Is Microsoft office best for Mac.

[olimason]

Hi there,

Really hoping for some good advice regards my Mac Book.

Have been suggested open office for the Mac Book, as been told entourage is not the best.

Some advice would be great

cheers

Oli

 

[NextPoint]

Open office will suit most of your needs. If you are looking to do pretty things like leaflets and presentations, you should get iWorks - it's less expensive and better than Office.

 

[Call Assistant UK]

IMOH Entourage is absolute pants and have not been able to use it, but Apple Mail which comes with your Mac, again IMOH is great.

Ok it doesn't have the calendar in it, but easily integrates to your iCal same with your contacts.

If anything I would recommend you use Apple Mail.

As for Office. I haven't been a big fan of open office, but like the concept, and have used it once or twice.

I currently use Office on all our Macs, and short of a few hicups, which aren't serious to the operation of office (just individuals preferences) its been great for us.

iWorks, yes its much cheaper and will do what you need it to do, I have it, but haven't looked at it since putting office on.

Its really down to your own preference and if you have money to spend on it. If you are looking to cut back - open office, if you are looking to be Mac loyal, stick with iWorks and if you know how to use office and like it, spend that little bit more and go for that.

The only caution I would throw you - if you use macros on any of your documents, Office for Mac doesn't support this, so all your fancy spreadsheets if any wouldn't be any use on the mac without re scripting them.

 

[JohnNash]

I tried a few and have currently settled on Microsoft Office.

I loved iWork, it was so simple, and OpenOffice was good, but I found I was getting formatting errors if I then had to transfer over to a PC so went back to Office.

Apple Mail seems fine (my version is 2.1.3). Does take a little getting used to when switching from Outlook, particularly the whole calendar / contacts integration, which I don't personally think is great. Had a few problems setting up imap initially, but was with Google Apps so plenty of support on line and got it working fine after a couple of hours.

 

[Call Assistant UK]

Thats interesting John, All our Macs are setup with IMAP and I found it easier to set up than outlook.

I think contacts and calendar integration is a bit 'long winded', but when you can select the number/date/day and use the drop down box to add to iCal or contacts, I thought that was fantastic.

Possibly as my version is the latest, I don't know.

The getting used to bit from outlook was the big thing I found, but 14 months on, I don't think I would go back to Outlook now.

 

[JohnNash]

Don't think it is entirely the fault of Apple Mail. It seems to be a pretty well known problem between Mail and Google Apps so managed to get it sorted after a while. I was struggling to get sent items in the sent folder, new items in the inbox, and trash in the trash but managed to resolve it with the 'Mailbox > Use This Mailbox For' option and not had a problem since.

One thing I do use a lot and really like is the search function, it is so much quicker than Outlook. Smart folders are really useful too.

 

[Call Assistant UK]

I actually can't get the hang of the smartmailbox solution, but agreed the spotlight search function is great, and wonder now how I managed without it.

 

[Edward Moss]

I use Office, mainly because you can see the size of the Entourage email when it's sending, something which Mail doesn't have, well it didn't last time I played with it.

I've heard only good things about open office, I would give that a go first and see if it meets your requirements.

I've used Office since 2003, only real problem I've had is synching Office calendar with ical and mobile me, gave up in the end and now only use ical.

 

[JohnNash]

The spotlight search has made me more disorganised though - no filing, just searching!

 

[spreadsheetsdirect]

Something to take into account if you want to use macros and have Windows compatibility, Office 2008 doesn't have VBA only Applescript. Then again neither does Open Office but OO basic should work on both Windows & Apple.

 

[carbontwelve]

I use office on my mac as it is in my opinion the best for word processing and spreadsheets. I wouldn't recommend outlook on a mac as the default osx mail app is easier to set up and use. However if like me you have several IMAP email accounts each with large archives then do not use mail, do not use outlook, use Mozilla Thunderbird - out of all the mail apps I have used in the past ten years Thunderbird has to be hands down the most reliable, especially when you have large IMAP mailboxes.