[malor]

Received my May copy of Macworld last night and immediately thumbed to the main article comparing iWork vs Office. I was quickly disappointed. The single item I wanted to read about was not covered: compatibility. I don't work in isolation and I don't know droves of other Mac users, so a dedicated switch to iWork without some sharing of output is not realistic. At some point I will have to share documents with someone (friends, family, other) and 99.9% of them use some version of Office. The "From the Editor's Desk" introduction even states, "Practically everyone uses them" (speaking of Windows and Office). The article did a reasonable job of covering some of the features in a side by side comparison, but not everyone uses those chosen features. So, why not cover the activity that most people will likely use at some point...sharing a document, spreadsheet or presentation with a work colleague, family member, potential interviewer or other person who uses Office? Along with the occasional sharing with family and friends, I've just returned to college for post-graduate studies and the college requires submissions in Word/Excel/PowerPoint format. I put off the decision to read your analysis, but can't wait any longer. I was looking for a reason to buy iWork but was disappointed that you didn't go there. I am going to Office for this version. I'll check back again in a few years.

[Jon Seff]

When you're done with a file in Pages, Keynote, or Numbers, you just go to File: Export and choose the appropriate Office format to save out as and then send it off. We talk about this compatibility in the reviews of the iWork '08 products that we link to from the story. And Apple has touted this ability and talks about it on its Web site.

Buy whichever suite you think is best for you, but don't make the decision out of spite...

[malor]

Sorry, didn't mean to make it sound that way. I'm just out of time to decide. Killer is I can't submit in docx or any 'x' format.

[Jon Seff]

iWork '08 exports as non-x files (.doc, for example), so that's no problem. And Office 2008 can save files in the older format as well.

[malor]

I think you're missing the point. I can read that on apple.com, too. But I wanted someone to prove it through some lab testing. There are lots of claims out there, but all are marketing without proof. I read through lots of posts on several sites and there are reports of issues in significant enough numbers to become skeptical about the "ease of compatibility" claim. I just think you guys missed the boat on this one. Perhaps you can do more extensive testing and post your results on this site. It's too late for me, but I assume others would be interested. My new copy of MS Office for Mac is already bought installed. I'll re-hash this in a 2-3 years when it's time to replace my MacBook.

[James_Dempsey]

OK, if you don't believe such a simple fact, I'll go ahead and confirm that files saved with backwards compatibility (non "x" file formats) do in fact open in older version of Office on both Mac and Windows platforms. My wife does this all the time without problems.

[jpp_zoso]

ms office binary/ms office xml file compatibility claims are about as good as autocad drawing compatibility claims...there is no such thing as 100% fidelity. the more complex the file or drawing, meaning the more types of objects used and the more types of formatting styles used, the further from compatible the end translation winds up. when the creator/owner of the file spec can't even guarantee nor produce 100% fidelity between versions, there's no way a 3rd party vendor can either. the closest i've seen to true fidelity maintained using different applications to create and edit a file back and forth is the open document file format. using openoffice/neooffice/staroffice/koffice on some fairly complex (tables, images, columns, sections, header/footer switches, page orientation switches, page size switches) word processing documents as a test, only found a few minor hiccups w/ display issues...printing was identical. never tried spreadsheets or presentations.

i'm using ms office 2003, 2007, and 2008 at work...strange things happen w/ formatting when editing among the platforms and versions. binary or xml makes no difference. the bulk of the documents we use retain maybe 75% fidelity when opening w/ pages. spreadsheets maybe 50%. have not tried any presentation files yet.

here's a question i'd like to see answered...why does iwork need to export the files to create the ms office xml files? iwork can open the xml files directly...why can't it save them as well?