Pages and Numbers Apps versus Microsoft Word and Excel

[PGB1]

Hello All!

I've read that Pages and Numbers work well with old Microsoft Word and Excel documents, but I've also read that they wreck formatting and formulae.

What are your experiences with opening and editing older Word and Excel documents in Pages and Numbers? I have .doc and .docx as well as .xl and .xlsx.

Reason For Asking: When I buy a new 64 bit computer, my 32 bit version of Microsoft Office will no longer work. Rather than buy or subscribe (or however it works now) to Micorsoft; Pages and Numbers look worth investigating.

Thanks For Sharing Your Experiences!
Paul

 

[Jimmysb]

Hello All!

I've read that Pages and Numbers work well with old Microsoft Word and Excel documents, but I've also read that they wreck formatting and formulae.

What are your experiences with opening and editing older Word and Excel documents in Pages and Numbers? I have .doc and .docx as well as .xl and .xlsx.

Reason For Asking: When I buy a new 64 bit computer, my 32 bit version of Microsoft Office will no longer work. Rather than buy or subscribe (or however it works now) to Micorsoft; Pages and Numbers look worth investigating.

Thanks For Sharing Your Experiences!
Paul

There are quite a few other "free" options available as well, Libre and Free text are just two, and lots of comments about them around the forum, just use the search function.

 

[pine man]

I dumped all Microsoft programs some while back and now use only Apple programs. I had a lot of Word and Excel Docs, both old and new, and all (yes all!) converted without any real issues.

It took a little while to get used to Pages and Numbers, after using Microsoft Office for more years than I care to remember, but I've got the hang of it now.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

...Reason For Asking: When I buy a new 64 bit computer, my 32 bit version of Microsoft Office will no longer work. Rather than buy or subscribe (or however it works now) to Micorsoft; Pages and Numbers look worth investigating.

If you are used to Microsoft Office, there is a fairly steep learning curve to switch to Pages and Numbers. The compatibility of old MS Office files with Pages and Numbers is just okay. They will have problems with complex formatting. Plus, if you are a power user of MS Office, Pages and Numbers are not as powerful.

I've moved a number of users to FreeOffice. It's extremely similar to Microsoft Office/Mac. (In fact, some users are barely cognizant of the fact that what they have isn't Microsoft Office itself.) It opens Office formatted files perfectly (even better than LibreOffice).

FreeOffice (FREE)
https://www.freeoffice.com/en/

If, after trying FreeOffice, you find that it's not good enough for your needs, you can purchase the latest verison of MS Office for a reasonable price, with no subscription:

Office 2021 Home and Business Lifetime License Key – For MacOS
$40
https://www.joywarp.com/product/office-2021-home-and-business-lifetime-license-key-for-macos/

 

[PGB1]

Thank You All for sharing your experiences with various applications.

I look forward to experimenting with Pages and Numbers. Also, I'll experiment with those mentioned by Jim B and Randy.

That's quite a low 40.00 USD price for Home and Business, Randy. Apple Store has it for $249.99 (USD) and Microsoft has it for two different prices (same item): 249.99 USD and 319.99 USD.

Thanks Again Everybody!
Paul

 

[IgorP]

Great question. I put off upgrading to Sonoma because it would kill Excel (IMO the best piece of software ever to come out of the DOS shop), plus it would force me to convert my 1000's of Word doc's. I tried Free Office but gave iy up, can't remember why.

Finally decided to bite the bullet, upgrade the OS and try working with Apple's offerings, figuring that Apple had had plenty of time to refine them and that the learning curve would not be too bad. That proved to be the case, and I've never looked back.

Pages loaded my .doc's without problems. Tables convert OK but editing and creating them involves a learning curve. I miss some shortcuts that I've not been able to recreate in Pages (eg, cmd-click to select a sentence), and if you load a .doc and then save it, it will change the extension to .pages; you have to do a Save As to save it as a .doc), not a big deal.

Numbers loaded my spreadsheets without problems other than a few formatting tweaks. I find editing formulae in the cell to be not as quick and easy as in Excel, but that's just my lack of experience.

Bottom line, I would say that Apple has put out first-class free software here, and giving up Office so you can switch to Sonoma, Pages and Numbers is fairly painless and worth the trouble.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

That's quite a low 40.00 USD price for Home and Business, Randy.

When I first mentioned this deal to the folks in my Mac user group, most were very suspicious about how legitimate it was. And, frankly, so was I.

But a bunch of folks in my user group went for it, and every single one of them has reported that things went well and that the software works perfectly. In fact, one user called Microsoft to see if it was a legitimate copy, and Microsoft confirmed that it was.

Here is a review of the company with the offer. Purchasers say that they are legit:
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/joywarp.com

 

[agwilliams]

I am a long-time Microsoft Office user who switched to Apple products not long ago.

