Does Microsoft Words on Mac have issues when sharing to windows pc

[Mukhzani Mustaffa]

Hi guys, been wanting to get a Mac for a very longgggg time. Unfortunately 90% of my works invlove Microsoft words and sharing it with my office mates. My office mates are using windows pc. So my questions are

1- is there any issue when sharing words from mac to windows pc? because i raed somewhere in this group that some of you guys have compatability issues. example some paragraph format, special font/icon missing
2- is it a little bit sluggish or slow when using words on mac?

thanks

 

[chscag]

The latest version of Microsoft Word for the Mac (Office 365) is compatible with the Windows version and either version can be read, edited, and so forth on both a Windows or Mac computer. I have some very old Word documents from Office 95 and 97 for Windows that I can open and edit with my Mac version. You should have no problem sharing Word documents or Powerpoint documents. I can't speak for Excel since I do not use it.

 

[Gregg2]

I use the "Office" suite from SoftMaker, and haven't had issues sharing files with Windows users. I use the free version.

 

[chscag]

I use the "Office" suite from SoftMaker, and haven't had issues sharing files with Windows users. I use the free version.

I also have used "Free Office". The problem with it is that it does not always render Word files properly. Word files with borders, tab stops, indents, images, etc, all had to be redone. However, in my opinion it's better than LibreOffice or Open Office.

 

[Aika]

Zero problems transferring Word files from OS to OS, the formatting survives. I can open up the same document on different machines and see the edits in real-time.

Performance is great.

 

[icanhazmac]

No problems so far but my uses are probably on the basic side.

 

[Madhatter32]

I have experienced no issues going from Word on MacOS to Word on Windows. Going from Pages to Word is not quite as seamless.

 

[sracer]

Hi guys, been wanting to get a Mac for a very longgggg time. Unfortunately 90% of my works invlove Microsoft words and sharing it with my office mates. My office mates are using windows pc. So my questions are

1- is there any issue when sharing words from mac to windows pc? because i raed somewhere in this group that some of you guys have compatability issues. example some paragraph format, special font/icon missing
2- is it a little bit sluggish or slow when using words on mac?

thanks

Based on my experiences....
1 - This is highly dependent upon how well the document is constructed, the fonts that are used, and how advanced the formatting is. With basic to moderate documents, file compatibility between Mac OS and Windows versions of MS Word is excellent. Add non-standard fonts, inconsistent use of paragraph and character styles, or advanced formatting, and things begin to diverge.

2 - Performance of MS Word on Mac OS devices is poorer than on Windows systems of comparable hardware. If you plan on using it on a Mac with a "spinner" (physical harddrive rather than an SSD) then be prepared to wait.

Other things to consider... does your shop use MS Word add-ins? If so, make sure they're available for the Mac OS version of Word.

The user interface for Word for Mac OS is a bit different. There are two menu bars that have functions split across the two or duplicated.

I heavily use MS Office on both Mac OS and Windows. If I had to choose one platform to work on MS Office documents, it would be Windows (with no hesitation).... and I'm one who uses Windows as a last resort and prefer Mac OS, Linux, and Chrome OS.

 

[jlc1978]

Let me echo sracer's comments. In general there are no issues with straightforward shorter documents. I've had issues with longer documents where the page breaks are different between Win and OS X and as a result the document looks odd on one of the two; this may be a result of printer settings being different on the machines. Fonts can be an issue if you use a non-standard font. The real problem I've had is when I've inserted Office objects or images and having them not appear properly; or auto updating when changes are made in the base document. Again, many of those issues resulted from my doing more complex things with Word.