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Help finding an iWork 09 alternate please.

fishingfromakay

fishingfromakay

macrumors member
Original poster
May 22, 2012
91
25
Hello all, I am coming from a 2012, 13" MacBook Pro using iWork 09 to a M1 MacBook Pro. My dilemma is that I am in search of help with is finding an alternative to iWork 09. I really like iWork 09. Does anyone have any suggestions for a replacement ? I tried using the new Numbers on the New MacBook M1 but then I was not able to open it on my older MacBook 2012. Any thoughts/suggestions/recommendation are greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your time.
 
fishingfromakay said:
Thank you very much, I will go take a look.
Click to expand...
It's true that newer versions of iWork can save as older '09 formats, but I agree with you and like iWork '09 the best. It has some of the best features, particularly for Pages (I don't use Numbers quite as extensively so you may know more about that).

New iWork has been kind of treated badly by Apple. I'm holding out on getting a new Mac for basically as many years as possible precisely because of iWork '09's features not being fully implemented on newer version of iWork.
 
Check out the free app named "Retroactive".
Seems to me that it is able to get iWork 09 running on Catalina and Big Sur, and perhaps the m1 Macs as well...?
 
Fishrrman said:
Check out the free app named "Retroactive".
Click to expand...
I looked at Retroactive a while back and found it very unreliable (unusable) with Big Sur. What is your experience?

My understanding is that it only works for (mostly) 64-bit apps, and iWork09 is 32-bit. I seriously doubt it would work for Apple Silicon Macs - but maybe you know different.
 
Last edited:
I have no hands-on experience with m-series Macs.
But I would suggest that you give Retroactive another try, before you write off iWork 09 entirely.
 
Fishrrman said:
I have no hands-on experience with m-series Macs.
But I would suggest that you give Retroactive another try, before you write off iWork 09 entirely.
Click to expand...
It's certainly worth a shot, but unfortunately I think @gilby101 is partially right—Retroactive *does* work on 32 bit apps like iWork, but it does not rewrite 32 bit apps to work on a 64-bit only OS. Retroactive basically just modifies an app so that it works faster and more consistently on pre-Big Sur OSes, but it hasn't been updated since September 2020. The M1 Macs came out in November. Big Sur and up just don't allow 32 bit apps to run, period. If there's a hack to get around that, it hasn't been invented yet that I've heard of.
 
His question was “what is a good alternative to iWork ‘09”, not “how do I keep using iWork ‘09”.

(Try SoftMaker FreeOffice, if you like the way it works, there is a paid version.)

What do you use an office suite for, and how complex are your documents / spreadsheets?
 
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