Why do some continue using Microsoft Office on Mac?

[Euroamerican]

^---- It was rather disappointing when they started de-contenting Pages (and Numbers?) a few years after launching it. I was thinking of doing the training certs for that software, but that ended up being as bad an idea as holding too tight onto OS X Server!

 

[MacBH928]

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. 🤗

If you are a MS Word master user you will prefer 100% MS Word. Me as a new comer, I found myself not needing to look up on how to do things in Pages and being a lot more intuitive than MS Word hell.

In Word, you can probably do anything, but good luck trying to figure out how to do that.

^---- It was rather disappointing when they started de-contenting Pages (and Numbers?) a few years after launching it. I was thinking of doing the training certs for that software, but that ended up being as bad an idea as holding too tight onto OS X Server!

At first I thought Apple should make their suite an MS Office replacement but soon I realised they were kind of right. It is not meant for professional work environment. Its meant for 90% of users who want to get by, you want the more advanced bells and whistles , go get MS Office.

I can't blame them, it works 100% with their strategy of capture the average consumer.

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

Pages (and Numbers) are descendants of the now ancient Apple/Claris-Works. The word processor in AppleWorks is based on the inimitable (and in my mind, still one of the best word processors ever) MacWrite Pro.

iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) is not meant to be a replacement or competitor to MS Office. Use it if you prefer it, or use MS Office if you prefer.

Personally, I use LibreOffice, which out-performs both.

 

[drrich2]

I see the iWorks apps as the evolutionary product of the integrated app.s suites that were common decades ago. I'm an older Gen. X guy. I remember when I got a 386 Windows PC back in my college days. Expensive! Home computers were pretty new to my parents (aside from the Commodore 128 system I got for high school graduation), so Dad naturally asked what I could 'do' with it. Well...play Solitaire and maybe mess with Paint until we bought some applications/programs for around $30 - $50 apiece (and I'm not talking Word, Word Perfect, etc...). Naturally he was a bit flabbergasted that we'd paid all that money to get something that couldn't do anything but play Solitaire out-of-the-box (this was before public Internet access, online downloads, etc...).

Microsoft Works was a somewhat 'watered down' integrated application suite thought to adequate for the needs of home users. And it probably was, except Word and Word Perfect were the recognized standard, 'integrated suites' were recognized as at a lower standard than the 'real' professional app.s, and since people often learned on-the-job or in classes, they often learned on the professional apps. The professional app.s and suites were very expensive (and if you account for inflation, very expensive, especially since many people only wanted Word or Word Perfect), but software piracy was rampant. I think it wasn't common to hear someone say they wrote a letter or paper on Microsoft Works. Apps didn't get the slick names and focused branding/marketing.

Google Docs reminds me of that approach, only strongly online-oriented. That online-dependency adds to why the integrated suites didn't catch on more strongly.

People these days are more knowledgable about computers and the need to by programs/app.s (or download free ones), but there's still that need that the computer be able to 'do something' right out of the box. Web browsers, e-mail and messaging app.s get the party started, but it's nice if it can write a letter.

In order for Pages to break out of 'integrated suite' second class citizen status, it'd have to stop being a Mac-exclusive. We are too small/niche a market to support a success level on par with Word, even amongst Mac users. Judging by what happened as Word via incorporation with MS Office overtook Word Perfect, iWork apps in general would have to do that.

 

[leifp]

Some day, likely around retirement, I’ll give up on MS Office. Mainly Excel. I use the Apple apps from time to time but they leave me quite cold. I did attempt to use them for all situations a little over a decade ago and it worked reasonably well. But then they homologated with the iOS versions and I lost a lot of functionality. I would guess most, if not all, of that is back in but I won’t worry about it for another decade or two…

 

[iHorseHead]

I tried to replace Microsoft Office with iWork years ago. Didn't work out.
Formatting etc won't work on powerpoint excel word and it screws documents up. Even these days.

 

[MacBH928]

Pages (and Numbers) are descendants of the now ancient Apple/Claris-Works. The word processor in AppleWorks is based on the inimitable (and in my mind, still one of the best word processors ever) MacWrite Pro.

iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) is not meant to be a replacement or competitor to MS Office. Use it if you prefer it, or use MS Office if you prefer.

Personally, I use LibreOffice, which out-performs both.

-What is great about MacWrite you feel hard to copy?

-I love the foss apps knowing I will always have a decentralized, privacy respecting free app but as with all FOSS apps its probably uglier in GUI and probably less intuitive with less helpful resources. Do you use the spreadsheet part of it? I wonder how it holds next to Excel.

