Microsoft Office vs Apple Office Apps

[cdcastillo]

I use Microsoft Office on my Mac ... I have to share files with coworkers who use Windows. You can export to Microsoft Office file formats from Apple's suite, but the conversion isn't perfect and that can be a problem. Formatting is very important in these files that I share...

The ONLY reason why I use MS Office for Mac is for 100% file compatibility when I will be sharing the resulting file with a person who uses MS Office. Although other suites claim near 100% compatibility, they fall very short with files that contain non-trivial formatting.

My go-to productivity suite is iWork...

I'm in the same boat here, I just use MS Word when receiving or sending files from/to people who uses office. As advanced as the format conversion from pages to word and viceversa currently is, I still face errors when converting documents with tables, images and some other "special" content. I do not like to waste time checking and correcting for errors that should not be there in the first place.

Other than this situation, my office uses iWork exclusively.

sorry for the OT question, but one of the most features I used in Word is the format painter where I can select a word or phrase using the format painter brush, then easily apply the same formatting to other test, lines, paragraphics, etc. in one go. How can this be done in Pages?

One of the advantages of using a Mac (instead of a Windows PC) is you can assign system wide or app specific keyboard shortcuts for any menu item (I have this particular example set to alt+ctrl+cmd+c or v)

 

[Cyprusian]

If 100% of documents created by Microsoft Office apps could be opended flawlessly by the equivalent Apple apps, and vice-versa, then I suggest the adoption rate of Pages, Numbers and Key Note by current Microsoft Office users would be a lot higher that it is now.

One example to illustrate my point ....... as a fairly advanced Microsoft Excel user, after transitioning from Lotus 1-2-3 in the mid-nineties, I believe one of the many powerful features Excel provides is named ranges within a worksheet.

Apple Numbers takes a completely differently approach by deploying standalone tables instead of ranges within worksheets. This means that Excel workbooks containing named ranges cannot be opened by Numbers with full formulae functionality retained intact.

No matter the undoubted elegance of the design of Numbers, its significant functionality differences inhibit full Excel compatibility. I suggest that a lack of full cross-application functionality tends to anchor the majority of many commercial users to the Microsoft Office apps.

 

[honestone33]

If 100% of documents created by Microsoft Office apps could be opended flawlessly by the equivalent Apple apps, and vice-versa, then I suggest the adoption rate of Pages, Numbers and Key Note by current Microsoft Office users would be a lot higher that it is now.

One example to illustrate my point ....... as a fairly advanced Microsoft Excel user, after transitioning from Lotus 1-2-3 in the mid-nineties, I believe one of the many powerful features Excel provides is named ranges within a worksheet.

Apple Numbers takes a completely differently approach by deploying standalone tables instead of ranges within worksheets. This means that Excel workbooks containing named ranges cannot be opened by Numbers with full formulae functionality retained intact.

No matter the undoubted elegance of the design of Numbers, its significant functionality differences inhibit full Excel compatibility. I suggest that a lack of full cross-application functionality tends to anchor the majority of many commercial users to the Microsoft Office apps.

You make many excellent points. Myself, I have been using LibreOffice for the past 5 months, and in EVERY instance, with Word and Excel documents I previously created when I was using Office 2016, they have easily been handled by the comparable LibreOffice modules.

Given that I am no longer working (have been happily retired since 2011!), I would like a way I could further test LibreOffice with "outside-created" Word and Excel documents. I might run into some on a website, but if anyone could either send me a couple of such documents, or point me to a website where I could download them, that would be good. But so far, LibreOffice is fine.

 

[interbear]

I use the MS Office suite on my Mac because MS is the standard for my workplace, with Office 365. So Word, PowerPoint, Excel and heavy use of OneDrive, Share point and Microsoft Teams for collaboration. I’m already on the edge by using my own Mac for work rather than the company supplied Windows laptop

All of this works just fine on the Mac. With one exception. I use Outlook for Mac and there is no way to sync my personal and family iCloud calendars with it. The suggested workaround of sharing a public calendar link via Outlook web calendar simply doesn’t work. It would be nice to see all of my calendars in the single Outlook app but it’s not possible. And as I have to use Outlook calendar app for the majority of my appointments, driven by work, this is a pain. I‘m even considering ditching my use of iCloud calendars altogether and simply adding my personal calendar into Outlook directly tagged private so no one can see the appointment detail. Not ideal.

