best office suite for mac?

[Skel]

I admit that I'm clueless on macs, the girlfriend has one and it doesn't seem to include a office suite. My interest came from when she asked where the word count was. What's the best office suite out for mac? Does need to be compatible with MS office.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

You can always get OpenOffice. There is a Microsoft Office for Mac. There's also iWork.

 

[TheStu]

OpenOffice is free.
Office 08 Student Edition is pretty reasonably priced if you want to guarantee compatibility (admittedly if you really want to do that, then you will put Windows into a VM and run Office 07 that way)
iWork is reasonably priced as well and the most 'Mac-like' of the 3 since it is made by Apple. It is compatible with Office, but some fonts and layout settings are not, so it isn't 100% compatible I have found.

 

[theflyingpig]

I used to despise Office 2008, however, my opinion of it has now changed. Microsoft has done a fine job of making it a usable product, worthy of being run on an Apple product. Everyone knows this.

 

[sourceninja]

I have the big 3 on my computer.

Overall I like iWork the best. However I mostly use it for presentations and not much else.

 

[Viper0329]

Having used NeoOffice (OpenOffice port) for extensive academic use, I started to get frustrated with the way it handles some things. I switched to MS Office 08 and haven't looked back. I also needed Word compatibility, which of course it does well.

 

[mmntech]

Originally posted by: Viper0329
Having used NeoOffice (OpenOffice port) for extensive academic use, I started to get frustrated with the way it handles some things. I switched to MS Office 08 and haven't looked back. I also needed Word compatibility, which of course it does well.

I'm one of the few people who actually prefers it to word. Don't ask me why. The only problem I've ever encountered is having to convert everything to .doc so other people can open my files.

 

[ubercaffeinated]

i use ms office for work/school related stuff. for personal things i'll use iwork. openoffice is too slow and clunky.

 

[n yusef]

Originally posted by: makoto00
i use ms office for work/school related stuff. for personal things i'll use iwork. openoffice is too slow and clunky.

This. I prefer to write with Pages, but it's not fully compatible with Word. So, I use Office 2008 for anything I have to share with other people.

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: n yusef

Originally posted by: makoto00
i use ms office for work/school related stuff. for personal things i'll use iwork. openoffice is too slow and clunky.

This. I prefer to write with Pages, but it's not fully compatible with Word. So, I use Office 2008 for anything I have to share with other people.

I too prefer to use pages when I'm doing something on my own and sending it out as a .pdf. If it's a collaborative effort, I usually wait for the .docx to come to me and then break out word.

For accounting stuff, I use excel, for other spreadsheets I like numbers.

Haven't used keynote/ppt much yet, but I'm sure I'll find a preference there.

<--- MBA student with varied and fairly heavy office needs

 

[timswim78]

I tried Office for Mac, iWork, OpenOffice, and NeoOffice

I now run Office 2003 in an XP VM.

 

[Eug]

Office 2004 with the XML plug-in also works well. I use that on one machine, and Office 2008 on another. Office 2008 is slower.

 

[speg]

I like Pages (from Apple's iWork) for word processing but also have MS Office because I prefer Excel over Numbers.

You could also always use a web solution if you were in a pinch, Google.

 

[aleckz]

My girlfriend uses Pages, then when she wants to print or send the final draft to people she exports it to PDF so there are no changes made to the layout. We found out that Pages -> Word sometimes ends up making things out of order. So we just export to reduce hassle.