Microsoft Word on a Mac

Cassady

Cassady

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Hello All,

I'm an Apple newbie, and have never owned a Mac before - taking the plunge, since I've crossed over to the iPad, iPhone & iPod - it kind of makes sense to go full circle...

I'm typing this on my trusty Compaq, which is now starting to show some seriously dodgy indicators of age - including an involuntary "scandisk check" on a black screen following a forced reboot yesterday... Think it's time to move on.

I'm still trying to finalise my thoughts around the whole MBA/MBP debate - think the best will be to pop in to a store, and play around with both for a while. It appears that the MBA 13" 128GB and the MBP 13" 2.5GHz retail for the same price - so will make a decision between these two...

All of this being said - I'd appreciate some real-world feedback on the Mac version of Office Word. I'm in the final throes of completing my postgrad thesis - and have relatively large Word documents that I'm busy with... Nothing overly fancy - so no use of paragraph or heading formatting etc. - just plenty of pages, with thousands of footnotes. They are split up according to chapters, but will obviously need to merge later. The biggest chapter at the moment, is sitting at 200+/- pages...

Now I realise that in theory, there should be no problem in taking it across - but would appreciate some thoughts on whether this is, in fact, the case? In other words [ha-ha] - how similar is the Mac version of Word, to the PC version? Are all the fonts the same - does it have the same features - i.e. track changes; comments; references/footnoting etc?

I realise this is no doubt a silly question - but since Word is one of the primary uses on my laptop - just want to be sure before taking the plunge...

Many thanks! :)
 
My dad who is not so tech friendly found it a bit harder to use the word for mac app. I recently installed parallels (lets you run windows on a mac) for him so he can still use the windows version of word on his mac. So you don't need to worry, just have parallels installed with windows 7 and office.
 
The file format (.docx and so on) is identical. Not similar, identical. Office for Mac will also save to the older Office formats flawlessly. Every feature is there, it may just not be where you are used to finding it.

Fonts all depend on what you have installed on your system. So before you leave your PC, backup your fonts directory. Just copy all the TTF and OTF files you see there to a USB stick. Then, when you get your Mac and Office 4 Mac all set up, and you find that a font you need is missing, just pop that stick into the USB port, doubleclick on the font file and follow the instructions to install a copy on the Mac. Do this just as you need them, otherwise you may overwrite the Mac's nice, fresh new fonts with ancient versions. Yes, fonts do change and evolve, if only slowly.

If your fonts are really old, as in more than ten years, you may come across one that doesn't work. Foundries used to ship separate fonts for PCs and Macs. Frankly, that problem seems to have been licked. Unless you are a typeface nerd (the worst kind, I tell you) fonts just work these days.

You don't say what version of Office 4 Win you are using. Assuming it is the latest one, let me tell you that I much, much prefer the Mac version. It has the ribbon. But it has RETAINED the menus. So instead of grubbing around the ribbon for half an hour looking where MS hid that rarely used feature, I can access the feature instantly.

So that is the good news. The bad news? Apple's iWorks suite makes Office feel like a refugee from the Lower Palaeolithic. Pages is the first word processor on which styles are so obvious and intuitive that I actually use them. Keynote shows you why most people's "powerpoints" are so utterly pathetic. I'm not a spreadsheet user, so I won't comment on Numbers. As for databases, Filemaker Pro and Bento are technically not part of iWorks, but Bento should have been, they look so similar in style.

Unless sharing files with other people is a major part of your life, have a hard look at iWorks. An update is overdue and should be coming out when the next version of OSX ships.
 
OK, in my first post I answered your specific question about Office. Now, a word of warning: I've been through the postgrad thing myself and if you are really in the final throes of it, you don't need the additional strain of learning a new computer system while you do that. Stick with what you know. Beg, steal or borrow another PC and finish your degree, and then come over to the Mac side.

I just know I'm going to get blasted for that. But I've been there, twice, and three months before you hand in a dissertation is NOT the time to make a major lifestyle change. Don't get married. Don't adopt a child. Don't change your computer system. Just finish the damn dissertation. You can thank me later.
 
Mac Office 2011 is the best version I've used, even better in certain aspects than Word 2010 for PC. It does take a bit to get use to the shortcut-keys as some of them differ, but overall, it is Word. It is also the best version in terms of compatibility between Word 2010 as they took a lot of time in ensuring that documents display correctly on both platforms.

Regarding MBP use for post-grad. I went to the Apple side. If you are okay with computers, the learning curve is quick with Apple. The only time I used Parallels was for my research as the one component (SEM) of the stats app wasn't mac compatible.

A few other apps that saved me a lot of time:

1. Dropbox. Great for research backup (and access)
2. Papers 2. You can import documents and also use it for referencing in your research. It does all the work for you.
 
Many thanks for all the replies! It's put my mind at ease - I'm relatively computer literate, so think I will pick it up easily enough.

