How compatible is Pages documents with MS Word documents?

Question

Level 1

13 points

How compatible is Pages documents with MS Word documents?

Having upgraded to Lion over Christmas, my installation of MacOffice is now deceased. Something I wasn't told about when the Guru at the Apple shop did the upgrade. So now I'm either going to put the MacBook in the corner and use it as a desk ornament or buy iWork or Pages and Numbers. Here is the rub, the guru told me 10.7 (Lion) couldn't run the newer products I would need to have Maverick installed, but that as I had an older MBP Maverick wouldn't install!

My MBP has an intel Core 2 Duo with 3GB of Ram. Beofe I persue this aspect a more fundamental question is can the new prodcuts Pages and Numbers read and write MS Word dcouments.

Unless they can do this there is little use progressing the upgrade path.

MacBookPro17, CS3, FCE & SoundTrack, Office 2004, going Leopard

Posted on Jan 16, 2014 2:56 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,910 points

Jan 16, 2014 3:15 PM in response to WayneAu

Try the free openoffice.

Reply

Answer 2

Jan 16, 2014 3:17 PM in response to WayneAu

Office for Mac 2008 and 2011 are compatible from Snow Leopard to Mavericks, so it will get the job done. WIthout Mavericks, you can't actually get Pages and Numbers, unless you find an old iWork 09 disk via Ebay or other non-Apple sources.

I run Office for Mac 2011 with Lion on an early 2008 MBP with 4GB memory. It works fine. Anything else you use will have to convert from native content to Microsoft file formats with mixed results.

If you do not want to spend money, look into LibreOffice, which likely has the closest compatibility with MS Office. The code base goes back to the mid-1990s and it is actively developed. I use it.

Reply

Answer 3

Jan 16, 2014 3:25 PM in response to WayneAu

Yes all the iWork apps of whatever vintage can Open and Export to MsOffice formats.

That doesn't guarrantee a perfect result. There are differences with how they work and their features.

For alternatives:

http://www.freeforum101.com/iworktipsntrick/viewforum.php?f=7&mforum=iworktipsnt rick

TextEdit opens and saves to MsWord. As does Bean. So do several other applications as well as LIbreOffice [free], the better fork of OpenOffice IMHO.

Peter

Reply