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

-What is great about MacWrite you feel hard to copy?

-I love the foss apps knowing I will always have a decentralized, privacy respecting free app but as with all FOSS apps its probably uglier in GUI and probably less intuitive with less helpful resources. Do you use the spreadsheet part of it? I wonder how it holds next to Excel.

I would need a working PowerPC Mac to be able to run MacWrite. The closest application to MacWrite now is AbiWord on Linux.

As for using LibreOffice, all I can suggest is download it and use it. I find that it is far more intuitive and easier to use than any of the MS Office apps, partly because Microsoft changes the whole user interface around every few years.
Just imagine if Ford or GM or Chrysler re-arranged the steering, foot pedals, gear shift and dashboard of their cars every few years. And then offered a 'Cut Price' Training Course in the new Driving Interface. And also charged you $150 for the Users Manual.

My biggest complaint about MS Word is that its Multi-File document format is incredibly unstable. And is even more unstable if you save your documents in OneDrive. The reason you need to use Multi-File documents is that .DOCX and .DOC files are easily irretrievably corrupted if the document is over 100 pages and has more than several hundred edits.

LibreOffice has none of those problems. And you can download the complete 400-page+ manuals for free.

 

[jlc1978]

LibreOffice has none of those problems. And you can download the complete 400-page+ manuals for free.

LibreOffice is a good free alternative to Office; I used to recommend it to people, especially those with kids going to college, as an alternative to spending money on Office since LO meets most basic needs just fine. Now that many schools include Office as part of a student's enrollment there's no compelling reason to use LO. The biggest issue I've seen is yu can never be 100% sure a file saved by LO will open exactly the same in Office; and since may professors require files to be submitted in .DOCX or .XLS format that can be an issue. Most of teh time they open just fine, but if you can get Offcie at no extra cost you might as well go with that.

In the corporate world, the risk is not worth the savings, IMHO. MS is not all that better at times, as files saved on the Mac can get mungled when opened in a PC, resulting in odd formatting, fonts, characters, etc.

However, for a home or casual user LO is a good alternative.

 

[crisgo]

Open office is my main go to, FMP for shop records only use apps that I can buy fully WITHOUT subscription. Only subscription I ve is Atv with Disney+. basic Netflix is free with $50.00 cell phone

 

[MacBH928]

I would need a working PowerPC Mac to be able to run MacWrite. The closest application to MacWrite now is AbiWord on Linux.

As for using LibreOffice, all I can suggest is download it and use it. I find that it is far more intuitive and easier to use than any of the MS Office apps, partly because Microsoft changes the whole user interface around every few years.
Just imagine if Ford or GM or Chrysler re-arranged the steering, foot pedals, gear shift and dashboard of their cars every few years. And then offered a 'Cut Price' Training Course in the new Driving Interface. And also charged you $150 for the Users Manual.

My biggest complaint about MS Word is that its Multi-File document format is incredibly unstable. And is even more unstable if you save your documents in OneDrive. The reason you need to use Multi-File documents is that .DOCX and .DOC files are easily irretrievably corrupted if the document is over 100 pages and has more than several hundred edits.

LibreOffice has none of those problems. And you can download the complete 400-page+ manuals for free.

what is multi-file document? is it when one .docx contains links to other .docx files all put together?

I am still surprised MS office crashes with long documents since its "PRO" for work. I thought this is what they use to write books.

LibreOffice is a good free alternative to Office; I used to recommend it to people, especially those with kids going to college, as an alternative to spending money on Office since LO meets most basic needs just fine. Now that many schools include Office as part of a student's enrollment there's no compelling reason to use LO. The biggest issue I've seen is yu can never be 100% sure a file saved by LO will open exactly the same in Office; and since may professors require files to be submitted in .DOCX or .XLS format that can be an issue. Most of teh time they open just fine, but if you can get Offcie at no extra cost you might as well go with that.

In the corporate world, the risk is not worth the savings, IMHO. MS is not all that better at times, as files saved on the Mac can get mungled when opened in a PC, resulting in odd formatting, fonts, characters, etc.

However, for a home or casual user LO is a good alternative.

there is more than compatibility, Office 365 provides complete work environment like cloud storage, user management, teams, sites, outlook...etc etc. Its just a more "corporate" app than LibreOffice.

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

what is multi-file document? is it when one .docx contains links to other .docx files all put together?

