10-31-2007, 11:47 AM

I was up to the apple store again the other day, and the guy explaining things to me on the iMac 24" was telling me that iWorks would be a smart buy rather than MS Office. My primary use of MS products include Word, PowerPoint, and Visio. I'm far more concerned about Word and PowerPoint than I am with Visio because I can always run it in MS/PC mode.

But what the guy said was that iWorks presentation component can be saved as a PowerPoint file, opened on any PC with MS Office, and played just like it was a PP file. He said the same is true of MS Word... you can open any word document with iWorks, create a new document and save it as a MS Word Document, and it can be emailed to anyone with a PC and opened in MS Office/Word. I seldom if ever use Excel, so no concern there.

Can anyone confirm that with iWorks you can create 100% compatible PowerPoint and Word documents that can be opened, possibly edited, and saved in MS Office?

Thanks in advance for the help.

Doc

10-31-2007, 11:53 AM

iWork can import and export Office files, but as with any program that is importing and exporting files that aren't native to it, there is a chance for some incompatibility...if you need to work exclusively with Office files, why would you risk that? Why not buy Office?

10-31-2007, 11:57 AM

Pages is not 100% compatible with Word and Keynote is definately not 100% compatible with Powerpoint.

It's a question of degree though. For 99% of people, the differences are small enough to not matter. But if you're in a professional environment, use PPT and advanced word documents every day, then Office 2004 (and soon Office 2008) would be a better buy.

Keynote can mess with font sizes, spacing and other formatting. When you've spend endless hours getting that presentation 'just right', it's not worth the risk. Powerpoint is sensitive to this - things like bullet sizes and colours get corrupted.

Pages is a really nice program, but does lack some features, like automated numbered headings for example (it will import them, but messes them up when you update the fields on the content page). It sometimes messes up footers and headers too. This would not affect most users, but again if you're using these apps as a professional, stick to Office.

10-31-2007, 01:00 PM

Heck, Word is not 100% compatible with Word.

But if you'll be exchanging documents with Office users on a regular basis, it's best to have Office.

Incidentally, check out OmniGraffle as a potential Viso replacement.

10-31-2007, 01:05 PM

Originally Posted by technologist

Heck, Word is not 100% compatible with Word.

.

Heh, that's so true. Powerpoint is even worse... Office XP and Office 2007 Powerpoint versions, really mess up bullet point sizes for some reason.