iWork or Office?

Im currently using Office 2008 on my MBP.

Truth is, I rarely use it. Only use Word occasionally.

However, we use office at work all the time on the Windows platform, so need compatibility etc just in case.

Im thinking of getting iWork instead - just seems less clunky etc, and would run better then Office I assume?

What are he main drawbacks of going to iWork over Office, and will I still be able to open Office formatted files, and also save in the Office .doc or .docx formats??

 

Office 2011 is nice!

 

I didnt realise it had been released yet!
Will take a look!

 

On another note - whats the difference between Office Home and Student, and Office Home and Business??

Ignore me - Business has Outlook!!

What's outlook like? I know how to use it, but what's it like in relation to imail? Is it large and clunky etc?

 

There are compatibility issues between iWork and MS Office. Most of the times its just a font that isn't on one or the other but I did make an excel file with pull downs that doesn't "work" in iWork. That being said, I still prefer iWork.

 

In the professional world and academically iWork is inferior. I used to have iWork 09' and Office 2008, but I always used Office more because the .doc/x extension is very common.

PC's are still dominant, and if you use iWork you will have to convert the file format to .rtf for someone to read it, and if you aligned stuff and changed fonts then it just doesn't matter. I would just get Office 2011 and be done with it. I'm expecting my copy in the mail sometime this week. I'm super psyched because it finally includes OUTLOOK!

 

People tell me Office 2011 is _very_ nice and iWork just doesn't match it.

 

IMO iworks sucks, if your in school, Office is the way to go, Word doesnt always open pages. and most schools have office.

 

Pages is extremely nice to use... and if your going to not be sharing files with Windows users, its great for everything... or if your only sharing .pdf files.

If you want to export to MS Office documents, then you need to keep them simple. If you use a buncha weird formatting or fonts or tables, the format gets messed up easily.

 

^ correct if your planning on not sharing the documents with office then its ok. it was a bit hard to get used to at first tho.

 

Looks like I'll be getting Office 2011 instead.
Dont think I will pay all the extra for the business version, which includes Outlook, though. I only use my mail client (iMail) to do basic stuff like send and receive mail, and tend to use my iPad more for calendars etc, which sync to iCal on my MBP as a backup.

Hence the Home and Student edition should be fine for me......just waiting for it to release now.....

 

No harder to get used to than the ribbon in Office.

Personally for novice users iWork is easier to learn. My father tried for weeks to create a formula for an Excel file and asked friends with years of experience with no luck. Within a couple of minutes using Numbers I was able to create a formula and send it to him in an email that worked perfectly. I've gotten better with Excel over the last year or so but find I can work much faster in Numbers. It all depends on your experience level, what you need to do and who you need to be able to share it with. For many people the best choice is Office simply for compatibility with the rest of the world.

 

Ive only ever really worked with Office, and the compatibility is nice should I ever need it etc.
May go for Pages on the iPad instead.

 

When I had the iPad I used Pages moderately.

I just got Office 2011 in the mail and man this product is great.

 

Office has always worked for me. I just wish that Office 2011 was identical to Office 2010 in layout.

If I feel that I need to start using Office extensively ... I will install Parallels 5 just to use Office 2010.

iWorks is pretty alright, but I've just been using Office much longer and don't have a reason to change that.

 

Yeah, I do agree that between two different operating systems they still should make the software consistent.. like Adobe suites; Adobe on mac is same as PC

 

I was really excited about Office 2011, especially Outlook, which I've been using for the past 3 days but I have to say I'm not totally impressed.

First, 2011 is better than Office 2008 in almost every way especially performance. It's very snappy now. I've only briefly played around with Word, Excel and PowerPoint so I can't say too much. The ribbon is almost the same as Office 2010 for windows (which I also use frequently). Word templates are very extensive and quite appealing.

For me it was Outlook that I was looking forward to the most as I hated Entourage in 2008. It is good but I still see shortcomings (major ones for me personally) compared to Outlook 2010 (windows). For one, there just isn't any way to sync my Google Calendar with Outlook which is very important for me. It's so easy to do that with iCal yet the almighty Outlook just isn't equipped for such a task - very disappointing.

I'm not sure if I can blame MSFT or Google for this, as I don't know who gets the credit for making it so effortless between iCal and Gmail (is it Google or Apple that made it work?), I just wish MSFT and/or Google had put in the effort on this one.

Also missing is the ability to subscribe to Online Calendars which is surprising. I do have to mention though that Outlook does have Sync Services which I'm not entirely sure what it's syncing but it did manage to port all my Mail and Address Book items on first startup - nothing from iCal though. EDIT: Just noticed that Sync Services appear to be for Contacts only, nothing else.

