[Macworld]

Post your comments for Office 2008 vs. iWork '08: Can they get along? here

[harpo64]

In my experience I would even question the ability of Pages to open Word files that contain anything more than text with basic formatting. This includes files that have tables, graphics, and any sort of layout features. Someone I work with gives me files in Word 2003/XP format and if I need to see how things actually look, as opposed to just needing the text, I have to open them in Word 2004 on Mac, and even then it's not always the same. The same is true in reverse; when I have documents with any advanced formatting, I have to export them to Word and then send, and again even then layout of text and graphics is often very messed up. I think Apple really overstates this claim. If all you have is text in your documents fine, but anything with any sort of page layout/desktop publishing features does not transfer well at all.

[GulfCoast]

I've been unable to open lengthy documents created in Office 2004 with Pages AND have large numbers of comments from the Word doc appear as well. I would have been happy to switch to Pages, but I needed those comments. . .this worked with smaller documents, but not with larger ones (around to 70,000 words)

[montgomery_burns]

When using Keynote to open Powerpoint presentations that contain automatic slide numbering, the slide numbers did not appear in Keynote.

[meta]

So, how well does Office open iWork files, or OpenDocument files?

Or are we applying double standards in this review process?

[reclusivemonkey]

Its not double standards; its simply living in the real world. The number of Office files out there compared with the number of iWork files is astronomically huge. Also, iWork claims to be able to compatible wth Office files whereas Office makes no such claim about iWork files.

[Filburt]

For collaborating documents and spreadsheets with other Office users, particularly Office for Windows users, iWork doesn't cut it. When exchanging and revising such files, revision history, exact formatting, and embedded data, must remain untouched.

[MJBlair]

As a novelist, my formatting needs are generally pretty simple. I receive marked up MSS from editors who use Word Track Changes and Comments. Pages opened a 90,000 word (270 page) Word document liberally sprinkled with tracked changes and comments without a hitch (and comments are a darned sight easier to find in Pages that in Word 2004). I did my revisions in Pages, accepted all changes, then exported back to Word 2004 to send back to my editor (not without checking it over first, though). However, with a relatively short technical document, again with no complex formatting, when exporting from Pages with tracking on, some of the tracking got messed up in the Word version. At the line edit and copy edit stage of my next book, I'm going to have to leave tracking on when I send the MS back. Not sure I'll feel comfortable doing in with Pages.

I haven't tried importing a .docx files (and Pages exports only .doc), but I suspect things might be a little dicier. In my opinion, while I really like Pages, it's not quite ready to claim true compatibility with Word.

Michael Blair
--


The Dells: A Joe Shoe Mystery, December 2007, Dundurn Press
Overexposed, A Granville Island Mystery, February 2006, Dundurn Press
A Hard Winter Rain, October 2004, Dundurn Press
If Looks Could Kill, 2001, McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

[cweber]

I tested extensively lat year, Office 2004 vs. iWork '06 and was happy enough with the results. The usual caveats apply, of course: We know that revision history and change bars don't survive the roundtrip, and if you are a stickler for "exact match" then you shouldn't even contemplate the issue, and perhaps not even Office Mac vs. Office Windows. But on the whole I find compatibility more than good enough.
I have sent my daughter to college with only iWork '06 and now iWork '08 as an Office suite. This was as much a test, as an attempt to shield her from the ugliness and idiosyncracies characteristic of Office (although she's plenty capable of dealing with those, I just don't think she ought to). She has almost two years behind her now without any pain, receiving and sending Office-formatted documents all the time.

[LukeBacon]

For me the limitation of iWork is its lack of ability to 'Save' properly as an office .doc etc... having to use the 'Export' feature does rather devalue this ability, and for me it's loss of an absolute essential.

[EthanB]

The issue isn't just is Office 2008 compatible with iWork, but is it compatible with early versions (PC or Mac) of Office. Early version of Word, either for Mac or PC, cannot open Office 2007/Office 2008 documents.
As an educator, I know that several of my colleagues who have earlier Office versions for PC cannot open documents from students (and others) using Office 2007.
For the most part I've had pretty fair luck opening .docx in Pages and then saving it as .doc to open in Word or editing it in Pages and exporting it as .doc, which the sender can then open, no matter his/her version of Word.

[mgibeault]

I've been using iWork 08 while co-workers are all using Office 2003. Problems so far:
-Opening a Word document template (.dot), page numbers aren't recognized and are then dumb numbers. Page numbers in Pages stay page numbers when exported to Word.
-Word Fields aren't recognized, they are translated as dumb text. That's a major problem for us because if a document is opened in Pages this functionality is lost even when later opened in Word.
-Events within a slide seems to be timed differently in Keynote than in PowerPoint. I opened a PowerPoint presentation in Keynote it looks like Keynote will start an event's counter from the moment the preceding event will end where PowerPoint used a "from the start of the slide" base for all event. So in Keynote the events where increasingly deferred and I had to change all the timings.
-A protected Excel file seems to be impossible to open in Numbers?
-The Export-instead-of-Save-as-Word problem is irritating.

[folklore]

I'm with most other posters here. Simple text comes through okay, but other features sometimes don't. If you're collaborating only occasionally, iWork will probably work for you most of the time. If you make a living collaborating with Windows users, probably not.
This isn't terribly surprising. I've had trouble with Word 2004 rendering Word 2003 files properly, especially when there's tricky formatting or pagination.
If you need 100% compatibility with Office for Windows, the only option is to actually run Office for Windows.

[Gatesbasher]

reclusivemonkey said:

Its not double standards; its simply living in the real world. The number of Office files out there compared with the number of iWork files is astronomically huge. Also, iWork claims to be able to compatible wth Office files whereas Office makes no such claim about iWork files.

This is such baloney! It IS a double standard: Apple is taken to task for not being 100% compatible with the moving target that is Microsoft Office, while the fact that Microsoft can't keep successive versions compatible with EACH OTHER doesn't get a mention. And the number of people still using Office 2004 or earlier compared with those using Office 2007 is not small, either.