New MAC User

HairyHaggis · Apr 26, 2011

hey all you mac users

A Scotsman walked into a local outlet and ended up befriending an Apple rep .... and after an hour was partially convinced to move to mac from pc.

About 3 weeks passed, and after much balancing on the fence, and a stumble into some cash from a redundancy, i took the plunge and I am now typing away on my new MBP .... a little lost with it all but getting there.

Main concerns I need help and advice on !

1) Un-installing programs. I have installed or tried to a few times some things and in the applications folder it is now looking messy after only a week !! Any simple way to tidy up and make sure no remnants of what I dont want is still on the machine - a firm pet hate of my windows experiences.

2) The @ symbol is in the wrong place !! lol

3) Office 2011 - I am happy with mail, but an avid fan of outlook - is there an alternative or a freebie. I use a lot of word docs, and been reading that they dont go back from mac to pc very well ... concerned, I dont mind buying it but feel going to mac is a statement against microshaft more than a new affiliation to Apple.

4) Making new folders for files etc? I need to copy files from an external drive to a new folder within the mac for editting in Lightroom, but i find navigating in Finder difficult. Am I doing it wrong? In windows a couple double clicks to a folder on a drive and then copy / paste job done .... whats the best way in mac world to do this?

Thats all I have for now....

I have a MBP372B/A machine as my first mac ..... but loving the way it works .. FAST infact even looking at a larger base style mac for the photo studio.
O:)

BrianLachoreVPI · Apr 26, 2011

Welcome. I was looking for the punchline after reading the intro - but you left me hanging.

1. To uninstall programs simply drag them to the trashcan, unless the application actually has an uninstaller - in which case use that. You can also use programs like AppCleaner or AppZapper - The uninstaller Apple forgot. to ensure you've removed all the associated files.

2. Sorry

3. There are a couple of free alternatives to Office that get recommended often here LibreOffice or NeoOffice but don't let your switch to Mac prevent you from using what is a very good set of software - Office for Mac 2011.

4. It's not much different than Windows - just right click or click with 2 fingers on the track pad - and you'll see the New Folder option. If you want to move up a level in your file directory - just use a three finger swipe to the left.

Congrats on your new machine!

harryb2448 · Apr 26, 2011

G'day Haggis and welcome to the forums.

Here is the punch line Brian ~ never, ever, ever, trust a man in a skirt!

Go with Office 2011 it is a fast and rock steady program.

chas_m · Apr 26, 2011

Read the essay in my signature.

PS. The idea that Word (Excel, PP) documents don't travel well from Mac to PC (or vice versa) is an old myth. They travel fine.

macrostheblack · Apr 26, 2011

harryb2448 said:
G'day Haggis and welcome to the forums.

Here is the punch line Brian ~ never, ever, ever, trust a man in a skirt!

Go with Office 2011 it is a fast and rock steady program.

Hey now its a kilt.

jjq224 · Apr 27, 2011

Just my two cents - OpenOffice works wonderfully on the Mac.

As Brian said, "4. It's not much different than Windows - just right click or click with 2 fingers on the track pad - and you'll see the New Folder option. If you want to move up a level in your file directory - just use a three finger swipe to the left." The only thing is to make sure you have the mouse set to use a "right click".

Click the Apple -> System Preferences -> Mouse. Then click the box for Secondary Click.

Then you can right click to create folders. And FYI - drag and drop folders works wonderfully as well.

Enjoy

Deckyon · Apr 27, 2011

Gah, I miss Scotland...

Office:mac 2011 is great and I have had no issues dealing with others on their Win7 w/ Office 2010. As to the free clients for office, they will not convert every Word or Excel doc 100%. There are functions and features not available outside Word and Excel. And Outlook 2011 is sheer beauty - I love it. Of course, I connect to a full Exchange server, but it is so nice to have a great and full-featured email/calendar/contact management client without having to use 3 different programs.

The keyboard has been driving me nuts as well. I am so used to the Home, End, Page Up and Page Down keys that not having them (dont know the shortcuts yet) is crazy. Gonna take some getting used to.

wolfpuppies3 · Apr 27, 2011

I use Pages

with absolutely no transportability problems either way. The same is true with Numbers.