And thanks for the advice iro keeping things plain and simple this far in... As it stands, I need to do quite a bit of reorganizing of data, as I finalise bibliographies and the like - and knowing myself - transferring everything across will force me to do alot of that in any event!

One final question - 90% of my articles are in .pdf format - does the Mac work with Adobe formats? Hope so...
 
Grinning ... Adobe invented the PDF format as a favour to Apple waaayyy back in the twentieth century.

And creeper is right, btw. Papers2 (from mekentosj.com) is a great program - better set up for hard sciences than for humanities, though. But if you are already heavily invested in Word's own reference manager, it's probably better to stick with it for now.
 
I've used both Parallels to run Office on a Windows VM as well as Office for Mac. Personal preference for me is the VM option, although it does have some of it's own drawbacks. I'm currently on an Office for Mac 2011 trial to see if I can ditch the VM option going forward.
 
Had a look at the dual/parallel option - will definitely look at it as an option. Does a 2012 MBA with 4GB memory have sufficient oomph to run it smoothly?
 
For thesis writing scrivener is the best i would say. And don't let the simple interface fool you, its extremely powerful. http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php

Word(including the windows version) is horrible for organising and writing long projects.

[video=youtube;MLasH88XqAc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLasH88XqAc[/video]
 
Last edited:
Zyzzyva said:
For thesis writing scrivener is the best i would say. And don't let the simple interface fool you, its extremely powerful. http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php

Word(including the windows version) is horrible for organising and writing long projects.

[video=youtube;MLasH88XqAc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLasH88XqAc[/video]
Click to expand...

Thanks for the heads up. Scrivener looks amazing. That's the part that I still need to get my head around. Need to stop thinking of the Mac in terms of a pc, but rather ito my iPad.... Which means apps for almost anything!
 
Cassady said:
Had a look at the dual/parallel option - will definitely look at it as an option. Does a 2012 MBA with 4GB memory have sufficient oomph to run it smoothly?
Click to expand...

That depends on what you are running while having a virtual machine. If its just word, some browsers and the virtual machine which in itself is running similar it will be fine. If you did what I did and ran a virtual machine and photoshop, then you're going to feel it.

For purely bootcamp it will run fine but if you have the 128gb SSD it will get full real quick. Just a reminder, using virtual machines allow you to use Mac OS and windows simultaneously but there is a performance penalty, using bootcamp will restrict you to either Windows or Mac but there is no performance penalty.
 
Cassady said:
Thanks for the heads up. Scrivener looks amazing. That's the part that I still need to get my head around. Need to stop thinking of the Mac in terms of a pc, but rather ito my iPad.... Which means apps for almost anything!
Click to expand...
In truth each platform has some areas where it is lacking.
 
Office for Mac is by far one of the worst collection of apps on OS X. Outlook should be sold in a brown box so people know what they are getting.
Word compatibility between windows and mac is seamless, but word for mac looks a lot better than the windows version. The ribbon, however is a complete waste of time on both platforms.
 
BobJones said:
Office for Mac is by far one of the worst collection of apps on OS X. Outlook should be sold in a brown box so people know what they are getting.
Word compatibility between windows and mac is seamless, but word for mac looks a lot better than the windows version. The ribbon, however is a complete waste of time on both platforms.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Having picked up Office Mac on special - I was amazed to note the price difference between the Student ed., and the Home Business ed. Cannot recall if the latter comes with OneNote (think that might only be the Professional ed.) - but it was essentially R1,5k extra - for the pleasure of being able to also use Outlook! This price difference is apparently the same on the PC versions....

Fortunately, I have the work computer to deal with Outlook, and will simply access all via the net from the new laptop.

As for Word - found some display models with Word installed - and had a looksie. Pleased to say it all looked familiar. Also noted the menu bar, which kind of makes the ribbon obsolete. Having said that - I must be one of the few(?) people who actually likes the ribbon?? Took a while to get used to it (on the work pc), but once I did - found it quite intuitive...

Must say - I use OneNote all the time at work. Find it to be very useful. Would've been nice to have had it on the new laptop as well - but at that price, it can wait.
 
Enjoy. The OS X mail app is good enough and use to be able to handle MS Exchange. So no biggie.
 
I know it's slightly off topic but I need to vent and this seems as good a place as any - Outlook for Mac 2011 is useless! Really wish somebody could come up with a decent mail client for Mac.
 
Speedster said:
I know it's slightly off topic but I need to vent and this seems as good a place as any - Outlook for Mac 2011 is useless! Really wish somebody could come up with a decent mail client for Mac.
Click to expand...

You have to be more specific. Outlook 2011 is a great upgrade from the previous version (Entourage) and works fine. The only issue that arose was an update that screwed up people's mailboxes. Otherwise, works well with Exchange, iCloud and Google.
 
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