I have to say that this has caused me many irritations. I find Pages nowhere near as good as Word, because it is too complicated and does many things that I do not want, without asking. For instance, I have just created a new Page then copied and pasted various chunks of text from other documents. This simplest of tasks has turned into a nightmare with blocks of text moving around, being cut in two and even disappearing altogether. I found that one block of text appeared twice, so I deleted one copy then found that both blocks had vanished. Something to do with the fact that new Pages don't appear as blanks but already have some formatting, I suspect, but that is not evident. Another problem - changing the text colour. Sometimes I can do it easily, other times it just doesn't happen.

This sort of thing drives me nuts and wastes far too much of my time.

I have formed the impression that Apple is staffed by very bright techies who cannot resist packing in more and more complexity with every update. Perhaps they should bear in mind that just because it is possible to introduce some new feature, it isn't necessarily helpful to users to do so.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

I find Pages nowhere near as good as Word, because it is too complicated and does many things that I do not want

Well, first, if you don't like Pages, and you liked Microsoft Office...why not just use Microsoft Office? It exists for the Mac, it's very similar to Office for Windows, and as you learned earlier in this thread you can get it for cheap.

With regard to Pages, I'm willing to bet that you are cursing Pages, but that you haven't spent any time learning how to use it. Pages isn't a bad word processing program, it's just very different than Word. You can bend Pages to do your will with some training...which you can get for free:

Apple offers free tutorials on how to use Pages here:

Pages User Guide for Mac

Learn how to use Pages for Mac to create beautiful documents and interactive books with photos, galleries, charts, customizable shapes, and much more.

support.apple.com

Pages - Official Apple Support

Get help creating letters, flyers, or essays, add images or charts, or continue editing your document from any Apple device with these Pages resources.

www.apple.com

https://help.apple.com/pages/mac/5.2.2/

You can take a commercial course on how to use Pages here:

https://www.udemy.com/course/mac-pages/

Finally, it's not like you are limited to Word or Pages on your Mac. There are a bunch of word processors (and office suites) to choose from. Several of which are free! See:

Macintosh Word Processors

 

[agwilliams]

Thanks for your response. In a way I think you've proved my point:

Pages isn't a bad word processing program, it's just very different than Word.

You can bend Pages to do your will with some training

In other words, don't expect to switch from Word to Pages without problems.

My situation may not be typical in that now I have retired, I am only an occasional user of word processing: which means that I get relatively little practice at it. Until recently, I did indeed use Office on my previous Mac, but the cost of doing that seems to have gone up more than somewhat, and I thought that as I love the Mac hardware, I ought to give the integral free software a chance too.

I did not know that there were other Office-like systems for free, my normal approach is to be wary of software from sources I don't know about. Thanks for the training links, I will persevere with Pages for a while longer...

 

[Howard Brazee]

I have a simple spreadsheet for my check register. It has different pages for each year. The new page pulls the last balance from the previous page with this command: =LOOKUP(9.99999999999999E+307, '2023'!E:E) . That works with Excel and with LibreOffice. But if I open it with Pages, it calculates a number which I do not find on the previous page. I don't have a clue where it got its result.

 

[Rod]

I have to say that having both suites is a huge advantage to a slow transition. With MS Office for MacOS still installed I am slowly moving more and more towards the Apple equivalent but if what I'm trying to do doesn't work in Pages or Numbers I simply use Word or Excel and vow to try again next time when I have more time and/or patience.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

In other words, don't expect to switch from Word to Pages without problems.

As with moving to any new software application from any other software application that you were used to, there is going to be a learning curve associated. This is especially true of software that isn't meant for beginners, and which has to fufull the needs of many, including possibly professionals.

I've said previously that I don't think that Pages is a good choice if you are used to Word. This doesn't make Pages a bad program, it just means that it's not a clone of Word and you are going to have to learn how to use it and get used to it if you are coming from Word.

Until recently, I did indeed use Office on my previous Mac, but the cost of doing that seems to have gone up more than somewhat,

You can get the latest version of Office for the Macintosh for $40, no subscription necessary:

Office 2021 Home and Business Lifetime License Key – For MacOS
$40
https://www.joywarp.com/product/office-2021-home-and-business-lifetime-license-key-for-macos/

It seems like an offer that is too-good-to-be-true, but at this point a lot of the folks in my user group have purchased Office from the above company, and they've all had excellent experiences.

and I thought that as I love the Mac hardware, I ought to give the integral free software a chance too.