Originally, I used BootCamp and installed a Windows 7 partition then loaded MS Office Professional for Windows. That was absolutely unnecessary in my experience and I ended up uninstalling both the Bootcamp partition and Office to reclaim valuable and needed disk space on my MacBook Pro.

Mini_mi · Apr 27, 2011

+1 for Office 2011. It's very slick and all docs are fully compatible with the Windows versions.

txtchr · Apr 27, 2011

Agree about Office 11. Documents transfer easily between Windows and Mac without any effort, and all of my saved '03 documents (.xls, .doc) that were originally created on a Windows system open without any issues on my MBP.

The full edition of Office 11 is not that pricey, considering what I used to pay years back for Office Pro for Windows. If you want it even cheaper, find a college student who can help you out and go to the college bookstore and buy it for you. There you can get the full edition (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook) for under $35. Now, that's a deal!

Kinnie · Apr 27, 2011

Or the Windows home user program benefits. $10 for the full edition. Thankyou boss.

EvenStranger · Apr 28, 2011

macrostheblack said:
Hey now its a kilt.

You know why they call 'em "kilts?" 'Cause the last man to call it a skirt got kilt!

HairyHaggis · Apr 28, 2011

Thanks all for the replies, am off to go grab a copy of office 2011. Now if only sage would get their finger out their behinds i wouldn't need windows at all !!!!!

ryebread761 · Apr 28, 2011

HairyHaggis said:
hey all you mac users

A Scotsman walked into a local outlet and ended up befriending an Apple rep .... and after an hour was partially convinced to move to mac from pc.

About 3 weeks passed, and after much balancing on the fence, and a stumble into some cash from a redundancy, i took the plunge and I am now typing away on my new MBP .... a little lost with it all but getting there.

Main concerns I need help and advice on !

1) Un-installing programs. I have installed or tried to a few times some things and in the applications folder it is now looking messy after only a week !! Any simple way to tidy up and make sure no remnants of what I dont want is still on the machine - a firm pet hate of my windows experiences.

2) The @ symbol is in the wrong place !! lol

3) Office 2011 - I am happy with mail, but an avid fan of outlook - is there an alternative or a freebie. I use a lot of word docs, and been reading that they dont go back from mac to pc very well ... concerned, I dont mind buying it but feel going to mac is a statement against microshaft more than a new affiliation to Apple.

4) Making new folders for files etc? I need to copy files from an external drive to a new folder within the mac for editting in Lightroom, but i find navigating in Finder difficult. Am I doing it wrong? In windows a couple double clicks to a folder on a drive and then copy / paste job done .... whats the best way in mac world to do this?

Thats all I have for now....

I have a MBP372B/A machine as my first mac ..... but loving the way it works .. FAST infact even looking at a larger base style mac for the photo studio.

As for Uninstalling use Appcleaner.

Spiderpig · Apr 29, 2011

Kinnie said:
Or the Windows home user program benefits. $10 for the full edition. Thankyou boss.

+1

I wish I had just went with this before buying iwork preinstalled. In my mindset I wanted nothing to do with Microsoft anymore. However I played with a friends office for mac and regretted my choice. Iwork is nice if you don't have the HUP available but I didn't like how it worked.

Live and learn I guess. I am not saying Iwork is garbage, just that I like office for mac much better.

Young Spade · Apr 29, 2011

If you're uninstalling programs, I highly suggest the free application AppCleaner. When you delete an application, the application goes to the trash but the associated files and settings don't go with it. If you don't uninstall the program (and that uninstall removes all associated files), you're going to have a big chunk of unused settings after a while.

The appcleaner application will search for all associated files and within 3 clicks you can have the program uninstalled and the files removed. I can spot light it, click the tab, scroll to the app, and have it and all associated files deleted within 15 seconds.

For moving around in finder, coming from Windows it took a little getting used to; I found that it's easier to do things with the more windows you have open, rather than trying to move things through folders themselves. If you don't have spaces set up, set up spaces and go to a clean desktop, open all of the folders that you're going to need and move files between them. It gets a little weird since you don't have cut and paste, however dragging between open folders works just fine.

New MAC User

HairyHaggis

BrianLachoreVPI

harryb2448

chas_m

Guest

macrostheblack

jjq224

Deckyon

wolfpuppies3

Mini_mi

txtchr

Kinnie

EvenStranger

HairyHaggis

ryebread761

Spiderpig

Young Spade

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