Word or Pages?

[Peter Franks]

I know it's probably been asked a million times, but I'm used to Word, but after downloading the 30 day 2011 trial, it's a right mess. I have never seen so much tat surrounding the page! I don't need THAT many options. I do my contracts, invoices etc, and it's not anything like the old Word I had on my PC.

I don't really need the other elements of Office and wondered if Pages is decent, same type of fonts etc. Reads doc. more importantly than docx?

And I save as PDF for emailing. So do I really need it or should I just get Pages from the App store and save a few quid?

 

[dgbowers]

Pages is by far better than Word. The UI is much simpler and it's much easier to navigate. If you use PDFs, then you'll love the export function of Pages.

Numbers is ok, but Excel is much, much better for heavy spreadsheet users.

Keynote is the greatest presentation creator that has been made to date. It blows anything else out of the water.

Overall I'd get the whole iWork suite. I've been using it for years and have actually enjoyed using it.

 

[CFoss]

I MUCH prefer iWork. Everything works and looks nicer. The only reason to not go with iWork is due to compatibility with Office. True, iWork can technically read and export .doc, etc. But it's riddled with format issues, or plain doesn't read properly.

People tend to have the following preference:
Pages > Word
Numbers < Excel
Keynote > PowerPoint

So, to sum it up: If you're making presentations, documents to print, or have access to a Mac at work, go with iWork. If you need to work with Office files on a regular basis at work, go with Office.

 

[Rowf]

Why not try the IWork 30 day trial as a comparison to Word.

http://www.apple.com/iwork/download-trial/?cmp

Then if you like it purchase Pages from the app store.

I moved from Word to Pages quite easily when I changed to mac.
In fact, as with most things mac, I prefer Pages over Word.
It seems calmer and more chilled to work with somehow, but maybe that's just me

 

[Peter Franks]

Thanks for that guys. I'm more concerned about the Word/Pages aspect than the Excel, Powerpoint areas, but if not compatible with my old doc format, and only OK with docx or it moves things around too much, then it may be a hassle, Just really hate this new Word, it's awful, and on the 13" there is just FAR too much going on, which always seems to come back no matter how many times I get rid and change page percentage views too. Didn't know about the export part of Pages but sounds good.

Have the bloated Office trial on here, wasn't sure I wanted another trial I may not want, but I guess It's got to be a suck it and see. The Office suite after the 30 day trial is not needed, only Word, but the stuff it's put on here including Messenger etc is a joke

Thanks again, I'll try Pages and see what it does with my old Word docs.
Anyone know a quick fix for deleting whole Office that would be good. The instructions are fierce and long to delete it. Is iWorks easily removable if It's not compatible?

 

[AFPoster]

Office 2011 is incredible. I like iWork but I grew up on Office it's what I know and I use it well.

 

[Peter Franks]

I suppose because I've been using Word 2000, and nothing else, opening that colossus that is Word 2011 on a smaller screen than I'm normally used to is just... like learning Japanese! All those options up top

 

[applefanDrew]

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I like pages better personally.

 

[Peter Franks]

Yeh, I'd like to give it a bash, Anyone succesfuly removed all traces of the trial Office 11? Don't want iwork trial as well as that on there when I just use the one

 

[oneofthesedaves]

Yeh, I'd like to give it a bash, Anyone succesfuly removed all traces of the trial Office 11? Don't want iwork trial as well as that on there when I just use the one

Try AppTrap. It will automatically remove all the files. Just drag the app to the trash. http://download.cnet.com/AppTrap/3000-2096_4-10867505.html

My preference is Pages, Excel, and Keynote. Pages blows away Word. Often times when I have to open a file created on a PC with Word, the format gets all messed up with Word for Mac, but pens perfectly with Pages.

 

[Rowf]

Follow the instructions on microsoft support site

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2398768

to completely remove it.

Print the instructions if you can and then just follow along, it's not as intimidating as it seems and it gives a good insight into the files and folders on the mac.
Take your time and take care over what you are doing and think of it as getting to know your mac a little better.

If you haven't come across it already you may also find this helpful:

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/11171082/

Deleted files can be left in the trash for a while until you're happy that everything's working o.k.

If you are trying (and uninstalling) a few different applications it might be a good idea to make a time machine back up if you haven't done so already.

 

[Peter Franks]

Try AppTrap. It will automatically remove all the files. Just drag the app to the trash. http://download.cnet.com/AppTrap/3000-2096_4-10867505.html

My preference is Pages, Excel, and Keynote. Pages blows away Word. Often times when I have to open a file created on a PC with Word, the format gets all messed up with Word for Mac, but pens perfectly with Pages.

Thanks
If files have been created in Word for several years, do you think Pages will do the same as they do to stuff created in Word, or should it all appear as is?