I am still surprised MS office crashes with long documents since its "PRO" for work. I thought this is what they use to write books.

...

It's called a Master Document. It has links to all its sub-documents.
The feature was first developed by Word Perfect. MS put it into Word so they could say it had the same feature, but they never got it to work.

I spend some 20-odd years supporting, amongst other things, MS Word on Mac and Windows. I can assure you that if a document has many edits it can become very unstable, to the point of being unrecoverable. When working on a long document I would do a Save As to a different version number each day. This puts all the edits in order and makes the current file more stable.

Because of this, I did try MS Word's Master document feature because it would let me deal with smaller document files and found it a rapid path to madness.
Read this site -- https://addbalance.com/word/masterdocuments.htm

Master Documents work well in LibreOffice, so well that they develop and distribute their documentation in Master Document format.

 

[jlc1978]

I spend some 20-odd years supporting, amongst other things, MS Word on Mac and Windows. I can assure you that if a document has many edits it can become very unstable, to the point of being unrecoverable. When working on a long document I would do a Save As to a different version number each day. This puts all the edits in order and makes the current file more stable.

Saving documents with new version numbers after edits is a good practice, since it:

1. Allows you to more easily revert to a previous version if you mess something up
2. Lets people know changes have been made to a document
3. Not having multiple documents with the same file name but different content spread out amongst multiple users

Because of this, I did try MS Word's Master document feature because it would let me deal with smaller document files and found it a rapid path to madness.
Read this site -- https://addbalance.com/word/masterdocuments.htm.

Interestingly, the site you reference points out a number of situations where Master Document would be very useful.

From furher review it appears the main is is with the master document becoming corrupt and not the subdocuments; and that it is not a good tool for creating an ongoing master document that will be used over time.

I've found, when creating long documents with a lots of different formatting, graphics, etc. it is better to edit each section and when you have a final draft start assembling and distributing it as a pdf. That at least ensures everything looks right when opened by someone else.

 

[gregmac19]

...I spend some 20-odd years supporting, amongst other things, MS Word on Mac and Windows...

@DaveFromCampbelltown,

Do you have any experience with ONLYOFFICE? If so, how does it compare to MS Word and LibreOffice?

Thanks,

Greg

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

@DaveFromCampbelltown,

Do you have any experience with ONLYOFFICE? If so, how does it compare to MS Word and LibreOffice?

Thanks,

Greg

Simple answer, no. I haven't used it at all, so can't make any comment.

 

[gilby101]

Do you have any experience with ONLYOFFICE? If so, how does it compare to MS Word and LibreOffice?

ONLYOFFICE and LibreOffice have common origins. ONLYOFFICE's codebase seems to be completely separate from OpenOffice and LibreOffice. ONLYOFFICE's look and feel is much more polished (in my opinion) and more MS Office like than LibreOffice. But doesn't have all the functionality of LibreOffice (e.g. no database) and is not as compatible with MS Office.

 

[MacBH928]

It's called a Master Document. It has links to all its sub-documents.
The feature was first developed by Word Perfect. MS put it into Word so they could say it had the same feature, but they never got it to work.

I spend some 20-odd years supporting, amongst other things, MS Word on Mac and Windows. I can assure you that if a document has many edits it can become very unstable, to the point of being unrecoverable. When working on a long document I would do a Save As to a different version number each day. This puts all the edits in order and makes the current file more stable.

Because of this, I did try MS Word's Master document feature because it would let me deal with smaller document files and found it a rapid path to madness.
Read this site -- https://addbalance.com/word/masterdocuments.htm

Master Documents work well in LibreOffice, so well that they develop and distribute their documentation in Master Document format.

So does LibreOffice handle long documents better or handle master documents better?

Saving documents with new version numbers after edits is a good practice, since it:

1. Allows you to more easily revert to a previous version if you mess something up
2. Lets people know changes have been made to a document
3. Not having multiple documents with the same file name but different content spread out amongst multiple users

Isn't this already baked in Office file where you can forever reverse the edits? sounds like a mess having 100's of files of the same document with different version numbers?

ONLYOFFICE and LibreOffice have common origins. ONLYOFFICE's look and feel is much more polished (in my opinion) and more MS Office like than LibreOffice. But doesn't have all the functionality of LibreOffice (e.g. no database) and is not as compatible with MS Office.

so what is the argument to use OnlyOffice over LibreOffice?

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

So does LibreOffice handle long documents better or handle master documents better?



