Office for Mac - options

andyred

andyred

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Hi

I've a (very hopeful) thread in the wanted section for office for mac, but I'm wondering if anyone has any other options they use.

It's going to be for my daughter for school, so probably word and PowerPoint. I'm looking into the student version of Office, have had a look at open office, but it seems to get mixed reviews.

Just wondering if anyone has personal recommendations.

Cheers
A
 
It depends if she needs to hand in the Word or Powerpoint files at any time. Though Openoffice can write Word compatible files etc it would probably be in her own interest to have the native program.

You don't mention how old she is but if only young and learning, if everyone else in her class is using the Microsoft programs, or she uses them at school, again probably best to stick with MS Office, helps when working with other people on projects as well.
 
Ploddles said:
It depends if she needs to hand in the Word or Powerpoint files at any time. Though Openoffice can write Word compatible files etc it would probably be in her own interest to have the native program.

You don't mention how old she is but if only young and learning, if everyone else in her class is using the Microsoft programs, or she uses them at school, again probably best to stick with MS Office, helps when working with other people on projects as well.
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Thanks, think you've clarified what I was thinking that getting Office was the best bet...

She's about to start 6th form, so reasonably experienced with office (for PC) - can probably run rungs round me :-) hence my initial question of is there anything else that's worth considering ?

Thanks for the reply.
Andy
 
Office on Mac & PC are pretty much the same nowadays (wasn't always the case). So if she already knows that pretty well you may as well stick with it.

Why learn something else when you already are quite handy with the MS offering.
 
Get LibreOffice (openoffice is now this) and you can always buy the M$ if you want / need. LO is 99% compatible and free - win! Unless she does lots of VBA accounting macros Ms is not really needed.
 
open office

i use it a lot for building csv files and the company we use to list with recomend it over office as it has extra features , or works better then office does

also the layout is so simple to use , i used office at school back in the 90's and to be honest it almost looks the same everything is in a similar layout

open office does usual , word , spreadsheets and loads more have a look at there website
 
Andy

Try www.software4students.co.uk - she will qualify for the education prices across all the software not just student editions




We bought Office 2010 from them but it was better/cheaper to buy the full version rather than the watered down student edition.

I have MAC Office 2011 and it has now caught up with the Windows version IMO as the previous one (2004 IIRC) was pretty poor in comparison

edit:
Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 - £79.95
Microsoft Office 2010 Professional - £79.95
 
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Thanks for the relies guys and good information.
Will certainly look into it for her

Andy
 
If you want a cheaper option look at the Apple alternative iWork. It's cheaper than Office and can be purchased as individual modules. It will also save doc etc as word documents, and open them as well.

Only drawback is you have to learn a new work environment. I prefer Pages to Word, but it's what you've been brought up with
 
Chappers said:
If you want a cheaper option look at the Apple alternative iWork. It's cheaper than Office and can be purchased as individual modules. It will also save doc etc as word documents, and open them as well.

Only drawback is you have to learn a new work environment. I prefer Pages to Word, but it's what you've been brought up with
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Cheers, will have a look and see what she thinks about it.
 
Pages/Keynote/Numbers which are the Apple versions of 'Office', are way better than Office.
 
neil_g said:
If you want 100% compatibility it has to be Microsoft office, trust me on that one.

Student pricing may be a good route for her.
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The only time I ever used OpenOffice was a couple of years ago when I tried to replace Windows with Linux as a day-to-day desktop environment.

The first Word document I opened was formatted slightly differently to how it was formatted under MS Word. For a WISYWIG editor, and given I share documents with people who use Word properly, that's definitely NOT good. A VM was installed running Windows within 20 minutes to get access back to MS Office (and a MS O/S installed 3 months later when I finally ran out of patience finding bugs in the UI, but that's another story ;)).

There are normally cheap ways of getting Office for most people (my work has an affiliate program where I can get Office for £13 for example). As Neil says, if you need compatibility, it's probably worth it.
 
Thanks guys

arad85 said:
There are normally cheap ways of getting Office for most people (my work has an affiliate program where I can get Office for £13 for example). As Neil says, if you need compatibility, it's probably worth it.
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yes, i work for NHS and they used to do something like this, but Microsoft pulled the plug so no longer available :-(
 
neil_g said:
i think it depends on your licencing model, on our agreement employees have access to Office 2010 for their home machines (not that we make it known lol)
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Haha. Rub it in why don't you. :-)
 
I use both iWork and MS Office on macs. I hardly ever have to resort to MS Office and I much prefer to use iWork. The only real compatibility issue is with some tarty powerpoint presentations produced by other people. As for Word and Excel documents, I export from Pages and Numbers and forward these to clients that use MS.

I tend to have a look at open office every couple of years to see how it's progressing - or not. I usually only spend a couple minutes with it until I find it makes a total horlicks of fairly basic tables within a Word document. If you want to share material with others then don't waste time with open office.
 
Go to Software For Students and get Office Mac at a good price would be my advice. Note that you can't use MS Access on Mac, but that probably isn't an issue.
 
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