Parallels Questions

[King Shady]

Hey all here's a brief explanation of my story - currently own a Retina Macbook Pro - I heavily rely on Microsoft Office (word, powerpoint, excel, and one note) because I will be using this machine for school. Currently, as some of you may know, all of the Office for Mac apps look horrible on the retina display (text is blurry and hideous). I've thought about purchasing Parallels to run Windows 7 just for Microsoft Office - but my questions are-

How do saving documents work? Can I access word documents from Parallels straight from finder on my mac? Can I save documents from parallels to my documents folder on Mac?

Will the text be clearer? - I'm guessing yes on this one because Windows can just scale the resolution.

Is this the best solution for me? As I side, I heavily rely on Microsoft Office and to be honest, I don't want to run Bootcamp just to get work done. Thanks all!!!

 

[Hawkeye16]

Text will definitely be clearer and everything will work like you are using a PC. I do recommend parallels for running Windows on the Mac.

Remember you will have to buy Parallels, Windows and Office for Windows. That is a lot of cost but it should get you to where you want to be.

As for saving in Windows through parallels and opening in your Mac or seeing on your Mac without the instance of parallels open... I am not personally sure how to do that aside from throwing it on a USB or something. I cannot just save to the Mac hard drive.

 

[King Shady]

Text will definitely be clearer and everything will work like you are using a PC. I do recommend parallels for running Windows on the Mac.

Remember you will have to buy Parallels, Windows and Office for Windows. That is a lot of cost but it should get you to where you want to be.

As for saving in Windows through parallels and opening in your Mac or seeing on your Mac without the instance of parallels open... I am not personally sure how to do that aside from throwing it on a USB or something. I cannot just save to the Mac hard drive.

Yea, I have Windows and Office already, I would just need to buy Parallels. Thank you for the reply by the way. So, where are the saved documents located at? Do I have to open Parallels and actually go through Windows to access my saved files?

 

[Hawkeye16]

Yea, I have Windows and Office already, I would just need to buy Parallels. Thank you for the reply by the way. So, where are the saved documents located at? Do I have to open Parallels and actually go through Windows to access my saved files?

The Virtual Machine is set up in such a way that corrupting the OS on that VM will not harm your computer/OS that is being run natively (most for OS/program/virus testing). Because of this it does not talk to the other OS or parts of the HD outside of itself.

You would have to open the windows instance to get to the files. There may be a program that can "look into" an instance of windows when it is closed and find a file but I am unaware of one (I have never needed one). I just throw everything on a flash drive if I need it anywhere else.