Recently bought a new 15" Powerbook. Now I'm missing all the old wordprocessing software on my blue and white iBook. Is Appleworks worth buying or should I just hold on and buy Office Mac ? I always found Appleworks to be great but had a lot of problems when I e-mailed documents to PC users. Has this been fixed ? Can I save documents as Word files ?
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Appleworks or Office Mac ?
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eyelight said:
I would also suggest Office or Open Office... Don't know if your a student or anything, but they have a pretty good promotional deal for teachers/students.
AppleWorks is barely supported by Apple. If you exchange files with peope you'll need Office. If you generally type up and just print things and don't exchange electronic copies maybe Works will fit your needs.
I would go with MS Office. I bought the Student Teacher Edition for $150 and it's great. There are some really nice features in Word, PPT and Excel that Appleworks just doesn't have. Plus, I have exchanged files with Windows and back and have had absolutely no problems what-so-ever.
Best wishes,
JOD8FY
Best wishes,
JOD8FY
Wait!
Wait and wait! I've had almost every single office app for mac, appleworks, I have it and use it, openoffice is pretty ok in compatibility, and the work with spreadsheets is nice, far better than AW, but the interface is still choppy, Presentation program, get Keynote, you don't want to spend money extra for it? .... get office, but wait, my feeling is they will improve appleworks this summer, when everybody got MS office already, I just got Office 2004 and the only thing I'm using is word, I was planning to use entourage but I live better with iCal+Addressbook+Mail+Stickynotes, i have Keynote and love it, Excel has no competitor, Word 2004 good if you have to share and edit docs with friends, if you are the writer and can send it as PDF, Appleworks rocks... is a lot user friendly.... that notebook feature in word didn't surprise me, I have it because I have to read some articles I wrote myself 4 years ago in a PC, and still screwed with the graphics interpretation, labels got messed up...
3-22 said:
Wait and wait! I've had almost every single office app for mac, appleworks, I have it and use it, openoffice is pretty ok in compatibility, and the work with spreadsheets is nice, far better than AW, but the interface is still choppy, Presentation program, get Keynote, you don't want to spend money extra for it? .... get office, but wait, my feeling is they will improve appleworks this summer, when everybody got MS office already, I just got Office 2004 and the only thing I'm using is word, I was planning to use entourage but I live better with iCal+Addressbook+Mail+Stickynotes, i have Keynote and love it, Excel has no competitor, Word 2004 good if you have to share and edit docs with friends, if you are the writer and can send it as PDF, Appleworks rocks... is a lot user friendly.... that notebook feature in word didn't surprise me, I have it because I have to read some articles I wrote myself 4 years ago in a PC, and still screwed with the graphics interpretation, labels got messed up...
I own a copy of the Windows version of Office-easily shared files with MS works, Claris/AppleWorks.eyelight said:
Get Office for Mac 2004, it's the best Office Suite available. Apple Works is outdated and OpenOffice still has a choppy interface. It's most current version (1.1.1) is not yet available for OS X.
3-22 said:
no you don't what formats dosent appleworks save to?
office is overpriced and overrated appleworks is not that bad some of us acctually like the simplicity and stability of appleworks it has not yet crashed on me ms word has.
try appleworks in an apple store and see if you like it.
as for compatibility it opens ascii files for pete's sake i havent used those sinse i used my old amstrad and it's a god send i can still use them.
I use AppleWorks myself - I don't need to share files with other users, and even if I want to send a file to a PC user that they can read, I just make it a PDF. The spreadsheet function isn't as good as Microsoft Excel, but it's good enough for basic use. Stay away from AppleWorks' presentation software - use Apple's Keynote instead. Hector's right about the stability of AppleWorks - it's never crashed or unexpectedly quit on me, either.Hector said:
If you need anything close to "full" compatibility with MS Office then you need MS Office. I've been holding off buying it for a year now and I'm getting by with a mix of TextEdit, AppleWorks and OpenOffice.
AppleWorks is a great stand-alone package but it does suffer a bit with complex MS Office documents. Someone sent me address labels using a Word template and AppleWorks couldn't do a thing with it. OpenOffice had no problems with that file so I've been sticking with OO for now.
You should try OpenOffice first. It's free and while not pretty it does seem to have better MS Office compatibility than AppleWorks, at least from my limited use. If it doesn't work for you I doubt that AW will, so then you'll have to shell out the bucks for MS Office. Maybe you can find Office 2004 on eBay or something...
AppleWorks is a great stand-alone package but it does suffer a bit with complex MS Office documents. Someone sent me address labels using a Word template and AppleWorks couldn't do a thing with it. OpenOffice had no problems with that file so I've been sticking with OO for now.
You should try OpenOffice first. It's free and while not pretty it does seem to have better MS Office compatibility than AppleWorks, at least from my limited use. If it doesn't work for you I doubt that AW will, so then you'll have to shell out the bucks for MS Office. Maybe you can find Office 2004 on eBay or something...
