Any thoughts on Microsoft Office?

[Wowfunhappy]

Ever since first switching to OS X in 2010, I've been an iWork user. I always figured that if I was going to use Apple's operating system, I should also use the office suite Apple explicitly built for that operating system.

Today, this means I'm using iWork '09 on OS X 10.9 Mavericks. Mavericks is my preferred version of OS X (as a lot of people here will know), and while iWork '09 is not the latest version Mavericks supports, it's the last version before Apple revamped the whole software suite, and early versions of that revamp were not very good.

However, I'm wondering if I should switch to Microsoft Office.

The single biggest reason is actually just compatibility with Microsoft Office documents. Pages does a pretty good job of opening and saving .doc and .docx files, but it isn't perfect, and native support would make my life a bit easier.

If I absolutely loved the iWork apps, this wouldn't be enough of a reason to switch. However, while Pages, Keynote, and Numbers are fine, I don't absolutely love them or anything. And, I've never actually tried Microsoft Office on Mac. I used it on Windows years ago, but never the Mac version.

Switching to Microsoft Office would be a major change. I don't like having multiple applications installed on my computer which do the same thing, because it gets confusing to keep track of which app I'm in, so installing Office would mean uninstalling iWork. When I need one of my old iWork documents in the future—which I absolutely will—I'll have to convert it to an Office file using the iCloud version of iWork, and manually fix any formatting inconsistencies.

So, my question is, how is this era of Microsoft Office on the Mac?

• Of the versions of Office would be compatible with Mavericks (I'm not actually sure which these are), which is the best one? Are some better than others?
• Are they good Mac apps? Does the visual design feel unified with the rest of the system? Does it follow Apple design guidelines? Do all of the little features you'd expect in a well-designed Cocoa app work as expected? Any complaints?
• Has anyone used both Microsoft Office and iWork '09? Leaving out compatibility, which do you prefer and why?

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

I tried Office but it literally took over my Mac with all the files, auto updates program, and other crap it decided to install. One of the most off putting programs to install ever. Thankfully I have a work computer with the Office suite and if I need to do anything Office related on my Mac I just use Google's online suite that can import/export office files very easily albeit with limited functionality but that's much better than the bloatware MS seems to be.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

I tried Office but it literally took over my Mac with all the files, auto updates program, and other crap it decided to install. One of the most off putting programs to install ever. Thankfully I have a work computer with the Office suite and if I need to do anything Office related on my Mac I just use Google's online suite that can import/export office files very easily albeit with limited functionality but that's much better than the bloatware MS seems to be.

Welp, that won't do—it's exactly the kind of thing I dislike most!

However, can I ask when / what version this was? Office 365 isn't on the table here—it wouldn't work on Mavericks even if I wanted it.

 

[Mlrollin91]

I tried Office but it literally took over my Mac with all the files, auto updates program, and other crap it decided to install. One of the most off putting programs to install ever. Thankfully I have a work computer with the Office suite and if I need to do anything Office related on my Mac I just use Google's online suite that can import/export office files very easily albeit with limited functionality but that's much better than the bloatware MS seems to be.

Did you install it via the .DMG installer, or through the App Store? I've been using it through the App Store for the last few years and have not experienced what you are experiencing since switching to the Mac App Store versions.

 

[Amethyst1]

Of the versions of Office would be compatible with Mavericks (I'm not actually sure which these are), which is the best one? Are some better than others?

You have a choice between Office 2008 (X and 2004 are PPC-only) and 2011 (2016 and later versions require at least Yosemite).
I use Office 2011 alongside iWork '09 and LibreOffice because I'm a friend of opening a given format only with the application that created it. I have no clear preference for any suite I'm afraid.

 

[davigarma]

Office 2011 the most beautiful version of Office that Microsoft has created. It is still on their servers. If you migrate to Office and want to move to Iworks occasionally there are converters. It has not support of any kind for five or six years ago

 

[Grumpus]

You can use some of Office for free on the web, although you might run into problems using whatever browser you're using on Mavericks. Might be worth a look though, while you're considering your options.

