Compatability issues in word?

I finally decided to give in and try out a mac at best buy and loved it!! I'm getting one since i'm going to college but im worried about the compatability between microsoft word and pages or even the microsoft word for mac. any opinions?

 

everything should be completely compatible, plain and simple, the new version of Word for Mac is fully compatible with the latest version of Word for the PC, and iWork can easily export and import Microsoft Documents from Word, Excel, Powerpoint.

unless you specifically need Microsoft Office, I would recommend trying out the trial of iWork and see if it will fit your needs, then if not go for Microsoft Office, if yes, purchase it for half the cost of Office.

good luck and enjoy the Mac.

 

There have been threads quite recently, comparing iWork with Office08; this should be helpful as to your questions about compatibility, etc.:

Recent Thread on iWork and Office

Check out wikipedia about the plethora of document formats Microsoft Word alone has been employing in the past few years, and related compatibility issues. (FYI, Office itself isn't quite "compatible" with its earlier iterations; on Office 08, on the very "toolbox" you have a "compatibility check" tab!)

NeoOffice is an excellent opensource office suite, and a) if you can live with the clunky interface, and b) if you won't be working in an environment where you'll be expected to share .docs all the time, it might be a perfectly fine solution.

While both Pages, and NeoOffice's Writer can open/save .doc files, one often gets annoying distortions. More accurately, Pages can't really open/save .doc files but import or export them, converting the formatting entirely. Tables and textboxes and columns and headers and footers can then appear jumbled up (especially textboxes), even in fairly simple documents. NeoOffice's Writer does save in various .doc formats, including the new .docx, but like Pages, it "imports" rather than open. Similarly, that can mess up a document; not necessarily, but it's annoying enough when it happens.

If you're a college student, there's a good chance you'll be eligible for a student license for Office08 through the university bookstore etc.; and those are usually *a lot* more affordable. (With of course, certain limitations; e.g. whereas the regular Office08 home-student license will let you install on 3 machines, the university license may allow only a single install; and obviously you're required to uninstall when you graduate, etc.) Apple's student discount on iWork is unfortunately rather small.

 

If you run into problems make sure that the Office 2003 and 2007 (for PC) are updated with the newest patches from MS website.

At my uni they dont update their office much and without the update many things are not compatible with Office 2008 (mac). Even saving in office 2003 format with office 2008 didnt always help. After I asked the admin to update all the PCs it was all fine.

 

Speaking from personal experience here:
I have used NeoOffice for a full semester, then bought iWork, then bought Office 08 (Home & Student version). Office 08 is much, much better than the other packages (IMHO). I wanted to like iWork, but it was amazingly slow on my MBP. Just resizing a graph would give the dreaded beach ball. Office is way faster (in my personal experience) and I think it looks a lot better than Office 07 (for PC).

Just my 0.02.

Enjoy!

 

awesome. thanks for all the help. i think i will go with the office 08 home and student, but ill also try the others as well. also i multitask(itunes, torrents, word, ie, movie all at the same time) alot on my comp so should i get the 4 gb ram rather than 2? im going to have this computer for a while so i would rather get more than regret it. also do you know by any chance if the student discount you get through your university is applicable to an instore purchase of a macbook or only online?

 

^ More RAM wouldn't hurt! I wish I could upgrade to 4GB; but I'm pre-Santa Rosa.

There's the link for iWork trial version:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/productivity_tools/iwork08.html

The student discount is valid for instore purchases as well; just make sure you have your student id with you. (When I bought my MacBook, I didn't even have a student id yet; I showed them my acceptance letter; any kind of proof would do.)

 

Awesome. Thanks!

 

I was almost ready to go out and purchase Office 2008 for my Mac when the IT folks at work rolled out Office 2007. Yuck. Yuck. (imagine Yuck written 2,005 more times). I really need some hands on experience with Office 2008 before M$ gets any more of my money. For now I "limp along" with OpenOffice, iWork08 and I suppose I could load an old copy of Office 97 under Crossover if I really need to. I found out I can unzip winzip sfx exe files in crossover. Only it puts them in some mystery location so I have to go back and do it again to "My Mac Desktop" so I can find the files. If you have an old copy of M$ Office for Windows lying around, Crossover with an older version of Office is an alternative to sending $$ to M$.

 

My friend has office 04 of his mac and when he sends me documents, sometimes the pictures are missing and it says something about a quicktime error...we actually had a report due today and when he went to the lab to print it, it also had the same error...so he had to beg for extra time to print it out.

I took advantage of the ultimate steal deal and bought MS office ultimate 2007 and I couldn't be happier with it. Yes, they tried to change the formate of word, excel, and powerpoint, but you can always save it as at 97-03 office document. The new interface is great because everything is in tabs and you can see everything out in the open and no looking through menus for hidden options. If your thinking of using virtual machine for, i would try 08 when the deal is available again, cant beat the $60 price....

O and you can change that ugly bluish color to other colors for office..mine is set to black and it looks pretty good actually...check pic below...

http://www.theultimatesteal.com/store/msshus/ContentTheme/pbPage.End_of_life

 

^ The toolbox on Office 08 has been adapted from iWork. While it allows for direct access to most functions you'd need daily, it's *far from* comprehensive. (It's not meant to be comprehensive, needless to say)

Most functions you'd need to call up from the menus.