Follow the instructions on microsoft support site

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2398768

to completely remove it.

Print the instructions if you can and then just follow along, it's not as intimidating as it seems and it gives a good insight into the files and folders on the mac.
Take your time and take care over what you are doing and think of it as getting to know your mac a little better.

If you haven't come across it already you may also find this helpful:

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/11171082/

Deleted files can be left in the trash for a while until you're happy that everything's working o.k.

If you are trying (and uninstalling) a few different applications it might be a good idea to make a time machine back up if you haven't done so already.

Thank you, I am not using TM as of yet, because I understood it to be a permanent connection or through the router, so am just dragging and dropping docs to a external. Am I wrong or should TM be backing up the whole thing, and if so, can I just plug in once a week let TM do it's thing and unplug or won't it work like that?

 

[rkmac]

Ive grown up using Office and therefore found a few aspects of iWork hard to use. There is also the compatibility issue with computers at University that only have Word for Windows. Even then, Word documents created on a Mac appear differently than on Word for Windows.
I ended up changing back to Office after having to literally tear my hair out trying to use Pages and Numbers to create a graph.
If you are used to Office, I personally see no reason to change to iWork. I found it a bit underpowered, or at least the more advanced features seemed to be hidden away in an area where I couldnt find them.

 

[Phil A.]

I prefer pages when I'm working on documents I don't need to share with anyone (or with documents I can share by sending a PDF), but If I need to work collaboratively with anyone on a document, I use Word as the Office compatibility with Pages is still less than perfect

 

[monokakata]

It's not difficult to clean up the Word 2011 visual mess.

Turn off the Ribbon, customize your toolbars so that they include only the icons you regularly use, get rid of rulers and sliders (if you don't need them) and you're done.

You can get anything you don't commonly use from the menus.

I hate clutter myself, but my Word 2011 screen isn't cluttered at all.

 

[torbjoern]

Whether you use Word or Pages, you can export as PDF on your Mac.

A major difference is how it handles graphics in document. In Pages you can drag&drop graphics, resize and align (e.g. to center by height or width) with less hassle than in Word.

 

[samh]

Peter,

Word 2011 for Mac closely matches the interface of the last two Windows versions of MS Word. I realize the Ribbon takes some getting used to -- the tradeoff you'll make with Pages is that I found the opposite problem. I couldn't find anything I needed. I routinely do a lot of advanced formatting that was difficult to work with in Pages. Compatibility was close, but not 100% there.

The one nice thing about Office 2011 is that you get full menus and the Ribbon bar. On the PC side, no more dropdown menus at all! The reason MS implemented the Ribbon is that 7/10 requests being made for new features were were things Word already did. The functionality was buried too deeply. The Ribbon is a (fairly successful, IMO) attempt at getting more features out in front of the user. It does take some getting used to, which I recognize.

I did not find Pages' "inspector" a helpful way of editing files and I tried it for over a year, because I disliked Office '08 even more!

 

[Rowf]

Thank you, I am not using TM as of yet, because I understood it to be a permanent connection or through the router, so am just dragging and dropping docs to a external. Am I wrong or should TM be backing up the whole thing, and if so, can I just plug in once a week let TM do it's thing and unplug or won't it work like that?

An external drive doesn't need to be permanently connected.

I have a 1.5 TB drive at my work station and use a macbook that I move around quite a bit, so when I'm at my work station I just plug the drive in and TM does its job, this might be once or twice a week and it works fine.

An ideal situation would be to always be connected so that every change is backed up but it's not 100% necessary.

The drive is partitioned to use 1TB for time machine and 500gb for general use, saving documents, pictures etc.
This gives me a full back up of my system via time machine and quick access to files and documents that I keep on the 500gb partition.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427 Heres a link to Time Machine info on apple support.

 

[samh]

An external drive doesn't need to be permanently connected.

I have a 1.5 TB drive at my work station and use a macbook that I move around quite a bit, so when I'm at my work station I just plug the drive in and TM does its job, this might be once or twice a week and it works fine.

An ideal situation would be to always be connected so that every change is backed up but it's not 100% necessary.

The drive is partitioned to use 1TB for time machine and 500gb for general use, saving documents, pictures etc.
This gives me a full back up of my system via time machine and quick access to files and documents that I keep on the 500gb partition.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427 Heres a link to Time Machine info on apple support.

Right. The more you connect to TM, the better off you'll be -- an hourly backup can be a lifesaver now and then! But if you connect once or twice a week, your Mac will begin backing up within minutes of your TM external being plugged in. The advantage of that over drag-and-drop is that you get file versioning, where applicable.

 

[Peter Franks]

It's not difficult to clean up the Word 2011 visual mess.

