Import Office files to iWork

Before you embark on this, consider carefully whether you want to tie yourself to Apple's unique and frequently changing formats. Office formats give you a much greater guarantee of accessibility as OS X and Apple apps are updated.

Pages Exports (not saves) to Word .doc/x files but that is not perfect.

What Tom is saying is given all the problems, omissions and incompatibility of Pages 5.x it is not a good idea to make it your application of choice.

Apple has trashed the file format and hence documents, and restricted what OS they run on, of so many its Applications, so often and predictably, that choosing to use Apple's software is inevitably going to cause unnecessary grief.

Peter

rkcrizzle wrote:

Thanks Tom. If I choose to move to iWork is there a way to move back to office if I change my mind?

Sure, but since Office cannot open iWorks files, you would have to use iWork to export each of your files back into Office formats.

What Tom and Peter have said is good advice, but I'll offer a different perspective. First, you need to evaluate exactly what you need to do with your documents. If you will be continually interacting with colleagues who use Office, then you're going to find yourself continually changing file formats if you use iWorks.

I worked with MS Office for years, but only because of the aforementioned reasons. Most of us recall when iWorks was not quite so dumbed-down (a move to make the apps more iOS compatible), and back then iWorks ran a closer race with Office. However, I've recently retired and don't have nearly the dependency on Office files so I moved 100% to iWorks. The reason for me is pure simplicity and elegance...iWorks apps are easy to use, not nearly as complex, are exportable to Office format when the occasional need arises, and I simply like iWorks better. It's "Apple".

I don't dislike Microsoft at all...I use OneDrive for cloud storage and it's filled with hundreds of iWorks documents. If I open any of these on my Mac the corresponding iWorks app is launched...the same happens on my iPhone or iPad. (If Apple would ever "get it" regarding what users need from the cloud, I'd move to iCloud, but it's probably not going to happen in my lifetime.

So, even though it's great advice to really think hard before you move to give up Office...don't forgot to think equally as hard about the benefits of moving to iWorks, even in a world where Office still prevails. If you find you really need Office...use it. If not, iWorks just might be a lighter and less complex solution.

Larry McJunkin wrote:

iWorks apps ... are exportable to Office format when the occasional need arises

And by keeping an extra copy of all your iWorks stuff in Office format, you can also make sure that you will still be able to access their content when Apple decides yet again to change iwork formats in some way incompatible with earlier versions:-)

Or...we could believe them this time when they say the format won't change again. And, that eventually the lost features of iWorks will be replaced (I'll admit, they've been actually working on this). My only point, Tom, is that all else aside, iWorks is a simple, elegant suite of apps that lack the complexity of Office, but of course, that's only important if you don't need such complexity. I used to...I don't any longer. It's all about the user and his needs :-) Additionally, I don't think Numbers will ever hold a candle to Excel, but then again, the reverse can be said for KeyNote running circles around PowerPoint.

You don't search on those files, you select one of them e.g. a Word .doc/x file in Finder:

Menu > Get Info > Open with: Pages > Change All

But as Tom says think before you jump.

Peter