What Office Software do you use?

[TacticalDesire]

What office suite do you use? Do you still maintain compatibility with other people while sharing files? Does office 2008 and 2004 still play nice with when most people are now on 2010, 2011, 2013 or some version of open office? Do you use it in a production environment? Just curious.

 

[Altemose]

What office suite do you use? Do you still maintain compatibility with other people while sharing files? Does office 2008 and 2004 still play nice with when most people are now on 2010, 2011, 2013 or some version of open office? Do you use it in a production environment? Just curious.

Office 2008 plays nicely with a great majority of modern files. Office 2004 loses some formatting in some cases even if you use the downloadable XML converter from Microsoft.

Office 2008 is not bad or "outdated" feeling software by any means. Heck, I still write in AppleWorks 6.

 

[gooser]

appleworks but i only type a few letters per year. when i was working i would sometimes use neooffice to open some files but now that i'm retired happily that chapter in my life is closed.

 

[gavinstubbs09]

I like iWork. Only thing I wish is that '09 would sync with iCloud, then life would be perfect! Never really liked Office much, and with the iMac lab I set up I notice is that they use iWork more than Office 2011, so that's good news!

 

[Altemose]

I like iWork. Only thing I wish is that '09 would sync with iCloud, then life would be perfect! Never really liked Office much, and with the iMac lab I set up I notice is that they use iWork more than Office 2011, so that's good news!

iWork isn't bad at all. The good part is that Dropbox is still on us PowerPC users side!

 

[eyoungren]

What office suite do you use? Do you still maintain compatibility with other people while sharing files? Does office 2008 and 2004 still play nice with when most people are now on 2010, 2011, 2013 or some version of open office? Do you use it in a production environment? Just curious.

Office 2008 on all my PowerPC Macs and Office 2011 on the MP at work.

I was using Office 2004 for several years, both at home and at work. For a few years I was the only one at work that could open .docx, .xlsx and .pptx files. Now that most of the PCs have been updated that's not necessary.

We use Office 2008/2011 every day for production work. All of our legals come in Word format and we get a cable tv guide from the City of Glendale, AZ every week in Excel format.

Here is a major difference between Office for PC and Mac though. On the PC, if you track changes in the document and make deletions or additions it shows you those in little frames on the side of the document. On Mac, however, changes are tracked in red UNDERNEATH where they are edited. This makes it DAMN DIFFICULT IF NOT IMPOSSIBLE to simply cut and paste from a PC document with tracked changes that's opened on a Mac. Because all of the additions AND deletions are copied too, not just the final edited text, which is all that should be copied!!!

We have to specifically instruct people at the cities of Glendale and Peoria, AZ to NOT use track changes on their documents. There is a work around where the Legal Manager can copy and paste to a new document on her PC that does not have track changes, but this is a PITA.

 

[Altemose]

Office 2008 on all my PowerPC Macs and Office 2011 on the MP at work.

I was using Office 2004 for several years, both at home and at work. For a few years I was the only one at work that could open .docx, .xlsx and .pptx files. Now that most of the PCs have been updated that's not necessary.

We use Office 2008/2011 every day for production work. All of our legals come in Word format and we get a cable tv guide from the City of Glendale, AZ every week in Excel format.

Here is a major difference between Office for PC and Mac though. On the PC, if you track changes in the document and make deletions or additions it shows you those in little frames on the side of the document. On Mac, however, changes are tracked in red UNDERNEATH where they are edited. This makes it DAMN DIFFICULT IF NOT IMPOSSIBLE to simply cut and paste from a PC document with tracked changes that's opened on a Mac. Because all of the additions AND deletions are copied too, not just the final edited text, which is all that should be copied!!!

We have to specifically instruct people at the cities of Glendale and Peoria, AZ to NOT use track changes on their documents. There is a work around where the Legal Manager can copy and paste to a new document on her PC that does not have track changes, but this is a PITA.

Plus Office 2004 is plain ugly in terms of UI.

 

[eyoungren]

Plus Office 2004 is plain ugly in terms of UI.

LOL!, while there's that!

Office 2011 isn't much better IMO, but it is what it is.

 

[Altemose]

LOL!, while there's that!

Office 2011 isn't much better IMO, but it is what it is.

I think Office 2011 is definitely better than 2008. I was never a fan of the floating inspector window which served no purpose as there was plenty of room up in the tool bar at the top. I definitely am looking forward to 2014, but then again, iWork is plenty on my Intel.

 

[jrsx]

iWork 09' and 08' does everything I need it to do.

 

[Altemose]

iWork 09' and 08' does everything I need it to do.

And compatibility with most basic documents from Office is great. It is when you get into the stuff eyoungren was talking about and then you need the real Office.

 

[roadbloc]

Office 2004 with the docx plugin. I use it to write my books.

 

[wobegong]

Well I was using Office 2008 but as I'm no longer using the PM as a daily driver its 2011 on the MBP. Has to be 100% compatible with work so it has to be Office whether I like alternatives or not

LibreOffice on the Linux desktop but thats no good generally for anything but viewing as far as work goes.

 

[tampasteve]

I use a combination of iWork (Pages and Keynote) and Libreoffice. I just have never been able to commit to using Numbers as my main spreadsheet app. However, sometimes iWork just does not convert files correctly, hence my using Libreoffice. Personally I like Libreoffice's UI better than OpenOffice, which is the primary reason I use it. I just use these apps for general business things, nothing too fancy.

 

[bse5150]

I have Office 2008 on my G4 but I don't use it. Instead, I use 2011 on my MacBook Pro. Don't know why, it just worked out that way.

 

[S.B.G]

I have MS Office 2008 on my PowerMac G5 and it seems to work fine.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

iWork '09 all the way.

 

[128keaton]

Not in a rush: AppleWorks, rushing: Pages. Never liked the MSOffice suite, even though I have 2008 CDs and 2004 (or 3) CDs for PPC.

 

[andyrugbyref]

Was Pages, now Libreoffice/Openoffice for everything.


Dont like Office 2008.

 

[2984839]

AbiWord. I only need something to write Word documents and it does this well. It's compatible with MS Office, LibreOffice, and OpenOffice, though it's not technically a real .doc file (it's a .rtf with a .doc extension). I have never had anyone complain to me about not being able to open them though, and AbiWord is extremely fast and lightweight.

 

[FigmentNewtonII]

I've standardized on iWork 09 for the longest time. I'm still able to format pages documents into different types that are easily distributed. Pages is really all I need, but I have Keynote and Numbers on the HDD just in case. I also have Openoffice and LibreOffice on my ext. HDD if ever in the event that I need them. Though, no situation has come up where I needed to pull them out.

 

[BaddestArvai]

Personally I can use anything. I have both office 2008 and iWork 09'. I use office for more common papers and iWork for projects and nicer papers.

 

[G4TheWin]

I use Office 2004 for Mac on Mac OS X, and Libreoffice on Debian.

 

[ResPublica]

I use Office 2004, because it runs faster then Office 2008, whilst still being able to read/write docx-files.

 

[eyoungren]

I use Office 2004, because it runs faster then Office 2008, whilst still being able to read/write docx-files.

Office 2008 runs faster than Office 2004 on my Macs.