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Seeing these posts, I wonder what kind of work MR posters do. I unfortunately produce documents that may be sent to others to edit.

I have to often make presentations on someone else's conference room computer which is not often a Mac.

If you live and work in an insular world where you don't have to interact with other businesses or non-Mac users then maybe these alternatives are possible.

For me, not using Office would be such a pain in the ass that regardless of how poor the software is, I have to use it because it is THE business document format.

This. I am an academic and many of my collaborators use Windows machines. I wouldn't dream of sending them a manuscript written in Pages. I also don't trust Numbers like I do Excel for handling my huge data sheets. Not to mention that most conferences where I present will only accept Powerpoint presentations...

Not sure about newer versions but 2011 for Mac is by far the best office suite I've ever used. Not sure what all the hate for Office is over outside of it being made by Microsoft... who is really no longer the "bad guy" lol.

I find it to be quite useful but if there are too many documents/spreadsheets open and I've been saving for days then the software starts to glitch out. It needs to be quite and reopened to restore stability often.

Therein lies the problem. People buy Office for Mac to gain compatibility with Office for Windows. While MS does whatever it can to keep Office for Mac not-fully-compatible with Office for Windows. It's a silly, annoying little game.

Have you tried to save a Pages document in Word format? Good luck preserving your formatting...

Really looking forward to this! Even though I love Apple software and you can open and edit Office documents directly in iWork these days you just can't beat the compatibility and feature set of Microsoft Office.

Office for Mac feels really outdated, it feels more like the old Office 2003 and its no where close to the more modern approach and feeling of Office 2013 for Windows.

I hope we'll see a more modern UI, or at least make something that fits OS X more not this Office 2003 with grey UI because that makes it feel like OS X nonsense we got today, hopefully we'll see some OneDrive (SkyDrive) integration as that would be awesome for cross-platform workloads as I guess iCloud integration is completely out of the question and the addition of One Note for Macs.

And hopefully they'll actually make Outlook for Mac into something useful, the thing we got today with Office for Mac 2010 is a complete joke that doesn't compare or risible it's Windows counterpart at all, it doesn't even feature Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync support which is completely nonsensical if you ask me.


And please drop all the added bloatware and nonsense like Messenger and whatnot that comes with the Office packages for some awkward reason.

Also, I would appreciate uniformity in the retina enabled icons on Office Ribbons. I got to say I'm looking forward to this release but I will not be adopting until they release one or two updates. Also, I'm sure it will take awhile for Endnote to catch up to the new version as well.
 
It'll be interesting to see what they have in store.

I sure hope there will be purchase options outside of the subscription (365) model though.

My most desired feature is Document tabs (like web browsers have)
 
Everybody hates Office ...

Yet I haven't found a single source that says it isn't still the most used suite out there.
 
Nifty. Are Access, Visio, and Project for Mac finally going to be available? If not, wake me up when they are...

Word. Not the app, I mean like "Word to your mother."

If there were Mac versions of those three I don't think I would have any need to install Parallels anymore.
 
The least they can do is at least make it look and feel like a Mac product. They have failed to do so thus far.
 
This. I am an academic and many of my collaborators use Windows machines. I wouldn't dream of sending them a manuscript written in Pages. I also don't trust Numbers like I do Excel for handling my huge data sheets. Not to mention that most conferences where I present will only accept Powerpoint presentations...

Business School professor here.
 
Seeing these posts, I wonder what kind of work MR posters do. I unfortunately produce documents that may be sent to others to edit.

I have to often make presentations on someone else's conference room computer which is not often a Mac.

If you live and work in an insular world where you don't have to interact with other businesses or non-Mac users then maybe these alternatives are possible.

For me, not using Office would be such a pain in the ass that regardless of how poor the software is, I have to use it because it is THE business document format.

Same here. I prefer iWork's interface, but Office is an evil necessity if you share documents in your job or college. iWorks and Libreoffice have the problem of requiring conversion to work with Office documents, and the conversion is far from smooth messing up complex doc/spreadsheets.
 
