Does iWord '09 work with El Capitan

No, and it is no longer available on the App Store. See the following in case you may qualify if you purchased iWorks from the App Store:

The iWork apps are free with a new iOS device since 1 SEP 2013. They are free with a new Mac since 1 OCT 2013. They are also free with the upgrade to OS X Mavericks 10.9 if you had the previous version installed when you upgraded.

I believe this still applies to El Capitan since you no longer can upgrade to Mavericks or Yosemite.

The iWork '09 applications, though discontinued in 2013, do work well on El Capitan 10.11.3, where many of us continue to use them. However, not all features of these applications continue to work as they did on Mountain Lion.

1. The Share menu has lost the ability to send documents via the Send via Mail menu item. So, no convenient Pages to Mail attachments.
2. Mail/Data merge may not fully function as on Mountain Lion.
3. No assurance that iWork '09 applications will continue to effectively work with any future OS X upgrade.
4. LibreOffice can now open Pages '09, Numbers '09, and Keynote '09 documents, though in their very rudimentary forms.

There are some caveats though. You will need the most recent updates (12/2012): Pages '09 v4.3, Numbers '09 v2.3, and Keynote '09 v5.3 for El Capitan compatibility.

1. If you originally installed the iWork '09 applications from their retail DVD, then you will need to install it on El Capitan again. You then immediately follow up with the downloadable, Apple iWork 9.3 updater that brings the iWork '09 DVD applications to their last revisions (per above). This updater is exclusively for iWork '09 DVD applications only.
2. Any custom templates that you accumulated along the way can be copied from your local Library : Application Support : iWork folder hierarchy to the same location on the new machine.
3. If you have a whole bunch of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote text replacement items configured in their respective Preferences, you need to save those from Mountain Lion to a USB stick, and bring them over to El Capitan. Put them in the same location.

   Local Library : Preferences :

   1. com.apple.iWork.Pages.plist
   2. com.apple.iWork.Numbers.plist
   3. com.apple.iWork.Keynote.plist
4. If your iWork '09 applications were purchased individually from the OS X App Store, and they are current revisions as mentioned above, then you can put them on a USB stick and copy them into the Applications folder on El Capitan. You will need to perform items 2 and 3 from above.
5. If item 4, but your iWork '09 applications were not kept updated, then there may still be a means to update them yet on Mountain Lion, if Apple has not finally disabled it.

   Sign into the OS X App Store on Mountain Lion. Under Purchases, there should be items for Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, but will reflect the new application icons. These applications will not install in Mountain Lion. When you attempt to install them, you will be informed that they won't install in Mountain Lion. This dialog also used to notice that there were outdated individual App Store iWork '09 applications, and then would offer to upgrade them. Hope for that.

6. Before you upgrade Mountain Lion, ensure that you have updated to iPhoto v.9.6.1, because anything earlier than that is incompatible with El Capitan. You need iPhoto v9.6.1 to see any photos in your Pages '09 application Media browser. The new Photos application also requires iPhoto v9.6.1 for photo library migration, but the new Photos library is unavailable to Pages '09.
7. Any iWork '09 documents that are opened, and saved by Pages for IOS v2 or later, Pages for iCloud, and Pages v5.6.1 on Mac, are no longer backwards compatible to Pages '09, and on export back to Pages '09, may not reflect the original content (e.g. no linked text box, etc.).

Be advised that hyphenation may not work properly with Pages v4 under OS X 10.11.

cf.

My hyphenation does not work und OS X 10.11

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7258229

H

Kappy why do you give such a definite wrong answer?

A simple test shows that iWork '09 with a few exceptions works and we have said so innumerable times here and elsewhere.

Unfortunately Apple Support is giving the same false information, pushing users onto the inferior Pages 5. etc.

Peter

Hi Peter, I am running iWorks '09 - Pages v4.0.5 - on Snow Leopard on an early 2009 iMac. Any idea if I'll have compatibility problems if I update to El Capitan? My worry is that I use Pages extensively for work and cannot afford to lose access to any current documents/ability to create new ones.

Thanks!

Sandra

Sandra,

If you still have that retail iWork '09 DVD, you will need to reinstall it again after the El Capitan upgrade, and then apply the Apple iWork 9.3 updater to get to Pages '09 v4.3 — a pre-requisite for El Capitan compatiblity. Note that I put emphasis on a retail iWork '09 DVD.

I have Pages '09 v4.3 installed here on El Capitan 10.11.4 and it works fine. There are some issues with hyphenation not working properly, Mail Merge panels are missing functionality, and the Share menu : Send via Mail is inoperable.

Apple will not warn us that a future OS X release will break Pages '09. They have retired it, and give it no thought. Every document that I do in Pages '09 (and Pages v5.6.1) is also exported as a Word document. If it is complicated, a PDF as well. Opening Pages '09 documents, and allowing them to be converted to Pages v5 document format will destroy your original content that is not supported in the latest Pages release.

I have ElCapitan and iWork 09. I see "update" in the app store, but ONLY if I go to each iWork app. It's not listed in the updates section in the store. I see now that iWork requires Sierra. Is it true that if I click update it will download the previous version compatible with ElC as well as retain my original iwork 09 apps?

iWork does not require Sierra, iWork is not available any more so it doesn't require anything specific at all, it has reached End of Life and may stop working with any upgrade. But it is still working with Sierra for now.

Looking directly at the app store, it says "compatibility MacOS 10.12 or later....

So? Didn't I just say "But it is still working with Sierra for now"

Ok, the old iWork 09 doesn't require sierra, but I see that the individual apps now do....

But, I still see "update" option when I look at each individually. My question was if I click that, will it pull in the previous version that was compatible and will it still keep my original (older) iWork 09 versions? thank you for any help.

my apologies, I should have stated I'm on El Capitan...

I have no idea, I abandoned these apps some time ago.

Ok. Thank you for taking the time to provide some feedback.