 

[Hrududu]

Why not both? No law that requires you stop using iWork or uninstall it just because you have Office. I've run ClarisWorks/Appleworks/iWork alongside MS Office for decades. Have both, use what fits your project or need. Office 2011 is a good product for Mavericks.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

If you are content with iWork, I would just stick with it. Microsoft is getting crazy with overhead. For instance, it tries to save to Onedrive and you have to specify your local mac folder every single time. I still have it loaded, but don’t use it at this point. I just use the iWork suite.

 

[TechRunner]

I had Office on my iMac during the time I used Mavericks, and it was...okay. Not as robust as the Windows version, but for my tasks, it sufficed. For the price I paid (free!), I found LibreOffice a very usable substitute and stopped using Office for Mac when it was time to consider paying for a newer version.

 

[MauiPa]

waste of money, unless you are required to use it for work. If I wanted to use the "office paradigm" I would go with google or some other free packages, they are just as good, but free.

Personally, I switched to iWork when I went MAC. Numbers is far better for me than Excel. sure some would say, but, but, but all the functions. sure excel has a few more, but if you don't use the functions, they are just bloat. Numbers does everything I need in a much more elegant UI. Imagine Excel still has only one table per sheet after all these years, LOL. I know some will say, but, but you can set up ranges within a table - not the same thing at all.,

After MS lost the IP restrictions on pivotables, Numbers added them, oh no, there is that advantage gone. In short, Excel is lumbering, antiquated, bloated and the ribbon interface totally sucks (and why does Excel still crash? memory leaks?)

Nope, I'm going to stick with iWork. Multiple tables, images, text boxes, graphs per tab, all resizable and movable, the side bar is far more elegant than the ribbon interface. If size is your thing, you should look into a database, storing too much data in a spreadsheet is just a dumb idea.

Finally, a little thing most probably don't know. If you have a table in Numbers, that corresponds to an import (comma or tab delimited) and paste it into the table, it aligns the columns for you. Just like paste append on MS Access.

 

[eyoungren]

Well…

I wasn't fully Mac until 2003 and by that point I'd already been invested in Office, just on the PC side. In OS9 Apple had no office suite. The default install even came with Outlook Express. As a free email app it was pretty good and my transition to Entourage and then Outlook was problem free. In my first job in graphic design, the IT had a Microsoft networking product installed for messaging between Macs. So, I'm pretty solid with MS for it's office products.

So, by the time I fully converted to Mac I rejected all the OS X apps and went with Office. First Office X, then 2004, then 2008, then 2016 and now 2019.

I prefer Office in all respects. Currently, I'm using Office 2019 on my newer Intel Macs and Office 2008 on my early Intels.

I refuse to use Apple Mail unless I am forced to. I'm used to the way Entourage/Outlook does things and Mail frustrates me to no end.

 

[AlixSPQR]

Office 365 isn't on the table here—it wouldn't work on Mavericks even if I wanted it.

Are you sure? Chromium-legacy might allow that. I don't know if it does, but it might be worth checking out.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

Depends entirely on your needs and work situation.

There was a time when MS Office was almost a necessity if you wanted a trusted word processor, spreadsheet designer and something to fill every corner of the screen with Clip Art (PowerPoint). Today there is not only plenty of choice in the market for standalone productivity applications, but also plenty of different ways to create these kinds of documents in the first place.

Office today is really excellent and runs great on Apple Silicon - the interface is nice and it's convenient having the apps on the App Store for updates.

But all of this is only relevant if you need Office; and the truth is that as time has progressed, fewer people actually rely on it. Workspaces have changed significantly and a lot of what we need to do with these apps has been simplified in newer, cheaper services.

I own Office, but only because my work relies on it since every day I'm exchanging .DOCX and .XLSX files. Many people like myself have to pay to guarantee 100% compatibility with various documents and formats, that's just the nature of being the dominant office suite.

Yet many businesses are, and in my opinion rightly, moving away from the thinking/model of every document having to be created in these legacy standalone applications. Cloud computing is moving so rapidly, the likes of Google can update their own 'office' apps as and when they choose to because they're all online, no fuss for the user. And they are much easier to use, if lacking in features that I don't believe many would miss.

So to sum up, I would view MS Office as being more of a niche these days. It's a "nice to have" package for sure, but the competition offers most of the features that the general public needs. Don't be afraid of trying something new!

