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Stupidly bought iWork w/new iMac. It's awful. Where's cheapest place to buy Microsoft

mindquest said:
I will be getting an Imac soon and will have Windows 7 on it via Fusion. Given that would you put office on native or on Windows 7? I am going back and forth on this. I have lots of .xls & .doc from 2003 version to bring over.
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I prefer to work in OS X as much as possible so I really like having Office 2008 for Mac. I am able to handle 90-95% of tasks in OS X with Office 2008. I keep Office 2007 running in a VM for that 5-10% of the time. I'm hoping Office 2010's return to near Windows Office parity (with VBA support and Outlook client) will make Windows completely unnecessary (other than my many Windows games)!

Cheers,
 
I know it sounds expensive, but you do still save a little bit of money. I bought mine through my school for $70, and that is Office 2008 for Mac.

Make sure after you buy it, you do ALL of the software updates on it, and I mean ALL, even when it says the update is finished, run the update again, and again until it does say you have no more updates left. This would fix a lot of the speed issues Office has had with 2008.
 
stever500 said:
Thanks for this. I'm new to this so bear with me... I don't see an "inspector" logo on my Pages document, only on my Numbers document, so I can't make the changes you suggest.
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The Inspector button is on your Pages document bar, the blue circle with an 'i' in it. Click it to bring up the floating Inspector window, then choose the Wrap button to select the object as Floating. See attached.
 

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Cave Man said:
The Inspector button is on your Pages document bar, the blue circle with an 'i' in it. Click it to bring up the floating Inspector window, then choose the Wrap button to select the object as Floating. See attached.
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Thanks for the visuals! This has been a fascinating thread for me. I'm doing everything I can now to make Pages work for me 100%.
 
I also have to say that using Fusion + Windows XP + Office 2007 is a beautiful thing. I have Fusion installed and running in the background just for this purpose as I make powerpoint slides (and don't even try converting keynote->powerpoint if you can't handle word formatting errors) that are broadcast to hundreds of people and I can't have a problem with formatting if I'm away doing a presentation, period. You don't even know you're running windows. Here's a screen shot to see what I'm talking about (with this screen in the background)
 

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I would love to hear form people who run both office for mac & windows. Getting first imac and still debating on which version. Does anyone know if you can share docs and spreadsheets between office in VM Fusion & the mac side? I would always be emailing out through the mac side but if I chose office for windows I have to have an easy way to access them.
 
Apple Customer Service is amazing! I just spend over 2 hours on the phone with them over a resume formatting issue they can't solve. I had my resume professionally done this week so I can get a better job, but when I send it out in Word format or Pages it has text boxes over every bullet point. She tried everything on the phone to fix it but eventually said the only thing left for me to do is to get Microsoft Office for Mac. Duh, I thought... I would have guessed that 2 weeks again when all these formatting problems started.

I told her I was mad that they didn't recommend this when I bought my machine, because I mentioned that I had lots of word docs that would be transferred over. It's my fault in the end, as one lady at the store DID say she recommended it for my situation, but most of the other people didn't.

In any case, here's the amazing part, she offered to mail Office for Mac for free to me due to all the problems of incompatibility I was having and all the hours I spend on the phone with different people. I was blown away. That saves me $100 even though I lost all that time.

Good stuff. I'm happy right now. Hopefully Office for Mac will solve my issues.
 
mindquest said:
I would love to hear form people who run both office for mac & windows. Getting first imac and still debating on which version. Does anyone know if you can share docs and spreadsheets between office in VM Fusion & the mac side? I would always be emailing out through the mac side but if I chose office for windows I have to have an easy way to access them.
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As a user of both I can say it is extremely easy. You Mac hard drive personal folder (the Home folder) will show up in windows either as a networked drive (to which you can make a shortcut to on your windows desktop) or a folder on the desktop (depending on which version of fusion you have) with which you can both read and write files on through the virtual machine. Either way, when I save files I just navigate to windows desktop->Home Folder->Documents and save there. That means that ALL my documents are saved on my Mac partition in the Mac Documents folder reducing any problems at all with windows. The only things that are actually saved on the windows drive are the actual programs of microsoft office so I don't have to worry if Windows gets corrupt or anything because I could just delete it or whatever (this has never happened though, but I love that all my files are stored in my home folder as it is very intuitive). When I email or manipulate the files in any way I just go to the Documents section of my home folder on mac. Easy as can be.
 
