Comments on: iWork vs Office: A Comparison

By: physiorol

physiorol — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 23:21:24 +0000

Anybody succesfully using the mail merge feature on iwork?

By: Ron

Ron — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:15:12 +0000

I have used Open Office, Zoho Writer, Google Docs and Mac Word in an attempt to create files that Windows users would be using. It did not take me long to run into problems with all of these, i.e., when the Windows user opens the doc, it is messed up somehow. Of course, the Mac user is always to blame for not using Windows.

Before I spend money on iWork, I would like to see a review that delves into the compatibility issue and shows iWork to be really compatible. Anyone seen such a review?

By: Johnson

Johnson — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 04:36:58 +0000

I am a big Office user and I am sorry to say that when it comes to Excel 2008, Microsoft totally messed with Mac users because they took out a lot of the features that where used with there reasoning that Mac users don’t need it. I am sorry but when I use my arrow keys I expect them to go to the next cell not scroll the page + who would ever need to use page break preview -not Mac user. It’s crap.

Plus if you are using Office 2008 for Mac you are most likely having to format to an older version because 80% of office users are running older versions. What’s the big deal it takes 2 seconds.

I have to say I love my Mac and will not go back to PC and if the iWork is as good as the rest of the package, why not.

By: Jovia

Jovia — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:57:22 +0000

I love the look of the Mac. I have a mac-based entertainment system, and my wife and I both have mac laptops. I have tried for a year now to only use iWork, even though I have Office 2008 installed. There have been a few hiccups along the way, trying to use iWork, and certainly some nice features of iWork (like quick and beautiful templates). However, I have finally decided to go back to Office. Here are my reasons:

1. For a quick document with some style, Office has a plethora of templates available to simply style the headers and paragraphs with something consistent. iWork only lets you choose a style if you tell it what type of document you want to create.

2. Who wants to worry about converting everything you email to people back and forth from iWork to Office? No matter how simple, it’s still annoying. The world uses Office, not iWork.

3. I tried creating a Christmas letter in iWork, couldn’t figure out how to add a page border, not even after searching for it in the help docs. Simple to do in Word. Even though I ended up ditching the page border idea, I realized that this is one more feature that Word adds that iWork must have thought was too un-Apple.

4. I think a lot of the bad press Office gets is because it is a Microsoft product. Look past the “Apple is Almighty” prejudice and realize that Office 2007(pc) and 2008(mac) are actually pretty sweet programs with a lot of built-in tools and attractive templates. Much better than previous versions.

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 01:50:52 +0000

@ Elizabeth, iWork does support .doc files so it would open up as if it was a Pages document, only thing is you may have some conflicts with fonts. Nothing serious enough to hinder you from getting your work done, I use it all the time and love it.

By: Diana

Diana — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:20:04 +0000

I was recently sold iWorks ‘09, thinking that it was Word, Powerpoint, and Excel; however, I was sadly mistaken when I discovered that it is a lot different. The main reason I need Word is for work, and when I tried opening my files that were originally on Word, they came up completely distorted. Therefore, if you have some Word documents that have a certain format now, I wouldn’t recommend switching over to iWorks unless you are okay with fixing your documents.

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:22:04 +0000

I am going to buy my first mac soon for grad school. I was debating buying office or not. I’m leaning against it now, but what happens if someone sends me a .doc or .xls? Do I need neooffice or openoffice? or is there a way to open a .doc/.xls/.ppt in iWork? thanks!

By: Hibachi

Hibachi — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:26:36 +0000

i just the new mac book pro on sunday and honestly the only really i got iworks is because best buy didn’t have office. and to be 100% i love it. at first i was like wtf is this i miss office but as soon as i gave it chance i started to truly enjoyed it. im not a pro at yet but i must admit i like and would recommend it to.

By: Ed Parry

Ed Parry — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:18:50 +0000

I’m fairly sure it is possible to mail merge in Pages (iWork). From the Insert menu, you would select Merge Field. Then you can set up on the page where you want specific elements to be, and instruct what database/spreadsheet/address book to find the data.

By: William Stratton

William Stratton — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:08:26 +0000

Try doing a mail merge (label printing for a large database) using iWork!!!!! Hmmmm…it isn’t possible?