It's called LyX. It is still available, and more than serviceable. I tend to use it more than writing directly in LaTeX.
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Why do some continue using Microsoft Office on Mac?
- Thread starter Benz63amg
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It's called LyX. It is still available, and more than serviceable. I tend to use it more than writing directly in LaTeX.
“Quite more” is quite an understatement.
I haven’t seen a single Numbers, Pages or Keynote document in my almost 30 years in college and business. I’ve seen a number of other formats, though (mainly Open Office and legacy). But 99.9% is MS Office.
The biggest problem with Apple formatted office files is that it’s impossible to use them on a non-Apple device. There’s no importers. LibreOffice is supposed to be able to open these files but it doesn’t work well if at all (I mainly refer to Numbers). So it’s limited to people with Apple devices and iCloud accounts.
That was why I was reluctant to change from Office (mainly Word). And, of course, familiarity going back all too many years.
But my attempts to use Libre were not good. Neither converting a Word document nor starting from scratch. Time after time, I'd run up against things I wanted to do that were unsupported.
And I hit several issues with Word. Particularly being unable to export to PDF under macOS. So I needed to keep a Windows box available almost solely to to that.
When I finally decided to use Pages, there were the fairly obvious difficulties everyone has in changing, but I found it pretty straightforward and good. The one thing that keeps catching me own is not having an automatic update to date/time (e.g. set to last saved date/time). So I keep realising I have missed that and having to go back and manually update to current date/time.
I'd really like to know that Pages was available under other platforms as an option.
I'm running macOS Ventura and have Microsoft Office for Mac 2019.
You can create a PDF from Word by going to the print menu, and at the bottom left, select the drop down menu where it says PDF and you can select "Save as PDF..." and go from there.
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Thanks. I know very well how to do it. I have Word for Mac 16.80 through 365.
But it falls over every time with some documents. And I have tried many approaches such as copying contents and pasting to a new document. Same in Windows. Checking for everything Word can report as an issue. Removing a vast proportion of the content (as an experiment). Changing fonts. Reporting to Microsoft. Posting here. Using both my mini and my MBP. Digging out older versions to try to find out when it stopped working. (The first problem was with a big document and I didn't export every time I made some changes. Just when I had done a load of changes and was ready to make it available to others.)
And if you export to PDF through the print dialogue, it does not include a full, operable, Table of Contents. It has been suggested before but ToC is vital in a 500+ page document.
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Worked for me using the "export" option. The ToC works and links to the correct headings/chapters. As polyphenol mentions, printing to a PDF doesn't create any links. However, my test wasn't using the most complex of documents. I wrote my master's thesis in LaTeX as I felt it fun to learn something new very old.
MacOS Sonoma 14.3 (latest beta), Office 2019.
File / Save As / Export as PDF
MacOS Sonoma 14.3 (latest beta), Office 2019.
File / Save As / Export as PDF
It works fine on some documents!
(Though even when it works it is incredibly slow compared to Pages. I frequently have to check I really did export a PDF from Pages and not just do a simple save of current document.)
I tried Latex (through Lyx) as well. But found it extremely tedious and hard to achieve what I wanted. I have no doubt it could do everything, beautifully, but it is tough going from nothing to having sufficient skill to do so.
I'd happily use Pages for everything, but I needed a word processor which would integrate with Zotero. Pages doesn't support it. I almost used Word for my document but as I enjoy basic programming and scripting thought I'd enjoy LaTeX.
I did, but I doubt I'll ever use it again!
I did, but I doubt I'll ever use it again!
That's an issue with me as well, I have looked thinking there was some hidden menu for an automatic update but there is not. With Pages, I just highlight the old date and hit the insert time and date over the old which works OK but not a nice as Office.
The problem with Pages is if you have to use any standard templates dictated by your organization or the client (e.g. standardized specifications, forms etc) which contain more than the very simplest formatting. Styles, TOC, tables, forms, headers and footers all get broken on conversion.
If you’re working on your own and only produce a PDF without any required standard formatting, Pages is fine.
Keynote is one part of Apple Suite that’s better than its MS counterpart, but it’s, again, impossible to use in a business environment because nobody’s going to be able to open your presentation, and if you convert it you lose most formatting.
