management of long documents, and collaboration tools for editing and comments.

While this is mostly true, the problem arises when you create a professional looking document and a re-format gone wrong ruins it on the other end. You (and your work) come off looking amateurish. In my business, most of these electronic documents and powerpoints are proposals. Should I risk my livelihood on a successful reformat? Seems like a risk I don't need to take to me.

 

[Stirolak123]

While this is mostly true, the problem arises when you create a professional looking document and a re-format gone wrong ruins it on the other end. You (and your work) come off looking amateurish. In my business, most of these electronic documents and powerpoints are proposals. Should I risk my livelihood on a successful reformat? Seems like a risk I don't need to take to me.

All you have to do is send it to yourself or email yourself and open it up on a pc to see how it formats and looks. How hard would thst be? You dont need to sit on a desktop pc using word to do the whole thing just edit at the end also.

 

[Shivetya]

$49 - Nope. I don't see it happening. It would dilute the perception of Office as an expensive professional suite. Apple can sell iWorks cheaply b/c it's s/w meant to sell h/w.

Uh, its a tablet. As such pricing expectations are wholly different and come across as an needed application to integrate with your office computer. As in, this will help acceptance of tablets in the work environment.

Think of it this way, create that big presentation on your work PC, pop it on the tablet, and connect the tablet to the overhead and do your presentation.

I just with One Note was available on the Mac edition of Office.

 

[stabile007]

I would love Office on the iPad; OneNote on iPad would be even better. I know MS has got to be thinking about it as someone else said they did bring OneNote to the iPhone and MS is not dumb enough to ignore the potential profits from iOS apps. I have a sneaking suspicion that Office Live might also be involved in this whole thing.

 

[Xeperu]

I will split this comment into two parts.

First I need to vent a bit. Stirolak123 "dude", get a spellchecker for your browser, I can't even take you seriously with the way you write comments. If you're trying to look smart, act smart.

Second on the topic of Office Vs. The World (of Office like suites).

1. Track changes is, by far, the most useful feature that Word has to offer. I could NOT live without it. I hold several jobs (ranging from consultancy to teaching) and in nearly all positions I use this on a daily basis. When reviewing a 200 page business proposal between two fortune 500 companies it's almost impossible to work without track changes.
2. Another is Excel. Number? Don't get me started! Excel is, and will be for many years, the defacto spreadsheet app. It's powerful, feature complete and the standard over many industries.
3. Powerpoint: No comment, Power corrupts, Powerpoint corrupts absolutely. I don't like it.
4. Outlook: Like millions upon millions upon millions of business professionals I cannot live without it. The agenda feature is by far the most powerful I've ever encountered (combined with MS Exchange Server).

Pages is good for your average liberal arts student, the mom and pop store around the corner, the Hipster kid that hates Microsoft, your grandmother and her book club and other non-essential walks of life.

So yes, I would be extremely interested in a iOS version of MS Office. Even for 200$. Worth. Every. Penny.

 

[DemonBob]

MS Word has plenty of templates. If you are used to pages, that's fine.



Try reviewing a 60 page settlement agreement with proposed changed marked up by opposing counsel, then you will see the value of track changes. Footnotes also are used widely, in Court opinions and motions, among other things.

Granted, if all you need word processing software for is typing up your resume to send to The Hut for a delivery job, then pages will undoubtedly suffice.

Arguing against what the business world actually requires is misguided. The fact is, professionals -- many of whom are in their 50s -- are not going to all-of-a-sudden switch to Apple's pages because you think it's adequate. They will continue using Word, and I will continue to have to view documents created in word.

Funny thing is, I am an IT guy, and at my previous company we had a lot of law offices as clients. I was surprised to see that 95% of them out of the 40 law offices we supported used IBM Lotus Word.

 

[MrWillie]

With Numbers on iPad, you can open Numbers and Microsoft Excel files. It works the other way around, too. The spreadsheets you create in Numbers on your iPad can be sent as Numbers files, Excel files, or PDF documents. That way, whether you use a Mac or PC, you always have the flexibility to view and edit the spreadsheets you need right from your iPad.

Total cost...$30.

However, if you read on, numbers unmerges merged cells. Utter failure for me.

It's unfortunate but I don't think most professors care about that unless someone forces them to do otherwise. MS Office is just THE standard accepted there and it's practically impossible to be in a professional environment without it.

Yep, send an xls or doc file and everyone and their brother can open it. We live in a Microsoft world, and I don't think Steve can kill it (die Flash die). I personally use Open Office, and no one that I send Excel files to knows it. Numbers for the iPad misses the boat.

I would GLADLY pay $49 plus for Excel for iPad. But it would have to be real Excel, not their dumbed down mobile version that they have had for the past ten years. (Doesn't handle merged cells). Desktop or "truck" Excel please.

 

[jb1280]

I believe that a $49 version of Office would create the same complaints that the $30 version of iWork has created.

If Apple has not been able to provide a feature rich version of Pages for the iPad, than I doubt that Microsoft would be able to provide a feature rich version of its suite for the iPad.

A $100 version of Word that provided the majority of the features of Word for Mac? Absolutely.