 

[eyoungren]

Nope, I'm going to stick with iWork. Multiple tables, images, text boxes, graphs per tab, all resizable and movable, the side bar is far more elegant than the ribbon interface.

A downside for me I guess in that I work in QuarkXPress and InDesign all day. I've played around with iWork in the past, but after 23 years I'm far more comfortable in just opening up QXP or ID. Since, those apps work best with Office products that also makes it easier for me to just keep on using them (my preference).

 

[Warped9]

I’ve used MS Office for many years on my Macs with zero issues. I use the Home & Student version rather than 365 (I’m not paying a subscription for something I use periodically) although I really only use Word.

 

[transpo1]

I know the OP said Office 365 is off the table but I wanted to chime in with my opinion FWIW— I subscribed to the personal plan and have used Word, PowerPoint (both of which I’m no stranger to, having used it extensively for work) and Outlook so far. I have absolutely loved the productivity boost the 365 version of Outlook provides me. Way better (unfortunately) than the Mail app for staying on top of email, etc. Wjth Office 365, I have not noticed too much bloatware either. Running it all on M1 Max MBP. YMMV but I will never go back to Office for Mac because I always found it clunky and annoying with all its software updates. Plus, you know it will eventually be outdated no matter how little you pay for it.

 

[MauiPa]

Well…

I wasn't fully Mac until 2003 and by that point I'd already been invested in Office, just on the PC side. In OS9 Apple had no office suite. The default install even came with Outlook Express. As a free email app it was pretty good and my transition to Entourage and then Outlook was problem free. In my first job in graphic design, the IT had a Microsoft networking product installed for messaging between Macs. So, I'm pretty solid with MS for it's office products.

So, by the time I fully converted to Mac I rejected all the OS X apps and went with Office. First Office X, then 2004, then 2008, then 2016 and now 2019.

I prefer Office in all respects. Currently, I'm using Office 2019 on my newer Intel Macs and Office 2008 on my early Intels.

I refuse to use Apple Mail unless I am forced to. I'm used to the way Entourage/Outlook does things and Mail frustrates me to no end.

It is more of what you are used to than anything else. I personally hate MS software, I swear they don't invest any effort or time into making it a decent user experience, just harder so that people who use it will be too reticent to switch. Of course that used to be true, maybe not so much anymore, but I won't go back - too many bad experiences

 

[f54da]

office 2011 works well, it's not native cocoa but with the right settings it looks essentially indistinguishable, and I'm usually picky. Not sure what other people are saying about background process, either I removed those or it was added only after 2011. Has applescript support as well. I think onenote might support up to 2016 version on mavericks. Only thing to watch for is that emacs keybindings don't work, but you can work around this by setting up your own via a script.

Also probably the other reason to use MS office is its robust OLE/COM support. Combine that with the math integration (either native equation editor or 3rd party MathType, is very useful for when latex is overkill).

 

[MadDawg2020]

I tried Office but it literally took over my Mac with all the files, auto updates program, and other crap it decided to install. One of the most off putting programs to install ever. Thankfully I have a work computer with the Office suite and if I need to do anything Office related on my Mac I just use Google's online suite that can import/export office files very easily albeit with limited functionality but that's much better than the bloatware MS seems to be.

I completely agree - install anything from Microsoft and it just invades your system with dozens of extensions and helper apps that are constantly active even when not running Office - some of the items you can easily stop in the login items menu, but others are deep in the system requiring terminal knowledge to manage, and Office feels the need to update itself pretty much every time you lunch it which slows it down even more.

The only thing worse is installing anything by Adobe, Office is not quite as bad - just having a single Adobe app on your system will cause at least a 10% hit in system speed and performance even when the app is idle, expect all your cores to run full throttle and forget about having free memory if you open anything beyond small jpeg in Photoshop.

 

[eyoungren]

It is more of what you are used to than anything else. I personally hate MS software, I swear they don't invest any effort or time into making it a decent user experience, just harder so that people who use it will be too reticent to switch. Of course that used to be true, maybe not so much anymore, but I won't go back - too many bad experiences

The primary motivator for me to move to Word (even on PC) was Microsoft Works. At one time, that app came in a bundle I had for Windows, so I used it.