This thread has left me confused. As a recent convert (4 months and counting), I vowed to run away from anything Microsoft. Then I remembered how I did the same thing with Apple when iPod came out. After getting over my thoughts on why the iPod was bad for the world of music, it hit me. It took several years, but once I actually looked at what Apple does I realized, Apple is fantastic. I don't want to run around saying I hate Microsoft because I will probably end up eating my words, but I choose Apple.

To the case in point, I have iWork and have had no issues as a former Office user. I will admit Numbers is quite a bit more simple than Excel, but I haven't had the need to work it too hard yet. So I have a full version Office:Mac 2008 Business Edition sitting on my desk and still feel hesitant about installing it. I have had nowhere near the problems with my Mac as I did with multiple PCs and have a connotation of problems with Microsoft (the occasional beach ball and one time the iMac wouldn't get past the startup grey screen but a safe boot and permissions repair cured all).

I read all the posts but cannot make a decision. Then again I have the Snow Leopard update disc sitting on my desk too, that I have not yet installed due to the fear of problems. With PCs I had a habit of trying to "fix" things and ended up messing things up with lots of drive formats and reinstallation.

Has there been any issues with Office in regards to security issues? I had a trojan on my PC laptop that attached itself to all my excel files and I had to delete them. I do not want to potentially introduce problems to my Mac files with the addition of Office. Anyone know anything about this?
 
I like iWork ok.

However, I use Office Mac 2008. Besides being a bit slow to launch, Office 2008 Mac is a great product. I love using it, and I think it's the only thing MS should do anymore.
 
Because I only use my Windows side to use Microsoft office I have not had ANY problems with it.
 
MonkeyET said:
snip
I read all the posts but cannot make a decision. Then again I have the Snow Leopard update disc sitting on my desk too, that I have not yet installed due to the fear of problems. With PCs I had a habit of trying to "fix" things and ended up messing things up with lots of drive formats and reinstallation.

Has there been any issues with Office in regards to security issues? I had a trojan on my PC laptop that attached itself to all my excel files and I had to delete them. I do not want to potentially introduce problems to my Mac files with the addition of Office. Anyone know anything about this?
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I too used to update when it was not needed, sometimes with less than optimal results. If you're working fine and don't need the features SL leave it alone. SL breaks some print drivers, and Acrobat Professional's print to PDF is gone. You must use Apple's built in save as (creates larger files most of the time for me) to pdf. Also some of our folks can't get the old Cisco VPN to work with SL. Had to switch to Cisco AnyConnect HTTP VPN. All this stuff can be fixed or worked around but why bother if you don't need SL. Perhaps in a few months drivers and software updates from vendors will fix this little bits.

As to Office 2008; it lacks Microsoft's VB script support so it is unlikely to be able to run into any excel script based malware. I prefer 2008 to most of the free or low cost alternatives but that is mainly a function of having 10s of thousands of legacy office files and sharing with Windows Offices users constantly. I also like Entourage since I keep every e-mail forever and it stores my mail DB locally, bypassing that pesky exchange-based archiving (this messages get archived on the Exchange server but the mac users retain the full messages locally because Exchange can't interact with Entourage like it does Outlook).

If you really don't have complex word, excel or PPT docs iWork will most likely be ok but for me I prefer Office 2008 for the most compatibility.

Cheers,
 
I'd rather use iWork over Office 2008. Understandable though if you're having compatibility problems. I personally refuse to ever dump Office v.X until they release something as intuitive and speedy.
 
Dustman said:
I'd rather use iWork over Office 2008. Understandable though if you're having compatibility problems. I personally refuse to ever dump Office v.X until they release something as intuitive and speedy.
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Well, my free Microsoft Office for Mac came in the mail today courtesy of a very nice lady in Apple's customer support area. I'll try it out this weekend and see how it is, and report back here accordingly.

It's interesting that at the Apple store I went to today, Microsoft Office for Mac is preloaded on the laptops, there. I wonder why they bother to do this when they "push" people to get iWorks instead?

Steve
 
I just read through this whole post becaise I recently went through the same thing and i just have to wonder.

how in the hell is this guy creating his word documents in such a way that they are always messed up on iwork for mac? It makes me think that the person creating them is using some weird methods to make certain things place a certain way. i know for SURE i have had to finagle things in microsoft word to get them to display properly and those are things that no other OS should have to account for.

