iWork users: how well does it work with MS office documents?

[M A V I C]

I'm considering switching from Office to iWork. Apple says it's compatible, but I know that's not the case. Even the Mac MS Office has some issues with compatibility.

[TheTominator]

I'd recommend trying out the demo of iWork on the range of Microsoft Office documents that you are curious about. As you can imagine, the quality of the compatibility will vary with the complexity of the Microsoft Office document and the range of features it uses. iWork does not have complete feature parity with Microsft Office so there is no way it will be completely compatible for all uses. Each user has to evaluate for themselves if it is good enough for their needs.

[jimbrady]

The only specific incompatibilities I've seen have been with the import of particular types of cells in Excel. Numbers gives detailed accounting of what issues are detected on import, making it easy to avoid any serious gotchas later on.

I'm sure there are hiccups I've not seen, but the ease and elegance of creating documents in iWork is more than enough compensation (not to mention that iWork's $79 price tag is less than 1/2 that of upgrading to Office '08).

If planning to make repeated roundtrips between iWork and Office, I'd recommend never actually saving the doc in iWork, but rather exporting to Office each time (thus avoiding the confusion of which file type contains the latest/greatest.

[M A V I C]

I have the demo install and will be testing it. Just wanted the general feedback from users.

I have 10 copies of Office 2007 for Windows that aren't even installed. So if I run into a major compatibility issue I can just use one of those. But I want to hear from people that already use iWork.

I'm currently using v.X and I'm guessing iWork '08 is at least as compatible as that.

Also, I have two upgrades to buy so the price really does make a big difference.

[roshi]

I use iWork - actually, just Pages - continually, side by side with Word 2008, and InDesign. Doing book-length manuscripts. Pages is great and if I had to choose one, which I don't, I would chose Pages probably.

[M A V I C]

roshi, where do you find that you still need Word 2008?

[simonm]

If you list the specific features you need, I'm sure you'll get an answer here.

One feature it doesn't have (neither does word afaik) which I'd like is tabbed documents like in Firefox. There are lots of things like note++ on the pc that do this but I haven't found one for mac.

[M A V I C]

Any document I create that doesn't need to be easily edited by others is done in InDesign CS3. The main reason I use office is for basic spreadsheets, and for working with clients who send me files as .doc, .xls... and I need to be able to open, edit, save and send back.

The contents of those files can vary greatly.

[simonm]

So far apart from some missing fonts I have had no issues opening xls, ppt, word docs. However, not are very complex. The spreadsheets are basically lists and minimal calculations/equations/embedd stuff. Not a lot of animation in the ppts. The are pretty much plain vanilla. The recent patch to iWork made a massive different to useability on all three packages on my g4 powerbook. Only pity is that they are not intergrated like AppleWorks was.

[dk62]

How well does tracking changes translate from Word to Pages and back?