 

[jwolf6589]

I use the MS Office suite on my Mac because MS is the standard for my workplace, with Office 365. So Word, PowerPoint, Excel and heavy use of OneDrive, Share point and Microsoft Teams for collaboration. I’m already on the edge by using my own Mac for work rather than the company supplied Windows laptop

All of this works just fine on the Mac. With one exception. I use Outlook for Mac and there is no way to sync my personal and family iCloud calendars with it. The suggested workaround of sharing a public calendar link via Outlook web calendar simply doesn’t work. It would be nice to see all of my calendars in the single Outlook app but it’s not possible. And as I have to use Outlook calendar app for the majority of my appointments, driven by work, this is a pain. I‘m even considering ditching my use of iCloud calendars altogether and simply adding my personal calendar into Outlook directly tagged private so no one can see the appointment detail. Not ideal.

MS has been the standard in most work places for decades.

 

[honestone33]

Well, there were some file conversions for a while... I used to receive some monthly reports that were formatted in some ancient .xls version that Numbers couldn't hack. I used OpenOffice for the conversion, but had no other reason to use it - I kept it on my Mac "just in case," and when I no longer needed that file conversion OpenOffice went un-used for years - finally deleted it altogether.

The primary reason why I chose LibreOffice over OpenOffice is that LibreOffice can both read and save documents in specific formats. This link describes that (and other features/differences):

https://www.lifewire.com/libreoffice-vs-openoffice-who-wins-2512178

Note the "part" within "Supported Formats: Microsoft Compatibility":

"On the flip side, this is a list of all the file formats LibreOffice supports for both opening and saving, meaning that you can not only open and edit the file, but also save back to that same format:

• CSV, DBF, DIF, DOC, DOCX, DOT, FODS, FODT, HTML, ODG, ODP, ODS, ODT, OTP, OTS, OTT, POT, POTM, PPSX, PPT, PPTX, RTF, SLK, STC, STW, SXC, SXI, SXW, TXT, UOP, UOS, XLS, XLSX, XLT, XML"

While that is all well and good, note that the article does not say one is better than the other. That seems fair.

I guess the best advice is to go with the one that satisfies your needs.

 

[eRondeau]

Nobody's more supportive of the Mac ecosystem than me. BUT -- in a world where Microsoft Office dominates, sometimes "better" doesn't matter and you have to defer to the class leader. My employer (2,500 staff) is exclusively Windows and I know from personal experience that saving a Keynote presentation as .pptx or Pages as .docx or Numbers as .xlsx isn't always exactly the same. Fonts can be different on Windows, character kerning and/or baselines can vary, and transitions may not be the same. Minor differences, but often enough to look obviously wrong (and cause everybody seeing it to think "Mac's aren't compatible".) So, regretfully, I've learned to use MS Office for work and iWork apps for personal projects.

 

[honestone33]

Well stated, eRondeau. Although I am retired, I still want to be able the occasional Word or Excel document I either "fall upon" or receive, and thus I chose LibreOffice to handle that.

 

[Spacetime Anomaly]

Libre Office sounds great on paper, but on Retina Macs the fonts are so blurry as to make it unusable, and if you install an older version from a year ago (to circumvent this) you get all the legacy bugs and fewer features.

In theory, it could be a fantastic office solution, but it's a mess right now for most Mac users.

 

[jwolf6589]

Libre Office sounds great on paper, but on Retina Macs the fonts are so blurry as to make it unusable, and if you install an older version from a year ago (to circumvent this) you get all the legacy bugs and fewer features.

In theory, it could be a fantastic office solution, but it's a mess right now for most Mac users.

I agree. I stay away from that software.

 

[chrono1081]

I personally hate Microsoft Office, it's a bloated pig. The Apple iWork apps (Numbers, Pages, Keynote) aren't nearly as full featured as MS Office but they do just enough that I don't need MS Office and they're much less cluttered (and much faster) to use.

I personally prefer the Apple apps but it all depends on your needs. Heavy Excel users usually need Excel vs Numbers, Word users can usually use Pages just fine, and Powerpoint users often like Keynote over Powerpoint.

 

[honestone33]

Libre Office sounds great on paper, but on Retina Macs the fonts are so blurry as to make it unusable, and if you install an older version from a year ago (to circumvent this) you get all the legacy bugs and fewer features.

In theory, it could be a fantastic office solution, but it's a mess right now for most Mac users.

I don't have a Retina-based Mac, and your classification of "for most Mac users" is not necessarily accurate. I suspect that the number of Mac users that have Retina displays is either the same, or somewhat less than, folks who don't.

