Office 2019 vs Pages / Numbers etc

[cming]

So, one of the first things i did when i got my mac last week was to install Office 2019. I am not intending to do much work 'stuff' on my mac but when i rebuild / reinstall Windows putting office on is kinda high of the todo list - so that's what i did with the mac.

I've not played around or even installed Pages and Numbers but reading around the forum i get the feeling that a lot of folks use these over Office - i think some of that may be a licensing / cost thing...Apart from the licensing are there any other benefits of using Pages / Numbers over Office?

Anyone have any experience of moving away from Office onto these apps - good, bad, benefits etc?

Thanks in advance...

 

[toMACsh]

Up to this point, updates to Pages and Numbers, and upgrades, come along with the OS, at no cost. You can't say that about Office. In fact MS wants you to buy it by subscription!

 

[Sawday]

In my experience Pages is fine. as a stand alone product. However, the instant you want to send/receive document to MS Word that include logos, formatted text (esp labels) it all falls apart. You could take a look at the free Open Office which interacts with Word better, but not perfectly.

 

[toMACsh]

Is Open Office still out there? I know that Libre Office, also free, is still going.

 

[chscag]

Yes, Open Office is still available along with Libre Office. I personally dislike both of them even though they are free Office Suites. Pages, Keynote, and to a lesser extent, Numbers work well as long as you do not have to exchange documents with others. In the real world, MS Office is the de facto standard for business, education, legal, US government, and most State and Local governments.

 

[IWT]

Yes, Open Office is still available along with Libre Office. I personally dislike both of them even though they are free Office Suites. Pages, Keynote, and to a lesser extent, Numbers work well as long as you do not have to exchange documents with others. In the real world, MS Office is the de facto standard for business, education, legal, US government, and most State and Local governments.

Hear, hear. I’m afraid that’s the way it is. Basic, uncomplicated things can be done on the Mac - in fact, I’m being unfair; the Mac’s app equivalents are capable of the most complex computations. It’s the sharing of these with the rest of the world that creates the problem, just as our Admin chscag says.

So by one means or another, a lot of people will have to acquire Microsoft Office. That’s life I’m afraid.

Ian

 

[usagora]

Up to this point, updates to Pages and Numbers, and upgrades, come along with the OS, at no cost. You can't say that about Office. In fact MS wants you to buy it by subscription!

$99/year gets you all the latest updates to each program (and some exclusive features only for Office 365 subscribers), up to 6 users, and also 1TB of cloud storage on OneDrive for each user. Pretty good deal if you ask me. I use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint ALL the time. You can also do $69.99/year and get all that for 1 user instead of 6. The only complaint I have is that PowerPoint has some small bugs with animation settings that have gone unfixed after multiple reports and more than a year, but I can live with that.

 

[RobNJ]

I am currently getting Office 365, along with my 1TB os storage from MS One Drive.