Second, one of the things I use often in Outlook 2010 is Read and Delivery Receipts and it doesn't look like Outlook 2011 has it. If anyone knows otherwise please post here as I've searched high and low for the past two days with no luck.

The combination of Mail, Address Book and iCal are still better for my uses than Outlook 2011 which is the most disappointing thing about Office 2011 - I really thought MSFT would nail this one this time around.

I wish I had opted for the cheaper version that excludes Outlook. Having said all that, Word, Excel and PowerPoint seem to work great and fast. I tried a few large .docx documents, with and without Macros enabled, and they all opened fine with zero issues.

IMO, those who are using Office 2008 will really like 2011 - it's a worthy update. But for those who have made the switch to Mail, iCal and iWork you should think twice before buying, especially if absolute/flawless Office document compatibility isn't a top priority.

 

Excellent thanks for that ATC.
Im buying the version without Outlook as Mail works fine for me.

Just waiting for it to be released so I can pick it up!

What were you using before, and why do you feel this one is so much better?

 

I had Office 2008 on my Mac, but I just recently purchased a new Mac and for the last 2 weeks I was using Office 2010 on my DELL which boots so fast. I hated Office 2008 how long it took to start up, even with a SSD it took forever. I do not like using iMail with my university email it is incredibly buggy for some reason and does not download all my messages... Outlook never has a problem for that. I hated Entourage - You could not use Hotmail with it which was a double minus for me. Word, PowerPoint, and Excel can't get much better, but adding Outlook just made me preorder this product last week.

FYI, I did not spend the retail $499 for this. I bought it for $99.00. And yes, it included Outlook.

If you are a student in higher education.

JourneyEd.com - Academic Software Discounts!

 

How much faster is Office 2011 booting compared to 2008? Cause it usually likes a while...

 

Office 2011 is very fast, sir. and pretty stable. MS did a very good job with this release. Upgrade with confidence.

 

Thanks so much for this!
I'm going to return the full priced version I purchased once it arrives.
Just got my neice to get me the academic version for MUCH less!
Although it comes with Outlook, I just want a simple email client to send and receive emails. Apple Mail fits the bill better for me, so im not going to bother installing or using Outlook. But I've installed the other apps and wow, do they open fast or what!
MUCH better then Office 2008. It looks like the full on Windows version now. Very happy with it indeed!

 

funny.. iWork will be in the Mac App store.

MS Office 2011 will not be there unless MS makes a specialized version to sell there.... mainly no Mac App store programs can use any type of serial numbers or activation, and cannot have any type of built in updates.

 

Same here, Mail/iCal combo works better than Outlook for me so I've already uninstalled and then ran a Custom Install of Office 2011 (without Outlook and a few other things that I don't need), essentially only installing Word, Excel and PP along with Messenger and the Office Fonts package. They're running great.

Only thing I wish for is if there was somehow a way to remember window placement/location on launch. For example, every time I start Word it's always positioned up against the far left edge of the screen but I like it centred. It doesn't seem to want to remember where the window was last placed. Oh well.

 

Ever since installing Office 2011 whenever I use any of the Office applications, upon logging out and then back in there is a Recovered File in trash (wkresources). Anyone else experience this?

A few topics on the subject just started surfacing on both Apple's support forums ( Link) and MSFT's own Office for Mac forums ( Link) but no resolution. It's very annoying.

 

I've not noticed that. but I also don't ever log off.

 

Yes I get this as well. I have to clear the trash every time I log in or start up!

 

+1 for Office 2011 - although I find the ribbon too busy.

 

Personally I was unimpressed by iWork. I like the free Openoffice.org better than iWork both in terms of interface/features and compatibility, and would probably have a copy of that plus Office 2011...not that I'd mind trying out the newest version of iWork too.

 

Office 2011 is pretty great, though all the icons and stuff drive me crazy. It doesn't look nearly as bad in 2010 on Windows imo.

 

Outlook 2011 seems to be having issues syncing with iPhone on the Calendar side.

The problem is because Outlook will sync to iCal and Address Book, THEN the iPhone will sync to iCal and Address Book. See the problem here? I deleted Outlook 2011 from my MBA.

 

Exactly why I didnt bother with outlook. Im fine with Apple Mail TBH, and everything works with my iPhone and iPad fine.

 

The fact that MS didn't release Outlook with the sync service functioning and enabled is moronic. Apparently this functionality will be added in a future service pack or patch. I've got both 2008 and 2011 installed - solely for the purpose of using Entourage from 2008 and Word, Excel, and Powepoint from 2011. The new messenger is nice too.