Q: New to mac....

so use word on mac you need to buy ms office for mac

to read and write word documents on mac you just need a program which read and write word format documents

You have 90 days of free telephone support from Apple and they can assist you doing that task. You can locate the phone number by clicking the AppleCare Contact Info.

There are many methods available to you  including using Migration Assistant, moving the documents from you PC to an external HD and then connecting the EHD to your iMac and dragging from teh EHD to the iMac. AppleCare can help with any of these methods.

There may be some useful info within the following links:

just have to bring in everything and leave it for a few days or so, could be worth the one on one service to have them set me up and show me some basics of how things work.

The AS will do everything for you during the one on one workshop.  It's all free!  You can either walk in or call to set up an appointment.

In the meantime, check out the following:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2477  Mac Basics: The essentials

New to Macs/My First Mac

You can use LibreOffice or Apple Pages with Word documents. There could be compatibility problems, that depends on how complex you files are. Only answer is to try them, LibreOffice is free, I think The cost of Pages is much less than MS Office.

LibreOffice

https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/installation/mac/

I would vote for that direction. If she must use all those templates and so forth. Then if she's comfortable with it, she can jump on using the Mac OS for everything else!