Being a new convert to Mac, I was wondering which office type program would be the best to use? It must be able to read Word, and Excel files. Would prefer something native to the Mac.

Thanks...

I personally use MS Office 2008 for Mac. Works quite well for me, although some have experienced slow start-up times with the Office apps themselves.

An alternative would be the OpenOffice or NeoOffice suites, which are also quite popular. I don't personally prefer them as I found compatibility issues while using them; in particular, for some reason I could never get printing to work properly over a network, although that was also with a hacked-up printer driver.

I thought of that, but was hoping to get away from Microsoft on my mac. Would the I-Work suite be capable enough?

I would highly recommend Office. Its one of those pieces of software that you can't live your life without. Especially Word and Excel.

neoOffice is free, based on OpenOffice.

That's what I use, and it will open Office files.

Just remember to save them as neoOffice files.

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I thought of that, but was hoping to get away from Microsoft on my mac. Would the I-Work suite be capable enough?

Since nobody seems to be answering the obvious, I guess I will.

Yes, Pages will open and save Word (97/2000) files, and Numbers will open Excel files. I haven't had anyone send me a docx (Word 2007/2008) file yet, so I'm not sure if it handles it or not.

A7

I've got 'em all - NeoOffice, iWork (Pages), and MS Office (2004 - not jumping on the 2008 bandwagon just yet).

I spent the past 18 months or so without Office (Word), using NeoOffice exclusively, and having zero compatibility problems (and I work with large academic manuscripts, copy editing, etc.).

The one feature I was needing was an Office-like comments viewer... NeoOffice displays MS-Word comments as a teeny-tiny yellow block one-character-wide... easy to miss.

By chance, I opened a commented document yesterday with Pages, and was very pleased to see a very good visual comments indicator. Haven't played with it much (it may have been added in the last update?) but it looks like it might do the trick for me.

And... out of paranoia, I have reinstalled my copy of Office 2004, just to ensure 100% compatibility, as I'm entering into a high-volume work period, and can't run this risk of not having proper file translation.

But - my intention at this point is to see how far Pages will take me... fallback will be NeoOffice first, and Office 2004 last.

FYI - NeoOffice is a *fabulous* program, IMHO, but you do need to ensure that you keep up-to-date on the patches. I've seen many a person complain about NeoOffice, only to find that they're talking about an older unpatched version. The latest updates make NeoOffice more than capable as an MS-Office replacement - and you can't argue with the price.

But for people like me, who bought iWork just to have Keynote, Pages has become a sleeper hit - a pleasant surprise.

M

The iWork suite -- Pages, Numbers, Keynote -- make an excellent replacement for most people's use of Office. You have to remember to save documents that are going to be "sent out" in Word/Excel/PP format, but other than that these programs are just incredible.*

*Well, Numbers is a little shy of incredible truthfully -- not as fully-baked as Pages is now, or Keynote was a version ago. But it's an amazing little spreadsheet nonetheless.

If your documents are small and not too complex Pages from iWork is the way to go. Once you get into longer documents NeoOffice is good. I am experimenting with OpenOffice 3.0 beta and its new Aqua interface; everything has gone well so far.

Only if you are receiving documents that will be in MS Office's latest format should you consider getting a copy. If people who are sending you documents can send them in Rich Text Format (RTF) or the older Word and Excel formats you should have no problem with NeoOffice.

I'm really interested in seeing what NeoOffice will do once OpenOffice 3 has gone final. Any guesses?

used neooffice, then bought office 2004

Used office then went to iWork. Way more stable...way more. I have had zero compatibility. Be advised though that Vista introduced the stupid .docx bull that has compatibility problems with xp. So if it wont open a docx file (I have never encountered one yet) then that is the vista users' damn problem. Stupid Microsoft and their drive for obsolescence.

Many thanks for all the replies. I have decided to go with Microsoft Office, as most of the files I encounter will be transferred back and forth with Windows machines, and I need to be able to work with them with no compatibility problems. Again, Thanks to all who replied.

Many thanks for all the replies. I have decided to go with Microsoft Office, as most of the files I encounter will be transferred back and forth with Windows machines, and I need to be able to work with them with no compatibility problems. Again, Thanks to all who replied.

Note that there is not full compatibility. Be sure that you save in the right format (i.e., for Office 2003 as that it still the most popular version on Windows) and run the compatibility check. I have had problems with Word documents into which I have imported charts from PowerPoint - the imported charts do not show up when the document is opened in Word 2003.

Yes I realize that, but thanks for the hint.:clap: :clap:

Like many of yo all, I work in a Windoze environment but at home I use a Mac.

Very often, I choose to use the Mac version of M$oft version because:

- I am familiar with it; and,

- I hope that doing this will minimize/mitigate compatibility issues when I share issues with my Windoze colleagues.

My recent experience is as follows:

- compatibility between the most recent version of Mac Office 2008 is fine if you keep it VERY simple, for example if you do something such as track changes and the folks you are dealing with are using Office 2003 - there will be issues. Or if you are inserting graphics.

- when I share files with the Windows world, I use the compatibilty mode and run the check. This may help, but there still seems to be some problems unless you are working on a Word document with limited use of funtions (i.e., very standard formating, no use of the new templates)

You can also do conversions with icWord and icExcel. Plus, you can always get a copy of the DocXConverter from the Evil Empire - while it lasts.

Mariner Write and Mariner Calc are Word and Excel compatible programs for the Mac, and are worth checking out, especially if you do not want to wallop your system with the Office bloatware suite...

iWork is where it's at. If you ever have to make a Powerpoint Presentation you will be in HEAVEN!

Like NeoOffice although it is slow to launch on my older eMac.

Still prefer AppleWorks Draw module to Pages, but Pages should do just fine opening Word docs.

Biggest issue I have are the latest PowerPoint slide presentations which periodically find their way into my eBoxes without request . Office 2004 just does not handle the audio. Neither do my older versions of Keystone or NeoOffice. Office 2004 does seem to handle the animated GIFs.

I believe Keystone from the iWork06 suite handles the animated GIFs but not the audio. Have not booted into Tiger in some time so that may be the other way around.

Not.


Get iWork. Effective and easy to use.