People buy Office for Mac to gain compatibility with Office for Windows. While MS does whatever it can to keep Office for Mac not-fully-compatible with Office for Windows. It's a silly, annoying little game.
The only reason I would have for buying and loading Windows on my MBA would be to run the de facto version of MSO. And even then it would hurt. Bad.
iCloud does it, GDrive does it, I'm assuming 365 does it.
hopefully we'll see some OneDrive (SkyDrive) integration as that would be awesome for cross-platform workloads
The problem that I have with any of these cloud-based sharing products is if the company is based in the US then your private data becomes accessible by the NSA. </tinfoil hat>
And please drop all the added bloatware and nonsense like Messenger and whatnot that comes with the Office packages for some awkward reason.
I'd add SkyDrive to the bloatware to be booted. Not only is it bloated, it's fiendishly difficult to remove it.
iWork is OK for casual things but can't even come close to Office. Office 2011 apps even come an an innovative thing called "Save As"!
So does iWork (as it used to be), but as is the way of Apple you have to invoke the option key to see it. Why do they have to make 'computing for the rest of us' so bloody difficult?
 
I've seen a lot of criticism of Numbers on this forum. While I don't think a business can safely rely on Numbers, it does have some features that are better than Excel. For one, a sheet can have multiple tables in which the rows and columns can move independently. I don't understand why MS has stuck religiously to its one table per sheet workflow. Second, Numbers is not nearly as finicky about closed parenthesis as Excel (although in fairness, I have not used the newest version of Excel for complex formulas). Numbers also uses contextual menus and buttons to help the user get a formula right, even a complex one. Excel has a few features to help, but I think that a novice can do more in Numbers.
 
In my experience, MS Office for Mac is a very poor piece of Software.

It comes with so much bloat (all I really want is Word, PowerPoint and Excel!) and it's extremely slow and laggy. It crashes all the time, takes forever to load files, and just doesn't seem like the usual polished "Mac app".

I hope this version is better! (Saying that, the only part of MSO I use is Excel)

+1 for bloatware
By the time maintenance /support pack SP6 comes around we can probably use it!
 
I can't imagine many of the posters so proud to wear their anti-ms bias on their sleeves are engaged collaborative creative work (that requires a word processor or slide presentations).

If you don't need those things, you don't need any office suite. If you do need those things and you force your collaborators to deal with your wackass file formatting, you're the weak link in your collaboration.

A number (not all, of course) of academic journals won't accept LaTeX files anymore, and those that accept pdfs are diminishing. .docx and .pptx are the new de facto standards, and I can only imagine they are as fully entrenched in the business world as .doc and .ppt were ten years ago.


Sure, there may be some small businesses that can get away with open office or iWork (et al), but those are the exception. Just as an author who has no editors can use notepad for everything they do, if they wish.
All of this is true enough, but when MSO Mac is not fully compatible with MSO Windows, not to mention plugins, one has to wonder WTF is going on.
 
The least they can do is at least make it look and feel like a Mac product. They have failed to do so thus far.

Seems like neither company can make a UI that actually fits in with the other company's OS these days. They're not alone, either, Google is joining that wonderful game.
 
ITS ABOUT DAMN TIME! Then again, I wish Apple could make pages,numbers, and keynote as powerful as MS word so they can just leave Microsoft alone for good!
 
I haven't used MS Office on my Mac for ages now.....seemed like every time I fired it up it needed to download and install a critical update #.
 
I really only use MO for college and to be honest most of my note taking is done in Notes on my mac.. :apple:
 
ITS ABOUT DAMN TIME! Then again, I wish Apple could make pages,numbers, and keynote as powerful as MS word so they can just leave Microsoft alone for good!

They're aimed at different audiences, though.

iWork is a consumer grade product that has some enterprise users.
Office is an enterprise product that has some consumer-level users.
 
And what did you replace it with?



----------

What did you guys replace it with?

Well, you weren't asking me but I went MSOffice free a few years ago. Mostly I use OpenOffice, which works quite well. Write is a pretty good replacement for word and Calc does what I need so I don't need Excel. Don't need PowerPoint or Impress as I don't do that sort of thing, and I use Mail.App for mail because there is no end of how much I despise Outlook. OpenOffice Draw is a fairly good low end graphic editor for arrows, lines, frames, cropping etc. I've looked at Pages as well, and frankly I'm not that impressed. It's just weird but it is integrated into iCloud which is very nice. Haven't tried Numbers (as you might guess spreadsheets aren't that critical for me.) I'm just starting to mess about with WriteRoom on my iPad. So far it seems to work well and I like some of it's features.
 
I'm sorry, but that really makes you sound ignorant. Get a clue.



If it's made by Microsoft or Google, it will be hated here. The Reality Distortion Field is strong here.

I guess.

It just hurts my head a little when people tell me that I don't need to use Office because iWork or GDocs are "pretty much the same thing". :|
 
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