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iWork and Office: Can they work together?

#1 User is offline   Macworld 

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Posted 12 June 2008 - 11:00 AM

Post your comments for iWork and Office: Can they work together? here
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#2 User is offline   AaronShep 

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Posted 12 June 2008 - 11:06 AM

Linespacing is measured in points, not pixels.
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#3 User is offline   bioneural 

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Posted 12 June 2008 - 11:34 AM

Another useful compatibility trick for sending iWork documents for Mac users without iWork, or Office users on the PC: save as iWork but use "Include preview in document" for cross-platform access to a file called Preview.pdf inside the QuickLook folder:
http://www.bioneural...k-08-documents/
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#4 User is offline   WilfredLaurier 

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Posted 12 June 2008 - 11:40 AM

I don't suppose iWork's and Office 2008's AppleScript macros are compatible?
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#5 User is offline   153957 

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Posted 12 June 2008 - 01:04 PM

A bit of contradiction?:
"... You can paste simple text into Leopard’s version of TextEdit, which can export to .docx. Unfortunately, there are no third-party utilities that can create Open XML files at this point."
".... Microsoft’s newer Open XML file formats (...). These are the default file formats of Office 2008 for Mac, ..... "
So, why don't you just paste the SIMPLE TEXT in Word (a 3rd-party 'utility') and save it as an Open XML there?.. you should get a much better look of what your co-workers are going to see in their Office...
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#6 User is offline   dfs 

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Posted 12 June 2008 - 01:43 PM

Note that if you have an Excel file consisting of two pages, a data sheet on one and a graph on the other, iWork can't import this properly.
This is off-subject, but I want get something off my chest concerning Pages. Previous versions had the standard "export as html" feature. In the current version this has been replaced by a more limited "Export to iWeb" option. Am I the only person who thinks this new inability to use Pages to create generic Web pages (that can then be further edited and manipulated in page creation apps such as Dreamweaver) is a real bummer?
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#7 User is offline   metavoy 

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Posted 12 June 2008 - 03:02 PM

How do you redefine the line spacing in both Word and Pages as pixels rather than lines?
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#8 User is offline   bonesb 

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Posted 12 June 2008 - 05:00 PM

iWork for Windows, anyone? Keynote Reader for Windows - I'd pay Apple for a version to issue to my clients....
Watched a PPT slideshow just this morning. Simply painful to watch. Great speaker, really needed help with his slideshow.
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#9 User is offline   bonesb 

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Posted 12 June 2008 - 05:02 PM

Separate comment - great article. Thank you for your time. If you could somehow convince Apple to use most-to-all of your contribution in an "iWork Compatibility Checker", kudos to you!
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#10 User is offline   Edmond Dantes 

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Posted 12 June 2008 - 05:31 PM

His point is regarding those who don't own Word. If you are a Mac only user, and have shunned all Microsoft programs, the only way to get XML is using text edit. Not that it really matters, most people wouldn't insist on XML.
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#11 User is offline   whitedog 

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Posted 13 June 2008 - 01:13 AM

While it's no doubt useful for some people to know how to move documents between iWork and MS Office, I have one word for the inherent and unavoidable compatibility issues: Nightmare. Also known as a colossal waste of time. Many Mac fans take pride in avoiding Microsoft Office applications. This is easy enough to do if your world is Mac centric. But many people don't have the luxury. For them the best solution for sharing documents with Windows users is decidedly not iWork. NeoOffice and OpenOffice.org are more suitable non-Microsoft options; if you live and/or work in a cross platform environment, however, there is simply no better solution than using a Mac version of Office. It's not a moral, ethical or partisan matter, or even an question of personal preference; it's just the way it is. It's not even a financial issue. If you compute the value of the time you would spend in dealing with interoperability problems between iWork and Office, including a premium for the aggravation involved, it would soon pay for your own personal copy of MS Office for Mac - many times over. In the end, your productivity suite is only a tool. Using the tool that gets the job done most efficiently and with the fewest hassles is, or should be, a no brainer. Anything else is, at best, a Pyrrhic victory on the alter of futility.
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#12 User is offline   dmac85 

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Posted 13 June 2008 - 06:38 AM

I don't understand why Pages requires an "export" to create a .doc compatible file to share with Windows users. The process is cumbersome. Why can't we "save as" .doc? I prefer using Pages but it's extra work and it's not convenient. I presume NeoOffice files can be saved in .doc format so why not Pages? What am I missing?
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#13 User is offline   macnews 

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Posted 13 June 2008 - 08:48 AM

I like Pages and Numbers, very simple and easy to use once you get used to finding the same features in Word/Excel. Granted, they aren't all there but I have found Pages and Numbers does most of what I want. My only problem, I am about the only person I share these files with who uses iWork. As a result, I switched back to Office and now mainly use Google Docs and Office. I tried Open Office but that was a complicated piece. Did a lot of stuff but couldn't get it to act like I wanted it to.
The one shinning point I find in iWork is Keynote. I love it, love it, love it. I'm not switching back to power point and people wonder how I make such nice presentations. Unlike Pages and Numbers, I have actually had a few people switch to Keynote and many more who would like to switch but are too afraid to move from Windows. I know, a shame.
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#14 User is offline   davidtruog 

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Posted 23 January 2009 - 06:32 AM

@dfs: No, I completely agree. Creating tables in Pages is easy, and there should be an easy way to export them as HTML tables.
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