Isn't this already baked in Office file where you can forever reverse the edits? sounds like a mess having 100's of files of the same document with different version numbers?



so what is the argument to use OnlyOffice over LibreOffice?

LibreOffice handles long documents better than MS Office, and certainly does Master documents much, much better.

Once the MS Office file is corrupted, you can't access to reverse the edits. The only way is to go back to a separate physical file.

I think people are getting OnlyOffice confused with OpenOffice. OpenOffice and LibreOffice come from the same software roots, but LibreOffice is continually updated while OpenOffice hasn't been significantly updated in over 10 years. It also has problems opening .ODT files that have been saved with the latest version (7.6) of LibreOffice.
I don't think that OnlyOffice is related to Open/Libre-Office.

 

[jlc1978]

Isn't this already baked in Office file where you can forever reverse the edits?

Yes, but I am not sure how far back MS Office will restore files.

sounds like a mess having 100's of files of the same document with different version numbers?

Not really. An archive folder holds them; and it easily to find a specific revision date.

Once the MS Office file is corrupted, you can't access to reverse the edits. The only way is to go back to a separate physical file.

But that's only the master document; but I agree large files are problematic in Office. Office just can't always seem to keep all the file info stored in the document straight. My biggest gripe is how it messes up numbered or bulleted lists at times.

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

Yes, but I am not sure how far back MS Office will restore files.



Not really. An archive folder holds them; and it easily to find a specific revision date.



But that's only the master document; but I agree large files are problematic in Office. Office just can't always seem to keep all the file info stored in the document straight. My biggest gripe is how it messes up numbered or bulleted lists at times.

Respectfully, no. Any large MS Word document that becomes corrupted is totally unrecoverable, not just the master document in a multi-file document. That's why I use daily numbered versions when working on a large (> 100 page) document.

 

[jlc1978]

Respectfully, no. Any large MS Word document that becomes corrupted is totally unrecoverable, not just the master document in a multi-file document. That's why I use daily numbered versions when working on a large (> 100 page) document.

True, hich is my having backups is critical. I use QRecall to automatically save old versions when I open and close programs, not just Office, I use for work. Beyond Office's issues with large documents, a computer crash or power loss can cause problems as well.

But what I meant was multiple small documents that are assembled in a master are not what gets corrupted, it's a master document that is the problem, in my experience. YMMV.

I prefer Scrivner for assembling documents.

Office is also not real good at embedding Excel and PowerPoint graphs and slides; I've found links don't always get updated and formatted correctly.

 

[gilby101]

I think people are getting OnlyOffice confused with OpenOffice

That is politely put. I wasn't confused. I was wrong. On investigating more thoroughly, OnlyOffice seems to be a completely different code base. (I have correctly my earlier post)

 

[MacBH928]

LibreOffice handles long documents better than MS Office, and certainly does Master documents much, much better.

Once the MS Office file is corrupted, you can't access to reverse the edits. The only way is to go back to a separate physical file.

So what do you do when you need to share the .odt files? export it to .docx?

also I have no idea why openoffice still around, its like the old version of libreoffice.

Respectfully, no. Any large MS Word document that becomes corrupted is totally unrecoverable, not just the master document in a multi-file document. That's why I use daily numbered versions when working on a large (> 100 page) document.

still amazed that a "pro" app backed by trillion dollar company used by corporates will corrupt the file. I can't imagine the catastrophe when an important long document disappears into thin air.

I prefer Scrivner for assembling documents.

does it keep .docx formatting? once you assemble the document can you export to .docx file to share? or do you export to pdf?

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

So what do you do when you need to share the .odt files? export it to .docx?

also I have no idea why openoffice still around, its like the old version of libreoffice.


still amazed that a "pro" app backed by trillion dollar company used by corporates will corrupt the file. I can't imagine the catastrophe when an important long document disappears into thin air.



does it keep .docx formatting? once you assemble the document can you export to .docx file to share? or do you export to pdf?

Yes. Very simply, write it in .ODT, or Markdown, or LaTeX, or by hand, and have Google Docs convert it to text, and when you are finished, save as .DOCX. For extra compatibility, then open the .DOCX document in MS Word, and save as again, to get true Word compatibility.
If anything happens, you still have the .ODT source file and can can convert again, if necessary.

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

That is politely put. I wasn't confused. I was wrong. On investigating more thoroughly, OnlyOffice seems to be a completely different code base. (I have correctly my earlier post)

I was including myself, as I made the same mistake, looking at the OnlyOffice website when I meant to look at the OpenOffice website...