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Office or iWork? Why?

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Cancelled
Original poster
Dec 25, 2011
100
1
Title is self explanatory. I'm an office user but thinking of making the change to solely using iWork due to iCloud and autosave etc. Thus, I'm trying to get some feedback from people using either or, to assist me in making my decision.

Thanks
Ace
 
I prefer MS Office for Mac, for maximum compatibility with Windows users. If you don't want MS Office for some reason, there are many alternatives, such as iWork, NeoOffice, LibreOffice, OpenOffice, Google Docs, etc. Searching the forum will reveal dozens of threads discussing these various alternatives and the pros and cons of each, such as this small sampling:
 
I have both and when I first got into the Mac, I had iWork only. After a few years I decided I wanted to go back to Office. So, I've not used iWork since I put Office 2011 on my Mac. I also use Dropbox for syncing my files between home and work.
 
I was strictly an iWork user for 4 years. Two months ago, I got a 3-device license for MS Office for my new MBA, as one of my kids uses it for school and he is REQUIRED to turn in an Office document (vs. pdf) and over the years I have had trouble with iWork exporting to .doc files without messing up. So, if you are in an environment where you need to share or need 100% compatibility for MS Office, go for Office. Be forewarned though - it is ugly on the Mac. I like it on my work Windows machine, but really dislike it on the Mac.
 
I have both on my Mac and prefer each one for different reasons. As others mentioned Office for Mac is a better choice when you need compatibility with the Windows Office world.

When it comes to personal documents and such I do prefer using iWork and for my own personal stuff iWork is the front runner. With that being said though, I am more comfortable using Excel over Numbers and tend to use that the most. When it comes to Word Processing I prefer pages over Word. Pages seems elegant to me, whereas Word is clunky. I don't use presentation software much but on the few times I used them I would say that Keynote is better on a creative standpoint.

With iCloud though, and the iOS iWork apps now available, I do find myself using iWork more than Office all the way around.
 
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Even though I worked on the Office development team from 99-04, today I prefer the iWork apps due to the more advanced font handling system. I also prefer that Pages has more desktop publishing features implemented in it than Word. I had expected the opposite when Publisher and FrontPage were EOL retired.
 
Mike in Kansas said:
I was strictly an iWork user for 4 years. Two months ago, I got a 3-device license for MS Office for my new MBA, as one of my kids uses it for school and he is REQUIRED to turn in an Office document (vs. pdf) and over the years I have had trouble with iWork exporting to .doc files without messing up. So, if you are in an environment where you need to share or need 100% compatibility for MS Office, go for Office. Be forewarned though - it is ugly on the Mac. I like it on my work Windows machine, but really dislike it on the Mac.
Click to expand...

I had the exact same issue with my kid's school and we had to switch to Office because there were compatibility issues when converting Pages or Keynote files.
 
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