All I know is LibreOffice looks good on both of my Macs. Did you try the latest version? It is V6.3.3.2.

 

[jwolf6589]

I don't have a Retina-based Mac, and your classification of "for most Mac users" is not necessarily accurate. I suspect that the number of Mac users that have Retina displays is either the same, or somewhat less than, folks who don't.

All I know is LibreOffice looks good on both of my Macs. Did you try the latest version? It is V6.3.3.2.

Have you tried iWorks or MS Office?

 

[Spacetime Anomaly]

I don't have a Retina-based Mac, and your classification of "for most Mac users" is not necessarily accurate.

Fair enough. I have a non retina Mac as well.

Did you try the latest version? It is V6.3.3.2.

Yes. Still bugged I'm afraid.

 

[honestone33]

Have you tried iWorks or MS Office?

Not interested in iWorks, as LibreOffice is fine. As for MS Office, I previously used Office 2011 and Office 2016, but I had a serious issue with Outlook 2016. So, I switched to LibreOffice, and Thunderbird as my EMail client, and I am quite pleased. While Thunderbird might not have a "sexy" interface, it works. And again, LibreOffice easily satisfies my needs.

Also, I guess the "claim" about most Mac users and Retina displays was not accurate.

 

[jwolf6589]

Not interested in iWorks, as LibreOffice is fine. As for MS Office, I previously used Office 2011 and Office 2016, but I had a serious issue with Outlook 2016. So, I switched to LibreOffice, and Thunderbird as my EMail client, and I am quite pleased. While Thunderbird might not have a "sexy" interface, it works. And again, LibreOffice easily satisfies my needs.

Also, I guess the "claim" about most Mac users and Retina displays was not accurate.

Try Office 2019 its great.

 

[honestone33]

Try Office 2019 its great.

No thanks. I am very happy with LibreOffice and Thunderbird.

 

[Spacetime Anomaly]

Has anyone tried FreeOffice?

I've given it a quick spin and it doesn't look bad at all.

 

[honestone33]

Has anyone tried FreeOffice?

I've given it a quick spin and it doesn't look bad at all.

Doesn't look bad, but it seems to have some short comings. Here is a review of all the free alternatives to Microsoft Office:

https://www.techradar.com/best/free-office-software

Note that LibreOffice is #1. I am going to stick with it.

 

[jwolf6589]

Has anyone tried FreeOffice?

I've given it a quick spin and it doesn't look bad at all.

Oh I remember using those apps back in the Windows CE/ Windows 98 days. The software wasn't that bad.

 

[3SQ Machine]

I use NUMBERS over Excel because I find it much more intuitive and user-friendly--but I'm not an accountant and can't comment on its other features for that workflow.

I use WORD over pages because its universal--but no freakin' way I'm jumping on the atrocious 365 subscription model once my work stops granting us licenses to use at home. If pages gets me 80% of the way there, I'm in for life. Still keeping my 32 bit office 2008 though because that was the last version able to go back to 1995 to read WORD docs (and I "own" the license for it--no more $$ required).

Finally, PowerPoint over keynote but only because, again, it's universal and these are presentations that are needed on multiple machines in varying capacities.

 

[jwolf6589]

I use NUMBERS over Excel because I find it much more intuitive and user-friendly--but I'm not an accountant and can't comment on its other features for that workflow.

I use WORD over pages because its universal--but no freakin' way I'm jumping on the atrocious 365 subscription model once my work stops granting us licenses to use at home. If pages gets me 80% of the way there, I'm in for life. Still keeping my 32 bit office 2008 though because that was the last version able to go back to 1995 to read WORD docs (and I "own" the license for it--no more $$ required).

Finally, PowerPoint over keynote but only because, again, it's universal and these are presentations that are needed on multiple machines in varying capacities.

Office 2008? I just upgraded my mom's Hi-Sierra MacBook Air to Office 2019. Entourage 2008 was having problems opening attachments among other issues. I think she is allot happier with Office 2019.

 

[||\||]

OpenOffice.

 

[jwolf6589]

OpenOffice.

Another one. In a number of years I predict many of these suites will be gone, but MS Office, iWorks, and Google will still be around.

 

[||\||]

Oh yeah, I also use Google Sheets and Docs. It’s handy for bill reconciliation and a lot of my political organizing/collaboration runs through the suite. I don’t understand why anyone actually pays for general office software.