Pages vs Microsoft Word...

I think Pages is great for academic stuff. I doubt you need to get Office for Mac. And Pages is much less expensive.

Pages is totally compatible with Word. It opens Word documents, and exports & shares in the .doc and .docx formats no problem. In fact, I think Pages is more compatible with most versions of Word than word is compatible with older versions of itself.

Pages is better with Word documents than Word is. Insane, I know.

There are features Word has that Pages doesn't have. But in my experience, Pages is great for 99% of students.

Pages is NOT totally compatible with Word, far from it.

"More compatible with most versions of Word than word is compatible with older versions of itself"? Really?

Leslie_michelle

Pages has just been recently downgraded to Pages 5.2 and has problems with its file formats and exporting to word .doc/x.

Work backwards from what you require to do your college papers. If that is only relatively simple you can use virtually any word processor:

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

If you need bibliographies and more sophisticated layouts and graphics, narrow it down to what does all of that and maintains file security (Pages doesn't).

LibreOffice (free) hits most of the bases and exports/imports faithfully to a huge range of file formats.

Peter

Microsoft Word won't run on a Mac. You would have to purchase Word for Mac.

Pages is written by Apple and can be purchased and downloaded directly from the App Store.

At the minimum your Mac must be running v10.6.6 to have access to the App Store > https://www.apple.com/support/mac/app-store/getstarted/

Buy Office 2011 for OS X. Almost all colleges use it. No colleges use Pages, Numbers, or Keynote. Go with the best. Many schools have academic discount programs if you purchase from the schools book store or computer store.

You can also try the freeware suite, Libre Office, that is functionally similar to Office 2007 for Windows except it works on Lion/Mountain Lion.

You may want to consider as well:

These two suites are similar to Libre Office but not as current or as well-supported:

NeoOffice

Open Office

I would second what Kappy has said. LibreOffice is current and works just fine on Mavericks too. The currently available Pages will transcode the native Pages document format as best it can into .doc/x documents. Unfortunately, it is not sufficiently accurate in this process, and the documents themselves are unnecessarily huge.

The Word in Office for Mac 2011 uses the native .doc/x document format that MS Office 2007 and later use. No guesswork when submitting papers to professors. Sadly, the ribbon toolbar in MS Word detracts from early productivity gains. Buy a book to accelerate and support your productivity.

Apple does not state that Pages is totally compatible with MS Word, and from practical experience, many that have posted to this community have learned a very poignant lesson when sharing exported Word documents with their publisher, or other MS Office users, including college professors.

I work in an academic office space where there are 200 Mac laptops. By corporate directive, not a single machine has Apple Pages installed. All are Office for Mac 2011, because Word documents need to be 100% native .doc/.docx when sharing with other MS Office users in the University system. Pages cannot generate 100% compatible .doc/x documents because it is not the native Pages document architecture, and Pages is not a Word clone. If you read a Word document into Pages, it is internally converted to .pages architecture — sometimes silently dropping Word features.

Pages is great for 99% of the students that want to gamble with the accuracy of their submitted document content, and don’t care about the consequential grade result. I have two Pages versions on my home computer. Any professional directed content that I originate is done with Office for Mac 2011, or LibreOffice.

Really. I've worked with many people who have had all kinds of issues exchanging documents with other people using older versions of Word. More issues than people using Pages, without question. People using Word always seem have many more problems that people using Pages.

Many of my clients are using Pages academically, and they haven't had the problems you're mentioning. However, I fully acknowledge that your experiences may differ from mine.

Pages 5.2 does lack in-line linking, which I think is unfortunate. I have submitted feedback to Apple requesting that this feature be brought back, as I'm sure many people have.

I spent 30 plus years in academia. I exchange files with people who used just about all versions of Office for Windows. Never had any problems. Having been one of the few long-term Mac users in my university I never found a single time when I needed to use iWork for anything.

The reality is that Office is used by 96% of the world. Why would anyone in their right mind use something different if they did not have to?

This, btw, is from someone who has used Macs since 1984. And, until 1989 my department's network was set up using Mac hardware. It would have lasted longer except that the university decided to go entirely IBM. However, I remained a Mac user until my retirement. I worked on many projects not one of which could have been completed had I relied on iWork applications. They are fine for the home user, but not the academic user unless you plan to write text to import into Word or InDesign.

Pages 5.2 has all sorts of formatting issues and problems with objects exporting and importing from Word.

It has over 110 missing features just from the previous Pages '09, and all you are missing is "in-line linking"? Whatever you mean by that.

The biggest problem any Pages 5.2 user is going to have is file security. The files will not eMail correctlly using anything other than Mail, and Apple has been changing the format with every minor version update, on top of having just trashed the file format last October.

My son is studying at university right now and my fatherly advice was don't touch Pages with a bargepole. Use something dependable instead, almost anything else.

Peter

I meant the ability to hyperlink to another section of the document. That's really the only feature that I miss. Truly.

Wow, this guy really hates Pages. That's okay.

I hate Word.

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

There is a lot of confusion, ignorance and heads buried in sand on this.

You may miss the one thing you know about and not know of all the other major issues.

Being aware of the reality does not amount to "hate", ignoring that that presupposes that Pages 5,2 is the only version of Pages, which it is not.

Keep in mind that your advice could lead to users putting their work and their study into software that can damage it or leave it totally inaccessible when due.

Bad advice benefits neither you nor the recipient.

Peter

I think anyone accusing me of "bad advice" is misguided, and I think people can make up their minds having read more than one point of view.

I think Word is awful software to have to use. But by all means, use it if you want. I'm not disparaging anyone.

You're however being needlessly zealous, a bit nasty, and stupidly condescending.