Iwork or Office

[Jack Moore]

From: Moore Jack <jackmo...@me.com>

Date: 7 December 2009 01:33:16 GMT

To: mmug...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Iwork or Office

I now have a revived G4 ibook (thanks to Peter Morris!) but I need to load some work software so I can work with excel and word files when away and then synch/copy them back to my Imac at home. The obvious plan is to buy another MS Office for Mac licence, but maybe I should get Iwork, but do their spreadsheets etc interact seamlessly with their Office equivalents? Advice please!
Regards
Jack
---

[Marc Carter]

I tried Numbers, which is Apples Excel equivalent, but it didn't work for me personally.  I use Excel a lot and am very used to all the features, buttons, names and where everything is, it was taking me a few minutes just to find a simple feature that I would go to in a second in Excel.

Numbers is a better app in many ways, and if starting from scratch to use a spreadsheet I'd suggest it over Excel, but it differs too much to be easy to switch between the two.

Compatibility, the files will open in the other app but I found formatting didn't always carry across properly.

[Dom Barnes]

Jack,

You should give iWork a try. You can download a 30-day trial. Give it a go, see what you think, see if it works with the spreadsheets and documents you use, and if you like it, buy it.

Download it here. http://www.apple.com/iwork/download-trial/

Personally I have switched from the Office suite to iWork and am very happy with it. But I only use it for basic docs and spreadsheets. 

Dom

[Walsall Youth Arts]

Definitely worth trying iWork. I think it's cheaper, and you can make
things look a LOT prettier in Pages than in Word, e.g. it's a lot
better at things like wrapping text around pictures. There can be
problems keeping the formatting between iWork and Office documents, but
I'm not convinced that's much of an issue, since Word documents can't
even keep their formatting between different Mac versions of Word (we
have at least 2 versions in our office), or between Mac & Windows. If I
ever need to email anything that doesn't need to be changed by the
recipient, I have to send it as a PDF to keep it looking proper.
Also, there's the thing about finding the functions you're used to. But
I can't find any of my old Word fuctions when I have to use the new
version, so that's something Office will eventually inflict on you
anyway!
I'd say it's worth having a go with the free trial of iWork and seeing
how you get on before forking out for a new copy of Office.

ma...@walsallyoutharts.org.uk

[Jack Moore]

I will definitely do the Iwork trial download !

Thanks to everybody who has responded on this

Regards
Jack

[Rick Squires]

You might also want to have a look at Open Office for the Mac

Free, open source and compatible with Office.

I have played with the WP part and it's good

The presentation package is not very good- at least the version I used wasn't but that was a couple of years ago.   Anyway, Keynote is widely agreed to be better that PuerilePoint  

Not tried the spreadsheet

Rick

[ayzee]

I'd recommend neo office over both of these. Open office is way too slow & buggy, and iWork feels and looks too different to office. Neo office is free and is very similar to office

Sent from my iPhone

[Robert Sharl]

On 7 Dec 2009, at 22:54, ayzee wrote:

> I'd recommend neo office over both of these. Open office is way too
> slow & buggy, and iWork feels and looks too different to office. Neo
> office is free and is very similar to office

In my opinion the fact the iWork looks and feels different to Office
is its biggest advantage. I've moved over entirely for 95% of
documents I receive, and 100% that I create.

Robert

[Berkeley]

I never use MS Office. However Pages does have it's limitations.
Yesterday I wanted to design a feature wherby I would like to have had
some words side-on - I.e. 90 degrees to the vertical, as part of a
newsletter. I couldn't find any way to do that. That said, I really do
like iWork 09.

Sent from my iPhone

[Patrick Neame]

If it's a newsletter and you're doing it in a page layout as opposed
to word processing, select the text or picture box, hold down the
Apple key and hover the cursor over a corner marker. You can now
rotate the box at will. Try it with the Modern Newsletter template.

[Berkeley]

Patrick that sounds great, and I am indeed using page layout - BUT - I don't have an Apple key on my iMac keyboard. There must be an equivalent/alternative, or a keystroke combination. I'll play around with it myself, but in the meantime if you (or anyone else) have any guidance on this I'd be grateful. It certainly seemed to me that there would be a method of rotating text, but the Help menu was no help at all in this. Thank you for your response.

Brian

BrianBW
bri...@btinternet.com

[Berkeley]

Forget what I just wrote. Got it! It's a Cmd/Alt combination. Simple. When you know how:)

B.

On 8 Dec 2009, at 11:36, Patrick Neame wrote:

>

BrianBW
bri...@btinternet.com

[Drew Reece]

You're correct cmd=Apple, and alt=option. Us older mac users find it
difficult to remember :)

Re:co