Many new Macintosh users assume that the free, included application software for the Macintosh that comes from Apple is somehow better than any other software. It's usually good, but it's not designed to be "the best." It's also not necessarily designed to be the "easiest". Apple's free included applications are designed to be a decent compromise for the widest number of users. That's why Pages may have more features than a newbie might like, yet it still isn't as wildly powerful as Word. Pages isn't designed for newbies, and it isn't designed, really, for power users either. It's designed to be in-between. That means that it might not be the best choice for YOU.

Pages IS free, which is nice. But this is the Macintosh; there are a bunch of really high quality applications for the Mac which are free. See:
http://www.macattorney.com/free.html
Apple's applications may not be the best choice for your needs.

I did not know that there were other Office-like systems for free, my normal approach is to be wary of software from sources I don't know about.

The Macintosh doesn't have the astoundingly horrible malware problem that Windows has. Any software that you get directly from a legitimate developer should be perfectly safe. There is no need for a large amount of trepidation when doing things on a Macintosh.

You may get a warning message when you go to install software that you download from somewhere other than the Apple Store. e.g. "This software is from an unidentified developer." That DOES NOT mean that that software is dangerous, or that it won't run on your Mac. But you may need to know the steps necessary to get such software installed. See:
http://osxdaily.com/2012/07/27/app-cant-be-opened-because-it-is-from-an-unidentified-developer/

Thanks for the training links, I will persevere with Pages for a while longer...

If I were in your place, I'd give up on Pages. You don't need to invest the time and effort into learning how to use it, as there are excellent free alternatives that you should find much easier to use. I'd try both of these free products, and see which I liked better:

FreeOffice (free)
A Microsoft Office clone. Not as powerful as Office, but probably all that you might ever need. Excellent compatibility with Office format files.
https://www.freeoffice.com/en/

Growly Write (Free)
A surprisingly competent free and easy to use word processor! Some say that this is the word processor that Apple should have included with the Mac.
http://www.growlybird.com/write/index.html

 

[desertduster]

Hello All!

I've read that Pages and Numbers work well with old Microsoft Word and Excel documents, but I've also read that they wreck formatting and formulae.

What are your experiences with opening and editing older Word and Excel documents in Pages and Numbers? I have .doc and .docx as well as .xl and .xlsx.

Reason For Asking: When I buy a new 64 bit computer, my 32 bit version of Microsoft Office will no longer work. Rather than buy or subscribe (or however it works now) to Micorsoft; Pages and Numbers look worth investigating.

Thanks For Sharing Your Experiences!
Paul

I have been using Pages and Numbers to open and create documents in Microsoft format and it works fine. The biggest issue is getting used to the new menu locations for making format, changes, formulas, etc.. i did subscribe to the Office 365 products for a while and let my subscription run out but I’m still able to open and read the documents.

 

[PGB1]

I have a simple spreadsheet for my check register. It has different pages for each year. The new page pulls the last balance from the previous page with this command: =LOOKUP(9.99999999999999E+307, '2023'!E:E) . That works with Excel and with LibreOffice. But if I open it with Pages, it calculates a number which I do not find on the previous page. I don't have a clue where it got its result.

I don't have Numbers, so I don't know if this will work in Numbers, but it might be worth trying.

In an Excel checking type register, to bring the previous page's ending balance to the new page, I do the following steps:
In the first row of the new page at the Balance column, I click it and type the equals sign.
Next I go to the previous page's ending balance and single click it.
Back on the new page, the previous page's balance appears.
All subsequent entries work with that balance as the starting point.

You can make a bunch of pages and repeat. Each new page's balance will equal the previous page's ending balance.


EXAMPLE:
If the previous page's ending balance (moved to the new page as per above) was 1,000.00 and my first transaction on the new page was depositing 20.00, the balance at that line will show 1,020.00. If next I withdraw 500.00, that row's balance will be 520.00.

I hope this will provide an easy solution for Numbers, Howard.

Paul

 

[Howard Brazee]

I don't have Numbers, so I don't know if this will work in Numbers, but it might be worth trying.

In an Excel checking type register, to bring the previous page's ending balance to the new page, I do the following steps:
In the first row of the new page at the Balance column, I click it and type the equals sign.
Next I go to the previous page's ending balance and single click it.
Back on the new page, the previous page's balance appears.
All subsequent entries work with that balance as the starting point.

You can make a bunch of pages and repeat. Each new page's balance will equal the previous page's ending balance.


EXAMPLE:
If the previous page's ending balance (moved to the new page as per above) was 1,000.00 and my first transaction on the new page was depositing 20.00, the balance at that line will show 1,020.00. If next I withdraw 500.00, that row's balance will be 520.00.

I hope this will provide an easy solution for Numbers, Howard.

Paul

That formula that I'm using is supposed to find the last entry, so that if sometime in January I discover I missed an entry and add it to the 2023 register, I don't have to change the 2024 register. It works with Excel and LibreOffice, as I add new purchases now, 2024 gets the last entry.