Turn off the Ribbon, customize your toolbars so that they include only the icons you regularly use, get rid of rulers and sliders (if you don't need them) and you're done.

You can get anything you don't commonly use from the menus.

I hate clutter myself, but my Word 2011 screen isn't cluttered at all.

Wow, I tried for that look, and couldn't get anywhere near it! That's what I want.
Also, the previous template I used is getting cut off at the bottom when I convert to PDF, even when I drag the sliders right to the bottom of the page. I shows in Word but not on the PDF docs

 

[Peter Franks]

Whether you use Word or Pages, you can export as PDF on your Mac.

A major difference is how it handles graphics in document. In Pages you can drag&drop graphics, resize and align (e.g. to center by height or width) with less hassle than in Word.

Didn't know you could drag and drop.. wish Word had that

Peter,

Word 2011 for Mac closely matches the interface of the last two Windows versions of MS Word. I realize the Ribbon takes some getting used to -- the tradeoff you'll make with Pages is that I found the opposite problem. I couldn't find anything I needed. I routinely do a lot of advanced formatting that was difficult to work with in Pages. Compatibility was close, but not 100% there.

The one nice thing about Office 2011 is that you get full menus and the Ribbon bar. On the PC side, no more dropdown menus at all! The reason MS implemented the Ribbon is that 7/10 requests being made for new features were were things Word already did. The functionality was buried too deeply. The Ribbon is a (fairly successful, IMO) attempt at getting more features out in front of the user. It does take some getting used to, which I recognize.

I did not find Pages' "inspector" a helpful way of editing files and I tried it for over a year, because I disliked Office '08 even more!

It probably looks very over the top to me because I was using Word 2000, and the fact I'm now on a 13" screen.... which is also taking some getting used to.

An external drive doesn't need to be permanently connected.

I have a 1.5 TB drive at my work station and use a macbook that I move around quite a bit, so when I'm at my work station I just plug the drive in and TM does its job, this might be once or twice a week and it works fine.

An ideal situation would be to always be connected so that every change is backed up but it's not 100% necessary.

The drive is partitioned to use 1TB for time machine and 500gb for general use, saving documents, pictures etc.
This gives me a full back up of my system via time machine and quick access to files and documents that I keep on the 500gb partition.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427 Heres a link to Time Machine info on apple support.

Thanks, this partitioning lark is all new to me... I've not gone there before

Right. The more you connect to TM, the better off you'll be -- an hourly backup can be a lifesaver now and then! But if you connect once or twice a week, your Mac will begin backing up within minutes of your TM external being plugged in. The advantage of that over drag-and-drop is that you get file versioning, where applicable.

Thanks, so I connect an external and set up TM and then plug in when I can and that should do it...! But can also put other things on the external, but need to partition...?

 

[Rowf]

Time Machine will make a folder on your external hard drive where the the back up will go.
You could use the remaining space 'outside of the folder' to store files etc but partitioning the drive keeps things easy by allowing you to access each partition as needed.

Connect your hard drive and go to Applications folder and open up the Utilities folder.
From the Utilities folder open Disk Utility - select the external drive from the list on the left and click partition - click + and select the existing partition on the drive, which should be your only partition, - disk utility then splits the drive in to two equal sizes and you can resize them how you want from there.

As a precaution copy the files that you already have on your external drive over to your mac before doing the partitioning.

When you have your partitions made you can select one for Time Machine and one for keeping files etc on, give them a name e.g - Time Machine/Data and they show up on your desktop as two individual drives.

I made a larger partition for Time Machine but that's a matter of individual needs.

 

[samh]

Didn't know you could drag and drop.. wish Word had that

It does. Right click on the picture and choose "format picture..." Under layout you can choose some basic options, or click "Advanced" and get additional options. Any of the free floating ones will let you drag and drop, and Word can automatically adjust where the picture is based on adding & deleted the text around it, or you can lock it in place, etc.

As far as quickly quitting an app, I would use Command+Q. Command+W closes the active window (usually).

 

[Peter Franks]

Thanks for that guys, I'm very grateful for all your replies

 

[Wheaty]

Lots of excellent suggestions already,

however has no one mentioned Open Office? Or have I missed that? Or Really I should point you to Libre Office (same thing, long story).

Both of these are free for domestic use, and very very good. I tend to compare them with Office 06 Pro, which is where I started giving them a go I think. However not all more technical spread sheet functions are quite the same.

And the PDF function is indeed very handy. Last night my missus got a bit cheesed off with Vista and Office not playing ball, so I ended up opening her document in Open Office, editing the few titles that it had decided to make a mess of, and one click on the PDF button it was suitably PDF'd to sed to the printers.. Marvellous.

Even better, she admitted that when her laptop dies that she is liking the idea of a hassle free Mac