How do I save a excel file to be compatible...

You don't have to save an Excel file by a different way, because a Mac can read Excel files without any problem, but you need a productivity suite that can read them. These are the most important suites:

1. Microsoft Office for Mac. The Microsoft Office version for Mac, that provides a full compatibility with Office for Windows files > http://www.microsoft.com/mac

2. Apple iWork. This is the Apple's productivity suite, that can read Office files and create Office files, but you can't modify them > http://www.apple.com/iwork

3. LibreOffice. This is an open-source, free productivity suite, and it should be the first you try to test > http://www.libreoffice.org

A productivity suite are some utilities (like Word, PowerPoint and Excel) in one package. The most famous productivity suite is Microsoft Office.

LibreOffice is just the same as Microsoft Office but with different applications and different type of files, but it can read Office files (Excel files, too) without any problem, so what you said is correct

Hi juicebars,

iWork is a productivity suite for Macs running OS or iThings running iOS. With a MacBook Pro you will need the OS version.

iWork consists of:

Pages, a word processor and page layout app (page layout mimics a drawing app). Pages can import Microsoft Word documents and you can edit and save them. Also Export as MS Word, PDF, plain text, RTF or ePub.

Numbers, a spreadsheet app that mimics a database. Numbers can import Microsoft Excel or CSV documents and you can edit and save them. Also Export as MS Excel, CSV or PDF.

Keynote, a presentation app. Keynote can open Microsoft Powerpoint. I don't use Keynote, so I can say no more.

You can buy the iWork suite from the App Store, or buy Pages, Numbers and Keynote separately.

There are some minor conversion glitches when converting between MS Office and iWork. If you are continually converting, it is best to buy Office or LibreOffice for Mac.

iWork does not take kindly to huge documents.

However, I find that Numbers and Pages for Mac OS to have a sweetly intuitive way of doing what I want.

Regards,

Ian.

Excel files do not need any converting — you can open them using Numbers.

If you want a project done in Numbers to be compatible with Excel — do File - Save As... in Numbers, then in file type select .xls