M.S. office 2004 replacement for Mac.

Is there a free replacement for office 2004. I know that they have free programs for the pc the work just like office, are there any for Mac.

If there are do they include a replacement for excel as well. I have something that wants to load and run in excel but since I dont have it I cant do anything at all with the Doc.

So what I am looking for is a free program that has a word pros., Spreadsheets and will also let me work with excel stuff. Is there something out there or am I gonna have to spend a bunch of cash on the Office 2004.

Yes, there are. I have recently been deciding whether to borrow office or go with some freeware. Openoffice.org has two great options. Open Office X11 is an office suite that can save files to be used in word excel and powerpoint. The other version is called NeoOffice/J. It is more mac friendly and user friendly. It can also save the .doc , .xcl , and .ppt files used in MS word, excel and powerpoint. If i download one i'm probably going to get neooffice since it runs more like a mac program.

Thanks allot.

I just downloaded the neooffice and the patch they reccomended. It does everything I needed. It does run a little slow but it does work really well. Thanks for the help.

glad i could help

Does these programs have anything similar to the Office "notebook view"?

I haven't used it yet, but I'll be getting an iBook very shortly, and I watched the demo from the MS Office 2004 for macs site, and I found it very convenient.

What do you mean by notebook veiw...then i might be able to help. Besides that...neooffice/j has all of the features of ms office and more. It acts more like a mac program and automaticaally spell checks for other languages.

J-Money said:

Does these programs have anything similar to the Office "notebook view"?

I haven't used it yet, but I'll be getting an iBook very shortly, and I watched the demo from the MS Office 2004 for macs site, and I found it very convenient.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure about the other programs, but I have just started using this in class and it is truly great for taking notes, ect. It will even do a voice record that intigrates into the notes as you type.

If you are using this for school you could look at apple.com. They have the student and teacher edition for 100 after rebate. I'm not even sure if that is with an education discount.

UncSki1218 said:

Yes, there are. I have recently been deciding whether to borrow office or go with some freeware. Openoffice.org has two great options. Open Office X11 is an office suite that can save files to be used in word excel and powerpoint. The other version is called NeoOffice/J. It is more mac friendly and user friendly. It can also save the .doc , .xcl , and .ppt files used in MS word, excel and powerpoint. If i download one i'm probably going to get neooffice since it runs more like a mac program.

Click to expand...

OpenOffice/NeoOffice is not freeware. Freeware means "free as in beer" while Open Source means "free as in speech". There's a big difference.

Open Source means you are freely able to distribute, modify, and copy said software until your hearts content. Freeware is usually commercially developed software for which you can't modify it, nor view the source code.

I personally use NeoOffice on my Mac, not only because (in my opinion) it is a better product than Microsoft Office, but I like to support the Open Source communities as much as I can.

Wow, that's a good price after rebate.

To see the "Notebook view" feature, watch the demo on this link:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/default.aspx?pid=office2004demo

Click on "Launch Demo," then when the new window pops-up, select "Create."

Seems really convenient, as the other person noted. Audio will help greatly during university lectures.

BTW mblphnlvr, have you used the audio feature often enough to give it good feedback? What do you use to record it? How does it sound afterwards when you play it back (not loud enough, too much ambient sound?, etc).

I am currently using the audio record feature for my summer classes.

First off, I am really surprised at the compression on the audio. After about 2 hours it comes out at about 7mb. That really shocked me.

Another thing that I like about it is that every time you do a return it automatically makes a place marker in the audio. Then once you are done recording, you can put your mouse over to the left margin and play the section of audio that goes along with the notes. (It's kinda hard to explain.)

The audio works surprisingly well as it doesn't get much noise from typing etc, my only problem is that I'm in a small class and sometimes my teacher talks too quietly. However, she can still be heard, but you will also hear more background as well. And the audio record program does show you the input levels as it is recording so that you can adjust the recording volumes accordingly.

Overall, I find it very useful. Even if you don't really get much use out of the recorder, the notebook is much easier to use for notes than the conventional document.