Using Word (Office 2011) with Apple's Pages
I used to use ClarisWorks on a Performa 450. I thought it was a great piece of word processing software. I published a magazine using Home Publisher but always used ClarisWorks for the basic 'typewriting'. It was a clean, elegant and simple solution that worked for me. I continued to use ClarisWorks' successor, ApoleWorks for the same reasons. It was a headache-free and reliable solution to my needs.
Eventually, as an editor with a music magazine I was required to interface with PC users and after much trial and error was able to set up some reasonable compatibility between my Mac's AppleWorks and Word for Mac software and the various Windows Word versions that the magazine's writers used. It wasn't problem-free but by and large it worked okay. I hated using the Word for Mac software, though. It was ugly and unpleasant to use, unlike Apple's WP software.
With the demise of Power PC and the introduction of Intel on the Mac, I eventually made the transition too but put off 'upgrading' my production process until a few months ago, instead continuing to use the iMac. With the MacBook I invested in Pages, AppleWorks' successor, and also Office for Mac 2011. I've grown to be comfortable enough with Pages (though I am not wholly convinced that it is as user-friendly as its predecessors) but I am alarmed at my experience with the Word element of Office 2011 for Mac.
I continue to use Apple's software to edit and generally wrestle with interview and review material before pasting it into Word for circulation to others whop use PCs. This editing requires the implementation of various house-styles and formatting. There are two things that currently concern me with Word in Office 2011when I am doing this.
First of all, when I receive a CD review from others, as a Word file, I copy and paste the review into Pages and edit it therein. My 'traditional' work practice. If, for example, a record label has been written in a mixture of upper and lower case, I correct it so that it is entirely in upper case, as per the house style. (That's done in Pages, remember!) When I subsequently copy and paste the CD review into a Word document and send it (and others) back to my chief editor, that upper case text will revert back to lower case! How bizarre is that! It is only when I change it in my Word file (rather than in Pages) that it remains fixed.
I'm assuming that this is a Microsoft issue rather than an Apple issue.
The other weird thing is when I copy and past a bunch of text (say a few dozen CD reviews) from Pages into Word, sometimes the text fails to paste in the correct manner, with spaces between punctuation that really ought not to be there. The only solution at this point is to quit Word and launch it again, after which the re-pasted text will be fine.
Over the years I have found Word's compatibility with other versions of itself to be less than reliable, to say the least. I remember a contact asking me if I could help him find a way of opening his Word file (written on a Windows 95 or 98 PC). None of his PC-owning friends had been able to open the file, and when he sent me a floppy disk with the same file I passed it on to my Windows-savvy colleague. He had no luck. It wouldn't open with whatever Windows/Word combinations he had available to him.
As I was about to return the floppy and its stubborn Word file to my contact, I realised I had an Apple Performa 6400 of a similar era to the time when the contact's Word file was created. What the hell, I thought, and fired up the old Performa. Sure enough, Apple's basic SimpleText software was able to open the Word file. I tried opening the same file on my old iMac G3 and again, no problem. AppleWorks was able to open it.
The lesson, I learned, was that Microsoft failed to make diligent efforts to ensure comprehensive compatibility with its own software whereas with Apple, "it just worked". Apple were more diligent and thorough with their Microsoft compatibility than Microsoft themselves!
There's a reason Apple's sales slogans resonate with Apple users, and it's because there's a profound measure of truth in them. "It just works!"
As for Microsoft, I cannot muster much respect for a software company that fails to make an appropriate amount of effort to respect its customers/users. And I simply do not trust the current version of Word in Office 2011.
