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Pages vs Libreoffice vs Word?

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darwichee90

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 26, 2017
55
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I´ve used Pages for ages, but it seems whenever someone recived and open the text document, wether it´s work-related or privat, sometimes the document looks completely different on their side, from how it looked like when i sent it (by design), and sometimes they can´t even open the document.

So i really want a program that´s universal, meaning when i write a document and make styles = heading, bold, and so on, it will look exactly the same on their end, regardless if they have a MAC or PC?

I hope you understood, since my English is not the best :)
 
If the audience needs to only READ your document, print from any of those programs to PDF. That will lock down the design elements you use and make it about as universal as printing it to paper and mailing that paper to them.

If the audience needs to be able to EDIT the document, (save as) RTF is a pretty broad-based standard. If you need better than that, you probably should go with Word, as it is close to universal and most of the other programs can import Word and generally do a pretty good job on the import.

For group editing, the best option is to communicate with the group of editors and find out what THEY are using... then use the same.
 
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Word writes/reads the same on Windows, Mac, iPad etc. But probably a better question is, do the people you send these documents to have a corporate standard? For example, I use a Mac (because reasons) but I work in a company that has standardised on Windows and Office365, so using Word on Mac is a no-brainer.
 
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For best compatibly you should use Word but as mentioned above you could get by with PDF exports from Pages.

LibreOffice (in my opinion) is terrible on a Mac as it clearly wasn't designed for it when you look at its UI.
 
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Thanks so much for the answers, really thankfull. No they will only read my text documents like resume, personal letters and so on, so it´s nothing big or something crazy, more simpel things.

So you guys think i should export my text document to PDF everytime i´ve maid one? Using pages
 
darwichee90 said:
Thanks so much for the answers, really thankfull. No they will only read my text documents like resume, personal letters and so on, so it´s nothing big or something crazy, more simpel things.

So you guys think i should export my text document to PDF everytime i´ve maid one? Using pages
Click to expand...

Yep, pretty much, see response #2 above as that's my go to answer for this question: PDF for read only, RTF for general format/layout compatibility, and Word if you need 100% guaranteed compatibility with other Word users, especially for more complex Word tasks involving macros and whatnot.

Libre Office is excellent, and price is obviously hard to beat, AND is does a good job reading and writing modern MS Office formats, but generally I use it for very lightweight tasks, and always export to PDF for read only documents (or use Office [Word/Excel] on the Mac).
 
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D.T. said:
Yep, pretty much, see response #2 above as that's my go to answer for this question: PDF for read only, RTF for general format/layout compatibility, and Word if you need 100% guaranteed compatibility with other Word users, especially for more complex Word tasks involving macros and whatnot.

Libre Office is excellent, and price is obviously hard to beat, AND is does a good job reading and writing modern MS Office formats, but generally I use it for very lightweight tasks, and always export to PDF for read only documents (or use Office [Word/Excel] on the Mac).
Click to expand...

thank you once again and may god bless you :) , so basicly i can stick with Pages, i really didn´t think it would be that simple,
 
My work also sends me Excel files and I'm not going to pay for MS products. Libre Office has worked very well for me. I am able to download the file, do any changes and save as a MS file and return it to my manager.
For personal use, Numbers has been just fine for me. I have no need to create any heavy load files and it works well with Pages.
For the OP, creating PDF's, IMHO, in Pages, for me works well as I can email the file without the other party having to worry about anything.
 
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darwichee90 said:
I´ve used Pages for ages, but it seems whenever someone recived and open the text document, wether it´s work-related or privat, sometimes the document looks completely different on their side, from how it looked like when i sent it (by design), and sometimes they can´t even open the document.

So i really want a program that´s universal, meaning when i write a document and make styles = heading, bold, and so on, it will look exactly the same on their end, regardless if they have a MAC or PC?

I hope you understood, since my English is not the best :)
Click to expand...
Pages > File > Export To... > PDF

Why share an unfinished document?
If you need to collaborate use Pages > Collaborate or online iCloud > Pages > Collaborate.
 
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darwichee90 said:
I´ve used Pages for ages, but it seems whenever someone recived and open the text document, wether it´s work-related or privat, sometimes the document looks completely different on their side, from how it looked like when i sent it (by design), and sometimes they can´t even open the document.

So i really want a program that´s universal, meaning when i write a document and make styles = heading, bold, and so on, it will look exactly the same on their end, regardless if they have a MAC or PC?

I hope you understood, since my English is not the best :)
Click to expand...

Replying after 2 years :D
Well, I see a lot of people talking about using MS Word, not everyone has that much money to waste anyway.

I rate Linux higher than Mac any given day and from my linux usage I've come across many open source applications and one of them is LibreOffice that was made on OpenOffice as a base. Libre is the answer to all your problems, just download a Mac OS version and you're good to go.
 
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Libre office works better than Pages for me. It's reasonably Word compatible, and not crippled like Pages has gotten. It runs the same on Mac, Win, Linux. Plus I doubt it will ever move to a subscription model, or try to force me into someone's cloud.
 
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SoftMaker has a pretty good basic suite of productivity apps. It's good enough for someone like me who doesn't need all the bells and whistles of Office.
 
Pages is good to store fancy layouts that are obviously not present in Writer. But compatibility? I mean, MS Office dominates the world, your school/work computers run your work on WINDOWS machines only.

iWork is less to NONE at all compatible with MS Office.
Don't say we could export. I imported a simple excel sheet, opened it with numbers, hanged cell colours and exported as xlsx.
Then? Opened it in libra office (later in MS Office with same results). All formatting done earlier, all formulas, all borders, all colours were gone and also the things I did in Numbers app didn't reflect. ZERO COMPATIBILITY (Removed numbers forever that day).

Libre Office is best and closest alternative to MS Office. It is highly compatible and possesses a simplicity. You can create everything in iWorks pages there but if you're less qualified to do so you might need readymade things of keynote and pages.

However, keynote and pages have a better compatibility than numbers, so you may rely onto them but again, you will always have to check the things by opening in libre or ms office after working to ensure whether it will work on your work desk or school computers. That's really a bad thing.

PAGES/KEYNOTE: better than Libre alternatives (even better than MS Office) and hold better compatibility. But you have to ensure compatibility that makes it a bad choice.
Numbers: Just doesn't stand anywhere in comparison to libre and MS office. An obvious NO.
 
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