Anyways.. I'm telling you that your OLD OLD files are there, but they proably need tweaking (but your data isn't gone) and creating NEW files should be simple as pie.. as well as importing stuff creating from an pretty recent version of any microsoft office program

I regularly have stuff sent to me created by PCs to iwork and never had an issue.. Well, i take that back. There were SOME issues when importing powerpoint to keynote, but the funny thing is.. its TOTALLY power point's fault because keynote can create a document that opens in powerpoint just fine.
 
lindsayanng said:
I just read through this whole post becaise I recently went through the same thing and i just have to wonder.

how in the hell is this guy creating his word documents in such a way that they are always messed up on iwork for mac? It makes me think that the person creating them is using some weird methods to make certain things place a certain way. i know for SURE i have had to finagle things in microsoft word to get them to display properly and those are things that no other OS should have to account for.

Anyways.. I'm telling you that your OLD OLD files are there, but they proably need tweaking (but your data isn't gone) and creating NEW files should be simple as pie.. as well as importing stuff creating from an pretty recent version of any microsoft office program

I regularly have stuff sent to me created by PCs to iwork and never had an issue.. Well, i take that back. There were SOME issues when importing powerpoint to keynote, but the funny thing is.. its TOTALLY power point's fault because keynote can create a document that opens in powerpoint just fine.
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Let me tell you, I've had huge issues. Now that I downloaded the Office for Mac, I can actually see docs the way they were supposed to be seen, with all the lines on my resume where they are supposed to be, the correct fonts on my new resume instead of incorrect ones in pages, and headers at the top of the page that sit correctly in the right place. Thank god I did this!!!! Pages may be great for some of you, but it sucked for me.

I'll never use it again. I just wish Office didn't have that weird crackling and pop noise when I use it. Very odd sound effect.

Steve R
 
I find using Office 2008 a pain too!
Office 2008 is decent, but full of compatibility issues.

First:
VBA doesn't work!!!
If you need to do statistics you are much better off with Office 2004!!
Macroes are bust, there are no statistics package in the 2008 version!

Second:
Equations made on Office 2007 (PC version) doesn't work on Office 2008!

So basically, if you plan to do anything related to math or statistics, stay away form Office 2008!

I hope next version of Office for mac again will make it usable for mac users!
I'm really using a lot of time to be sure I get documents either converted to older formats so I can use them in Office 2004 or equations added with MathType instead of Office's built in Equation Editor.


There is also a huge issues with documents refusing to save because Office sometimes bugs equations. I'm making a new copy at least every hour when i work in Word!

I had to redo over 25 equations once because Word refused to save the document!

I really should have bought Office 2007 and ran it in vmware instead of buying Office 2008 for mac!
 
cluthz said:
...I hope next version of Office for mac again will make it usable for mac users!...
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And people say I'M an eternal optimist.... There's no way Microsoft will make an equal version of Office for Mac unless they are essentially FORCED to, the reason being, if they offer a nerfed version, it'll boost their sales.

People will buy the nerfed Mac version, try to use it, fail to do everything they need, then buy a copy of Windows AND the Windows version of it.

This is one reason Open Office is so incredibly important. It's stable, powerful, and more than fast enough. More importantly, it's cross-platform.
 
knewsom said:
And people say I'M an eternal optimist.... There's no way Microsoft will make an equal version of Office for Mac unless they are essentially FORCED to, the reason being, if they offer a nerfed version, it'll boost their sales.

People will buy the nerfed Mac version, try to use it, fail to do everything they need, then buy a copy of Windows AND the Windows version of it.

This is one reason Open Office is so incredibly important. It's stable, powerful, and more than fast enough. More importantly, it's cross-platform.
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I wish Open Office worked for me. It turned my resume into 4 pages long (from it's 2 pages in Word) and totally screwed up the formatting.
 
ugh, bummer. Kinda makes you wish there was a good universal document type that was translatable and entirely open source.

Lucky me I don't have anything with requisite formatting in MSWord. My Resume I redid in Pages, and I've been quite happy with it. Easy-peasy, drag, resize, etc. I dig.
 
There will always be an issue with excel spread sheets because of the fact that macs and pcs processes these types of input differently.

Macs register every new line as a carriage return, and pcs register them as a carriage return and linefeed. When a mac tries to read that type of document, things get hairy.

The creator of the file should make sure that when they save, they save for mac and for pc depending on who they are sending the file to
 
stever500 said:
It's interesting that at the Apple store I went to today, Microsoft Office for Mac is preloaded on the laptops, there. I wonder why they bother to do this when they "push" people to get iWorks instead?

Steve
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That's just a free trial. After the trial period is up, it stops working.
 
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