does microsoft office 2004 for mac matter?

triple h

ok, I need office 2004 for mac, its a fact. But the price 500.00 euro is a bit steep.

I reckon i am better off buying iwork for 79.00 euro . pages seems good enough for my needs. + i can then buy microsoft excel 2004 for mac 299.00 euro (which i will need) grand total 378.00 euro.

I was just wondering. Actually i know, that people in here will put me on the right road. Has anyone in here bought office 2004 or gone a diff. road?

I only activated my 30 day free trial version of iwork today, so its my first time to use iwork. Is pages the equal of word??? will pages open all documents? I am afraid (WARNING THE NEXT FEW WORDS I TYPE MAY BE BULL, I HONESTLY DONT KNOW ) anyway, as i was saying i am afraid i come across an attachment in an e-mail that only word can open.

Also i see microsoft have excel 2007 out now, but not for mac yet. will i wait?

p.s. how do i type the euro sign?

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look this is what i get 2 and @, no euro sign

Rebeller

If all you need is a word processor, spreadsheet programme for everydau home use then you should consider the free open source Neo Office.

You can download it here

Another alternative is Open Office which also requires installation of the X11 component to run on macs.

Download here

Both programmes can open documents created in Microsoft Office.

However, since they're open source an free they mightn't be as stable as microsoft office. This is particularly true for Neo Office.

I've used both and have found them reliable and user friendly.

Microsoft Office on Mac is not as nice as the PC version. The menus are not as user friendly.

Good luck.

DadaKopf

Word for Mac is also useless in handling documents made on PC that have footnotes and comments.

One problem which seriously turns me off NeoOffice is that it won't proberly do apostrophes. They've sorted out converting double-quotation marks, but it still doesn't fix single ones.

Unless anyone here knows something I don't?

xebec

triple h wrote:

p.s. how do i type the euro sign?

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look this is what i get 2 and @, no euro sign

Try pressing the alt key and 2 (alt+2) should give you the € symbol

ZENER

Another thing: Office is not yet a Universal Binary so runs a little slower on Intel Macs.

I've used Open Office a couple of times and found it quirkey but usable for most things. There is also Googles online Word Processor and Spreadsheet programs. Documents accessible from anywhere !!

By the way where are you getting that 500 quid figure from ? Student Edition is only ST£81 on Amazon ?! Don't worry about Virtual PC because it doesn't work on Intel anyway. Surely you know a student somewhere ?

ZEN

Oriel

Bt

ZENER

^^^^ ?? What's "Bt"


Edit: Oh gotcha !!
ZEN

Milo

Don't know if you're a student (maybe you know one!! ) but if you're dead set on MS Office try http://www.software4students.ie

It strikes me as being a little cheaper than the €500 mark!

Cabaal

Rebeller wrote:

However, since they're open source an free they mightn't be as stable as microsoft office. This is particularly true for Neo Office.

imho even if software is open source it certainly doesn't mean its any less stable or un-stable then software you get from the likes of Microsoft.

Ham'nd'egger

For what it's worth, I bought MS Office for Mac for €180 in the 3G store in Henry Street, and the O2 shop accross from them are happy to sell it to you for the same rate without a student card.

If you want just to type stuff to print on your own Mac, then have a look at Textedit Pro, it does the bare bones of typing words that 90% of MS Word usrs would just use and is on a Mac for free; well it was on my Pbook and iMac!

Breezer

imho even if software is open source it certainly doesn't mean its any less stable or un-stable then software you get from the likes of Microsoft.

No but NeoOffice 2 is currently beta software. I love the program but it certainly has some pretty irritating bugs. For example, I've found that when viewing slideshows created with Powerpoint that contain even simple "appear" animations, some of these are randomly left out so you miss half the information. Go back and view it again and a different one'll be left out. Also I've found that when you apply certain formatting to pictures in Writer and export as a .doc, the file crashes Microsoft Word on PCs. You can work around these of course but it's not ideal for a professional environment where efficiency is essential.

Haven't tried the older (stable) version 1 but from what I've read it doesn't measure up to Microsoft Office in terms of features, particularly Impress (the Powerpoint equivalent).

OpenOffice.org, on the other hand, is stable although it requires you to install X11 and doesn't look or function like other Mac applications (menus in the window rather than the menu bar at the top, no aqua interface...).

Be aware that neither of these programs supports Microsoft Office macros. Also if Excel is essential you'd want to read up on the differences between it and OpenOffice.org/NeoOffice Calc, AFAIK they're pretty much neck-on-neck feature-wise but there's some compatability issues regarding charts and possibly in other areas.

Star Office is a commercial product from Sun Microsystems which retails for around €80 and from what I hear is just as good as Microsoft Office. Though as other posters have said, you must know a student somewhere, and to absolutely ensure 100% compatibility Microsoft might be your best bet. Though even then there could be PC/Mac compatibility issues.

korramatta

Well, Appleworks which comes free(with iMac's, not portable mac's) is doing the job for me. Comes with a spreadsheet,word processor and other useful apps. You can save as and open office compatible documents!

Is your keyboard set to Irish layout? try pressing Alt+2 to get €, should work!