Numbers is both the most different in the way it works, compared to Excel, and quite frankly somewhat subpar. It does have some nice features (free form canvas, nice predefined formats) but it’s also missing some powerful features, and is unnecessarily complicated and slow in some other features (filtering is my pet peeve, why do I have to set up and save a recipe for a filter in a separate sidebar dialog, when in both Excel and LibreOffice it can be done and changed in seconds using quick drop downs right there in the table ? )
If you’re working on your own and only produce a PDF without any required standard formatting, Pages is fine.
Keynote is one part of Apple Suite that’s better than its MS counterpart, but it’s, again, impossible to use in a business environment because nobody’s going to be able to open your presentation, and if you convert it you lose most formatting.
Numbers is both the most different in the way it works, compared to Excel, and quite frankly somewhat subpar. It does have some nice features (free form canvas, nice predefined formats) but it’s also missing some powerful features, and is unnecessarily complicated and slow in some other features (filtering is my pet peeve, why do I have to set up and save a recipe for a filter in a separate sidebar dialog, when in both Excel and LibreOffice it can be done and changed in seconds using quick drop downs right there in the table ? )
Keynote is so much easier than PP.
I don't know if I posted this on this thread earlier or not, but I got stuck into making some slides for a Roku TV at work (exporting to images). I started using Keynote because it was there and easier to use. No one else uses it. So I tried switching to PowerPoint so I can have someone else help or take over while using the same templates (texts and pictures).
What a pain. With Keynote, when I add in a picture, it pretty much aligns it for me. With PowerPoint, it would place it out of alignment and sometimes on its side. Fixing it was not a simple task, either.
I ended up sticking with Keynote and just making the slides for them to change while I'm on vacation. When I leave, the next person can sort it out.
PowerPoint is OK, it has auto alignment too. Keynote is just easier to get good looking results in, PP default themes are boring and ugly.
But PowerPoint is *the* holy cow of corporate world. “Death by PowerPoint” is a real thing…
But PowerPoint is *the* holy cow of corporate world. “Death by PowerPoint” is a real thing…
Many years ago, so things might have changed, I created a few PP presentations under Windows which, while they worked, were actually better when exported as PDFs, then the PDF "run" in Acrobat reader (or whatever it was at the time). Smoother and more consistent.
That is why I have always exported the files to the Microsoft Office format to turn in for my assignments or work colleagues and generally they have not realized that I did not use Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office on any platform other than Windows is behind because Microsoft does not want you to use any other platform than Windows. LibreOffice is still not an option. At least the Microsoft Office subscription is paid by someone else, or included in the tuition.
You point out the problem, people are using Microsoft Office and there is not a standard application generic accepted format. Maybe the organization should require all files to be formatted as plain text.
You just tap on the date/time, and you can update it there. Never used the feature in Microsoft Office, and I have used Word since 2.0.
In Numbers, you can right click on the field and select Quick Filter. Yes the interface is different, you just need to take the time to learn where the options are.
Indeed, you can do that. But in Word I can insert a date/time which update automatically when saving. Hence, not something I might forget to do. Which I have done too many times! Most of my documents, I want to know the displayed date/time is right. Then, if someone asks about a document, I can check what they are seeing and immediately have a good idea whether or not it has been updated.
Thanks. It's still a lot slower than in Excel, but at least better than using the side panel...
Further to my earlier posts here ...
When Office Update ran today to check for updates to my 2019 Office programs, for the first time it directed me to this page End of support for Office 2019 for Mac explaining that support for Office 2019 for Mac ended on October 10, 2023.
This is consistent with what you had posted back in November - I don't know why that did not happen earlier for my own Office install. My plan is to purchase Office 2021 for Mac, one-time purchase, as soon as there is an opportunity to do that at a discounted price (today it costs $149.95). There isn't any urgency to doing that, my current 2019 will continue to work fine but eventually I prefer to continue with a product that receives updates from Microsoft.
I prefer this to the Microsoft 365 monthly subscription mainly because I don't like endless monthly subscriptions, and there have been lower prices for these one-time purchases from time to time that make them a very reasonable way to keep Office current on my Mac.
Deals come around all the time but tend to sell out or end after a short period. They are the best way to get a non-subscription version.
I still have my Microsoft account for office 365. Frankly, the only app I really enjoy is Microsoft Word. Pages is a poor excuse for a word processor, but it does look pretty, kinda like’ a kindergarten app. 🤗