Apple works has an option when you save so you can make it save as a word document so PC users can read it. It has options to save as all the formasts MS office uses
I use Office ONLY because I have to share documents with other people using Office. I've tried it with AppleWorks but it does fall down in the conversion--especially if you have tables or images embedded in the document. Plain old text documents saved as .doc usually convert just fine when you open them in Word, though sometimes special formatting will get screwed up.
I feel really bad about using Office--basically because there's no good choice. That's the way Microsoft likes it. I'm changing jobs soon and I don't expect to have the same document sharing needs--so I'm going to uninstall Office and start using AppleWorks over the summer. If I end up having to share a lot of documents I'm going to fight going back to Office.
Of course when there's an OS X native version of OpenOffice I'll certainly give that a whirl.
I feel really bad about using Office--basically because there's no good choice. That's the way Microsoft likes it. I'm changing jobs soon and I don't expect to have the same document sharing needs--so I'm going to uninstall Office and start using AppleWorks over the summer. If I end up having to share a lot of documents I'm going to fight going back to Office.
Of course when there's an OS X native version of OpenOffice I'll certainly give that a whirl.
AW vs MsOffice
Just one question: why can you choose to save and send windows friendly attachments or save AW documents as word XP, Windows 2000, if a pc user cannot use them.
I'm a new Mac user and have had quite bad surprises when sending out AW documents (work related one) and no one could open them!!!
SO even if you save an AW document as windows compatible, it will not open on a PC or am I doing something wrong ?
Just one question: why can you choose to save and send windows friendly attachments or save AW documents as word XP, Windows 2000, if a pc user cannot use them.
I'm a new Mac user and have had quite bad surprises when sending out AW documents (work related one) and no one could open them!!!
SO even if you save an AW document as windows compatible, it will not open on a PC or am I doing something wrong ?
When you tell it "Windows friendly" or whatever, all it does is append the extension to the file name. This way Windows will know what program opens it and if you have AppleWorks on Windows it will open. The problem is that nobody has AppleWorks on Windows so it's an unsupported format.
To ensure that people on Windows can open your documents, don't save them as the default .cwk format. Use .rtf for word processing documents. You'll stand the chance of losing tables or anything else you put in the document though. Text will come through just fine. I haven't sent AppleWorks spreadsheets much, so I don't know what the alternate format is there.
To ensure that people on Windows can open your documents, don't save them as the default .cwk format. Use .rtf for word processing documents. You'll stand the chance of losing tables or anything else you put in the document though. Text will come through just fine. I haven't sent AppleWorks spreadsheets much, so I don't know what the alternate format is there.
wide said:
... and make sure you back up your Home folder.
No, seriously... don't download software from limewire. Why do you think software is so damn expensive in the first place?
DavidLeblond said:... and make sure you back up your Home folder.
No, seriously... don't download software from limewire. Why do you think software is so damn expensive in the first place?
if software sells well why lower the price?
support shareware yes
support m$ no
I have to admit that it's a bit odd for a Mac user to admit something like this, but I am absolutely in love with Office 2004. I used the Test Drive that came with my iBook until the trial period ran out, and then I tried using AppleWorks, but hated it more than anything. I ended up just using TextEdit until the newest version of Office was released. I know Microsoft may make a shotty OS, but I have to give them credit for making an absolutely fantasic Office Suite. I love the notebook layout view and the ability to add tabs to a document. There are so many wonderful features I couldn't possinly list them all, and besides, that would take the fun out of discovering them for yourself. The program I use out of the whole suite is Word, although I do have Excel installed for the rare occasion that I need a spreadsheet... but Word alone was the worth the cost (I got the student and teacher edition, so I only paid $150)... depending on how much you plan to use it, it could very well be worth the money. I use it for work and personal use and it's been great at keeping everything I need organized. I can't begin to fully describe how awesome I find the new Word. I think that says something in and of itself.
wide said:
I didn't see this before I last posted, otherwise I would have included it. If you honestly don't feel that you should give your money to Microsoft, then you don't need to use the program. Plain and simple. Find a piece of software that you DO support... there are even plenty of free alternatives out there. If it's not worth paying for, it's not worth using. I admit I used to pirate software, but I'm completely clean from it now because I realize that it's just not worth it. I also feel the same way about music. If I don't feel a song is worth 99 cents to buy from iTunes, then why on earth would I feel it's worth having on my computer at all? If you don't feel comfortable supporting Microsoft by giving them money for a product, then you shouldn't feel comfortable using the program at all.
wide said:
:lol: That's how that person who reported that trojan to MacWorld got the trojan in the first place....
Horrortaxi said:
I believe that AppleWorks 6.2.9 can save documents in a .doc format. Can't Word (Windows, I believe 97 even) open AppleWorks documents?