andrewyarbro19
Level 1 (22 points)
Notebooks

Q: Using part of iWorks instead of Microsoft Offcie

Im in my first year of college and I have always been a Microsoft user (Windows OS and Office), but I don't want to use Microsoft Office because of the subscription ( Yes I know there is an option to but it once but I want to be able to have continuous updates). Is part of Apple's iWorks (Pages, Numbers and Keynote) good enough to use for a college student for day to day use? (Using this for college essays and papers) I am willing to be part of Apple's Ecosystem. I have a Macbook Pro 13' and an iCloud email address. I will be getting an iPhone and iPad in the future. Im planning to use just Safari too. I value having the ability of having everything be seamless and integrated with each other. My subscription to Office 365 Personal is going to expire in January and wanting to see of part of Apple's iWorks will work for me. What is your recommendation? 

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)

Posted on Sep 5, 2016 6:03 PM

Close
andrewyarbro19

Q: Using part of iWorks instead of Microsoft Offcie

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

  • by ckuan,

    ckuan ckuan Sep 5, 2016 6:15 PM in response to andrewyarbro19
    Level 7 (33,026 points)
    Sep 5, 2016 6:15 PM in response to andrewyarbro19

    Unless your school set the requirement, you surely can use Pages.

    Anyway, you can export Pages documents as MS Word documents if needed.

    Read below:

    Pages - Official Apple Support

    Import and export different file formats with Pages - Apple Support

  • by PeterBreis0807,

    PeterBreis0807 PeterBreis0807 Sep 5, 2016 11:13 PM in response to andrewyarbro19
    Level 8 (35,522 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 5, 2016 11:13 PM in response to andrewyarbro19

    Pages is a bad match for Word, exporting/importing changes things and it can be unreliable.

     

    If you want to avoid Microsoft's subscription, use LibreOffice [free] which opens and saves directly to .doc/x Word files or to .odf open document format and is much safer in the long run than Pages, which is an invitation to eventual tears.

     

    Peter

  • by ckuan,

    ckuan ckuan Sep 6, 2016 2:20 AM in response to andrewyarbro19
    Level 7 (33,026 points)
    Sep 6, 2016 2:20 AM in response to andrewyarbro19

    Well, my son and daughter both use Pages/Keynote for their college's assignments and they are doing well.

    No issue at all.

    Only <10% what MS Word offers are been used, and for school is an overkill.

  • by Tom Gewecke,

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke Sep 6, 2016 3:19 AM in response to andrewyarbro19
    Level 9 (78,979 points)
    Sep 6, 2016 3:19 AM in response to andrewyarbro19

    I recommend you use Office if that is what your teachers are using.  Doing well at school is hard enough without having to worry about the potential incompatibility and stability problems which could arise by using iWorks exporting to Office formats over the next 4 plus years.

  • by VikingOSX,

    VikingOSX VikingOSX Sep 6, 2016 5:14 AM in response to andrewyarbro19
    Level 7 (20,544 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 6, 2016 5:14 AM in response to andrewyarbro19

    Check with your college to see if they participate in this Office 365 Education plan. Otherwise, I would recommend Office 365 Personal, which would get you Office 2016 for Mac, and allow Office applications on an iPhone, and iPad. This meets your critierion for continuous updates. You can spend that $6.99 per month in one visit to Starbucks, or most any other coffee shop.

     

    There is a high likelyhood that your faculty are required to use a current release of Microsoft Office on Windows, or Office for Mac, just like most corporations. If true, then they are opening, creating, editing, and saving Microsoft documents in their native document format. No one has time to battle document conversion and incompatibility issues.

     

    Apple's Pages, Numbers, and Keynote were never designed as clones of their Microsoft counterparts. You can never work in the native Microsoft document formats, as everything is translated on open, or export — to and from Apple's own proprietary document formats. Apple does not guarantee 100% document interchange accuracy, and features that could be required to complete an assignment — may actually be absent from the less complete Apple applications.