Works is garbage and if you try to open a Works file in Word that's what you get - garbage. Also, at some point it started to get difficult to open my old files, so I moved to Word and my problems went away.

 

[eyoungren]

I completely agree - install anything from Microsoft and it just invades your system with dozens of extensions and helper apps that are constantly active even when not running Office - some of the items you can easily stop in the login items menu, but others are deep in the system requiring terminal knowledge to manage, and Office feels the need to update itself pretty much every time you lunch it which slows it down even more.

The only thing worse is installing anything by Adobe, Office is not quite as bad - just having a single Adobe app on your system will cause at least a 10% hit in system speed and performance even when the app is idle, expect all your cores to run full throttle and forget about having free memory if you open anything beyond small jpeg in Photoshop.

I guess I'm just not experiencing that (Office).

I agree with you on Adobe though. I went and stripped out all the Creative Cloud garbage. An app can't run if you've deleted it and it's support files off the drive. Adobe CC is the majority of the reason there's that hit.

 

[rampancy]

As others have said, why not both? Pages is different enough from Word that IMHO I think it's fairly easy to distinguish between them; ditto for Numbers vs. Excel and Keynote vs. PowerPoint.

I've bought and worked with Office X, 2004, 2008, and 2011, and...well, there's not much for me to say except that it's Office. It's what you'd come to expect from an Mac app from Microsoft. 2011 is certainly the best I've used out of the bunch in terms of UI and performance and in terms of compatibility it's unmatched, especially for Windows Office files, or for people who are used to workflows based in Office.

But it's still a Mac app that comes across as being an attempting to look and act like a good Mac citizen, even though it fundamentally isn't -- since at the end of the day it's an app that wasn't built from the ground up to be a Mac app fully utilizing Apple-native APIs and abiding by Apple UI guidelines (for whatever that's worth these days). A good example of this is Office's characteristic (iconic?) Ribbon UI. It very clearly sticks out in Word vs. Pages, Mellel, or Nisus Writer, but as ideosyncratic UIs go, it's hardly offensive (YMMV of course).

At the end of the day, between iWork '09 and Office 2011, I'd pick Office 2011, as I exchange enough files with other people using Windows Office, and I'm used to using editing features in Office through Track Changes. But the thing is, Google Docs has taken care of my compatibility requirements, and its editing functionality is just as robust for my needs as Office's. And in my experience, it's worked well enough in Chromium Legacy. If compatibility is what you need, ask the people you work with if they'd be open to sharing their documents with you over Google Docs, and see if using that over Chromium Legacy works for you.

Really, my only major problem with Office 2011 is that Microsoft took the online activation servers offline in 2017, which means that people like I who actually bought the damn thing can't install it and activate it without either going through Microsoft's phone support, or simply just hoisting the Jolly Roger over their Mac.

 

[elvisimprsntr]

Unless you are roped into O365 for work, iWork or libreoffice is good for 90% of users. The price for either is exactly right.

 

[tensixturtle]

Office 2011 the most beautiful version of Office that Microsoft has created.

This. The design of Microsoft Office 2011 is unlike any other I have ever used, and it fits the Mavericks aesthetic very well in my opinion. (I use it on both of my Macs running Mavericks)

I have used Microsoft Office 2004, 2008, 2011, and Microsoft 365 2016 onward. I've also used iWork '09 among numerous other versions of iWork. Office 2004 and 2008 in my opinion is less good as 2011 and onwards due to the lack of the ribbon at the top. Instead, there is a separate formatting pallette window to the side which is not very space efficient and frankly inconveniently placed. To me, the ribbon on the top with all the icons is the whole reason I use Microsoft Office over iWork. The icons, their placement, and how they are divided in categories is so extremely intuitive for me. Being a lifetime iWork user, as soon as I started using Office I never looked back. Beyond the ribbon, Office 2011 is good being easy to use, filled with features, and great for compatibility. I would select it over iWork any day, unless you are trying to work with placing a lot of graphics on a page then sometimes I prefer Pages over Word. Also, if you are willing to make the switch because you will have to convert current iWork documents. There is a copy on the Garden I believe. The installer includes unnecessary apps (communicator, remote document connection, etc) but you can choose not to install them.

Comparing the ribbons of Microsoft Word 2011 (top) and Pages 2009 (bottom):