Office docs on mac and windows? new mac user

Some of your options are MS Office for Mac, iWork, OpenOffice, NeoOffice.

To run Windows apps on your Mac, you need to install Windows via Boot Camp or use Parallels or VMware Fusion.

If you don't have a Windows license, you can use CrossOver to run some applications. Not all Windows apps are compatible with CrossOver. Check their site for compatible apps.

There are several links to software recommendations in the following:

Helpful Information for Any Mac User

 

Or LibreOffice.

NeoOffice, OpenOffice & LibraOffice are all (I think) free

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Of VirtualBox (which is free!)

 

iWork suite is fantastic but not "perfectly" compatible with MS docs, especially versions older than 2007.
If you "have to" work in windows, sure you should do it. Bootcamp in Utilities will help you with installing windows.(It seems that Lion would only allow you to install win7.)
As mentioned by GGJstudios, VM or PD are also options.
What I would recommend are MS Office for Mac, Evernote, MPlayerX(this is wonderful, compare to QuickTime), winRAR for Mac and Paragon NTFS for Mac(if you also have a PC or work with a PC).

 

If you use macros, Office 2011 is your only option.

 

Buy office for mac. Best thing ever as a student. Usually booting into windows is best if there is a program on windows that is not compatible for the Mac OS. This isn't the case.

 

I do a significant amount of writing, presentation/lecture/training work, and a decent amount of spreadsheet gyration, so I wanted the best interoperability with the office standard (MS Office).

Here's my quick take:

iWork
Great up to a point, more geared toward "lite" users, some compatibility issues (between MSO), good price.


Open Office/Libre Office/Neo Office
Free options (i.e., price is excellent!), some features work excellent, others are a little wonky, UI so-so-ness, these are all different development forks from the same core set of Open Source libraries, some slow updates, fixes, etc.


MS Office 2011
Highest price (student edition can be cheap[er]), best interoperability with Winders©, very feature heavy, some
non-OSX UI elements, some reports of poor performance and VBA/macro incompatibility (mostly in Excel).


Windows + MS Office
Obviously, perfect Office compatibility with Windows! Pricey (potentially Office + Windows + [optional VM]), more resource hungry (or a VM), not being in your native OS for MS office use (Bootcamp).

It' my feeling if you can avoid running windows for _just_ MS Office, do it. Heck, I'm running Windows in a VM for development work, yet I still use OSX native MS Office.

 

iWork is great but nowhere near as full featured as MS Office. This in itself is no big deal, you'd need to have quite specific requirements for this to do anything more than annoy you occasionally. iWork does support all MS Office doc types and for the most part works pretty well BUT doesn't handle them perfectly. Stuff like formatting can look a bit off. If you're planning to shuffle documents between OSX and Windows on a regular basis, I don't think iWork is a good option.

I used iWork for two years and only needed to open MS Office docs occasionally so it was fine for me. If compatibility isn't crucial, iWork is great but MS Office is guaranteed to work. I use MS Office now and it is much more powerful with no compatibility problems. It is more expensive but you do get more as well.

 

To add to this: Bean is another great alternative for free.

 

As others have mentioned, iWork is very good especially for shorter documents, particularly were the focus is creating good looking documents. Keynote is an outstanding App if you need to do presentations and in most cases is better than Powerpoint, which is included in Microsoft Office for Mac. As your documents become more complicated and you need more power features then Microsoft Office becomes more attractive.

If you need to collaborate with other Windows office users, get Office. As others have said iWork can read and write in Microsoft Office file format, but the conversion is not 100%, and it's just not worth the hassle messing about with documents after the conversion.

If you want to read more about the differences and which Application in iWork / Office for Mac are more suitable, depending on intended use, click here.

I actually use both, and which application I use, depends on the what I want to do, and who the document is being produced for, as both Apps have a slightly different target focus.

 

I'd add my vote to just using Office for Mac - least amount of fuss and muss with compatibility and rebooting/running Virtual machines, etc.

Part of the fun is exploring the Mac's capabilities but sometimes you just want to work which to me, means firing up Office.

I will add that Keynote is great but I choose Excel and Word over their iWork equivalents.

 

Definitely get a student discount on Office 2011 though. If you're not a student, as a buddy who is.