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Saving as .doc, put back the Save as option

As much as I appreciate and want to love Pages, I don't want to use it because I have to keep a Pages version and a .doc version of my files. If I edit one, I have to export it again to a .doc. I'm managing two sets of files. It's just a mess.


I'm sorry that I have to share files with other people. But it just so happens that the other 10 billions people in the world are using MS Word.


Please, please, please, give us the option to save as a .doc by DEFAULT so that we don't have to export documents to .doc files to share them.


Please, please, please, put back the Save As option!


Thanks!

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9), 8GB RAM

Posted on Nov 6, 2013 11:05 PM

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19 replies

Nov 7, 2013 1:18 PM in response to Hagrid@Hogwarts

There are many options available that will let you save as .doc or .docx by default. If you don't want to use Word, consider LibreOffice, Open Office, NeoOffice, etc.


Pages is not one of them. Exporting from Pages is a better description of what happens as the Pages file is converted as best as it can to Word format. You should alwasy save a copy a the native Pages format in case something does go awry.


User uploaded file

Nov 8, 2013 9:16 AM in response to Michael Black

I do appreciate all the comments. I know that the people on this site are users just like me. I know there are other solutions if I want to save to a doc file (Word compatible format). But Apple now is basically giving away Pages--doen't that say something about the program. Apple is not giving Pages away because they are nice people, they are giving it away becasue they can't sell it.


The only reason I don't want to use Pages is because it's not compatible by default with MS Word. Someone should get a clue! Apple, that is you.


Please allow me to remind Apple and those users who have not been using Apple products since the mid 80s. Apple built their produces to simply work and be compatible with the other platform. Not export and save two file compatible--I'm talking seemless compatiblity. That's what made Apple great. Us Mac user use to sit around and giggle at the silly DOS/Windows users becasue nothing was user friendly on those systems.


Back to my original post; I don't want to save two copies of every file that I create with Pages. I want an option to save my Pages file in a Word compatible format by default.


I do hope someone at Apple reads this post--or have they forgotten how to read too!


PS. Just poking fun at Apple, which I love...

Nov 8, 2013 9:40 AM in response to Hagrid@Hogwarts

I guess it depends on your user perspective. I too have used Apple (and DOS, Windows, various UNIX's) since the early 1980's, and I've never found much of anything in the arena of office-suite programs to work seemlessly across platforms.


For the kind of Word and Excel files I work with at my employment, nothing made by Apple has ever been a true alternative - certainly never Pages or Numbers. They simple lack compatibility with the more complex features of MS Office files and always have in my experience. For my uses, there is no substiture for MS Office, not even the free alternatives like OpenOffice are fully 100% cross compatible (excel more so than word arguably).


MS makes their apps deliberately difficult to be cross-compatible with, and other commercial vendors would prefer you use their formats and products for everything so they gain market share for their products.


So from my experience, I stand by the advice I gave - if you have to work regularly with MS Office documents, then get MS Office - nothing else will ever likely 100% satisfy, or at least some minor frustrations will continually come up.

Nov 8, 2013 9:58 AM in response to Hagrid@Hogwarts

Not true Hagrid


Pages was always the second or third highest selling App in the App store.


There must be millions of Apple customers who bought it before Apple decided to downgrade it and make it free.


Apple is just doing what it does everytime it runs short on innovation, it changes the color of something or tosses in some "New", "Free" bonus.


Unfortunately, having nothing better to do they decided to fiddle with something that wasn't broke.


Peter


btw I agree with the previous post, if you have to work in Word, use Word, not a substitute.

Mar 30, 2014 8:26 AM in response to Hagrid@Hogwarts

I have found no way to save a document written in Pages 5.x in .doc format. In Pages 09, this was possible by selecting File/option, Save-As, .doc.


However, documents composed with Pages 5.x (including inserts, .jpgs, etc) can be saved as .pdf, by selecting File-Export_PDF. That's the good news. The bad news: if you want to convert the .pdf into .doc, you have to buy a monthly service from Adobe, starting at $1.99/week, and going up from there.

Mar 30, 2014 10:49 AM in response to wolfromon

wolfromon wrote:


I have found no way to save a document written in Pages 5.x in .doc format. In Pages 09, this was possible by selecting File/option, Save-As, .doc.


No it wasn't. It was Save a Copy as…


However, documents composed with Pages 5.x (including inserts, .jpgs, etc) can be saved as .pdf, by selecting File-Export_PDF. That's the good news. The bad news: if you want to convert the .pdf into .doc, you have to buy a monthly service from Adobe, starting at $1.99/week, and going up from there.


How on earth can you go to File > Export and not see Word as an option?


Peter

Aug 10, 2014 10:02 AM in response to Hagrid@Hogwarts

I totally agree with Hagrid@Hogwartz


The iWork suite has always been best. Office is heavy and uneasy. But iWork stays at home. And the big guys use O365 at work.


So what a lot want is to use iWork also in theire enterprises, on the Mac we have there. All the docs we send has to be in a Office-fomat. Yes we already have the super-expencive Office 365 but all of my Mac-user-colleguas really want to default-save their iWork docs in Office-format. Since there is an export, there should be easy for super-easy Apple to make an Save As Default to Office-format option.


This will be an opening for all those small businesses that wants to get rid of O365 (and for all those that sells Mac-systems to enterprises that are switching from Windows)!

Saving as .doc, put back the Save as option

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