MS Office questions

Unfortunately, I'm an educator who has no choice but to create MS Office documents because our school division is Windows-only (surprise, surprise). I use school computers all the time to create files that I edit at home, and vice-versa. Therefore, I believe I'll need to get "Office for Mac" once I get my Power Mac just for compatability reasons.

However, I've read some rather vague posts, something about how you can edit and re-save MS Word and Excel documents in OS X, and I think AppleWorks (which won't be included with my Power Mac) is supposed to allow this. Some questions: Is this true? If so, can you only edit such files with this, or can you create and save them as well?

My MS Office needs will only require Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, plus perhaps Publisher and FrontPage on occasion. If I can avoid having to buy "Office for Mac", I will, but I get the feeling that I'll have to buy it anyhow - unless someone reading this can tell me how to avoid it. Please help!

I've never heard of being able to open word pages with appleworks...and by that I mean I've just tried it and it's won't work. You CAN, however, open it with "Text Edit." This is an ok program, but I don't think it can hold a candle (IMO) to apple works (or word, which I'm not too fond of).

You CAN open excel items with appleworks and that'll run fine.

There's pretty much no way to run PowerPoint on mac w/o the software. I think Office on mac, isn't bad. It's nice to have when you work with a lot of word files.

You can open and edit and export powerpoint documents with keynote and do the same with word documents with pages. You're out of luck as far as publisher goes - it doesn't come with office, and I haven't heard of any programs that will read publisher documents.

You could also get OpenOffice which is a free, open source alternative to MS office and that will read and write office files, although it is a little buggy and doesn't have quite the same amount of features.

With frontpage, you can't get a version for mac, but as long as you're exporting as HTML, most WYSIWYG web page applications will be able to work with those files (dreamweaver, golive etc...).

muso said:

You can open and edit and export powerpoint documents with keynote and do the same with word documents with pages. You're out of luck as far as publisher goes - it doesn't come with office, and I haven't heard of any programs that will read publisher documents.

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Ah, yes. I forget about keynote. I guess I don't think about it, 'cause I'm not hip and with the new software. hahahah. thanks.

OpenOffice might work, unless there are macros involved in MS OFfice. Even then, with MS OFfice, there are limitations on VBA code. You will have to check some of the code. And MS OFfice for Mac does not support ActiveX and Pivot Charts; there is some support for Pivot Tables.

So let's see if I've got it straight so far - correct me if I'm wrong:

• Word files can be created, edited, and exported using Pages. I can create one on a Mac, open and edit it, etc. on a PC, then do the same again on a Mac, and vice-versa.
• PowerPoint files can be created, edited, and exported using Keynote. I can create one on a Mac, open and edit it, etc. on a PC, then do the same again on a Mac, and vice-versa.

These two programs are part of iWork, but AppleWorks is also required so I can open Excel files. However, I can't create and export Excel files, am I correct? And if I can, I would have to get iWork AND AppleWorks in order to do all of the above.

At this point, "Office for Mac" seems like my only solution, although I really like what I read about Pages and Keynote - they seem like much better alternatives to their MS counterparts.

the Office for Mac is really great software. Download the 30 day trial from Microsoft to see what you think, I really like it. Worth the $150 I paid for the student addition. I still get frustrated with some layout stuff, but thats because i'm used to inDesign, but no, Office for Mac works incredibly well.

Some colleges have amazing partnerships with M$,too. Washington State University has one that allows me to get Office for Mac for around $50! Check into it, if you, or someone you know, is a university student.

I paid for the $240 upgrade (from Office 2001), and it has been worth it. I help consultants by testing VBA solutions on the Mac side, and while I am frustrated by MS's lack of complete support on the Mac side, I have been able to transfer files without problems (no Pivot Charts, no ActiveX, and limited Reference Library for VBA). But if those are adjusted appropriately the work is seamless.