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iWork

Compatible with Word, slightly....

Written by MC from Hebburn

27-Feb-2009

Yes iWork is compatible with Word. But, it is compatible in that you can open a document in word which doesn't look like the document that you typed on pages. Colours and layout for instance are not what they are when you saved your file as a .doc
I tried this using fonts which are native both to Pages and Word, such as Arial and Times New Roman. So there should be no reason why there should be problems. But there are, and it is really annoying.
Keynote is excellent, but I have not yet used it save as .ppt feature. I have not yet used Numbers for this purpose either.
However, how can you rate a package which says it is compatible with another format, when it isn't compatible in its entirety! I can't, hence two stars.

61 of 68 people found this useful

iWork

Nice to use but it's no PowerPoint substitute

Written by KL from High Wycombe,

25-Jan-2009

I am a relatively heavy professional user of Keynote 08 and (when clients demand it) PowerPoint. Keynote has for me, always been the more intuitive, quicker and enjoyable of the two to use, but PPT 2008 leapt so far ahead in terms of functionality that I have found myself putting-up with its slow, clunky interface to gain the benefits of vastly superior range of objects, shapes and superb fills (the 3D options are phenomenal) which can be created then cut and pasted as pdfs or jpegs to be cropped (yes with a proper crop tool), built-up, the vastly superior reference tools, easy insertion of clip art (yes, I hate it too... but sometimes needs must), the auto save function (which has been a lifesaver many times), the smaller and client-friendlier pptx files, etc. etc. I was keenly looking forward to iWork 09 to see how Apple had responded by, hopefully, leap-frogging its adversary. What a bitter disappointment it has been and a squandered opportunity for Apple to regain the lead over PowerPoint. I don't need gimmicky new templates (professional users have their own templates) or flashy animation, I want features that enable me to make higher-quality, more polished-looking presentations. I thought that was what using a Mac was all about? Looks like I'll using PowerPoint more than I wanted to after all.

42 of 62 people found this useful

iWork

Numbers vs Excel

Written by CB from Solihull

08-Nov-2009

Numbers has some nice features but is underdeveloped and grindingly slow when processing large amounts of data. Had to buy Office just for Excel.

17 of 19 people found this useful

iWork

Mail merge...

Written by LS from BRISTOL

02-Mar-2009

I love Pages a lot. But unfortunately I run a small business that relies on a setup where I'm using spreadsheet data to create documents and Pages just doesn't allow me to 'custom' choose the spreadsheet records individually to create my end document.

Also, as another reviewer has pointed out - when you save your document for compatibility purposes as a .doc (because that's what the rest of the world uses) it won't appear the same as it beautifully did on your machine.

If however, you are using Pages for writing and printing at home, with no need for compatibility worries, then it's freaking awesome.

Numbers is brilliant too, play with the pre-created spreadsheets. Again, saving these as .xls will affect the way they look.

Enjoy!

53 of 55 people found this useful

iWork

Nice software but...

Written by RB from Cobham

09-Mar-2009

I have encountered compatibility issues - images going missing, text changes - when saving files as word docs and sending them onto clients; I don't have this problem when using Microsoft Office on my PC. For this reason, I will not be using iWorks as an alternative to Microsoft Office for business purposes.

However, I have bought a copy so that I can read word docs and excel spreadsheets without having to switch on my pc. It's worth giving this software a free months trial to find out for yourself.

But it is a nice piece of software for the money.

41 of 45 people found this useful

iWork

Its good to Share

Written by MH from Ashford

09-Mar-2009

I must say that the sheer ability to share numbers, pages and keynote documents with a number of people at the same time is somewhat special. The formatting of the documents are retained and the ability to let people comment and then download whatever version you specify is a real treat. Well done apple for this piece of '09. However, not all greatness, the ability to share the same document formatting into the (sadly true) common .doc file type is virtually non existent, even when using cross platform settings such as same fonts and text alignment and tables. For this reason I have to go from a potential 4 stars to 3.

46 of 57 people found this useful

iWork

Almost there

Written by JK from PRESTON

28-Jul-2009

I mostly use the Pages feature of iWork. As a word processing program its pretty good but still needs extra refinements. Some shortcomings already mentioned - mine are:
1. No automatic Drop Cap function
2. No page imposition function for booklet printing
3. Some functions don't save accurately in .doc or .docx

28 of 33 people found this useful

iWork

Pretty Good. Lacks some Office functionality/ease of use

Written by MS from Reading

22-Jan-2009

I'm new to the Mac and consider myself a intermediate/advanced level user of MS Office. iWork 09 is pretty good and seems to handle most of what I want to do, but it isn't as useable as Office it must be said. For example, want to select multiple objects? Word, just select the arrow tool and drag a box around the things you want to select... in Pages you have to hold down shift and click on every item you want one-by-one. Want to have truly floating objects over text, a logo in a header with some text nearby for example, in Pages I can't stop the text being re-arranged as you position the logo, whereas in Word this is easy.

Overall, pretty good, but don't throw away the copy of Office yet!

27 of 39 people found this useful

iWork

Great new features but basic flaws remain

Written by AW from Loughton

07-Jan-2009

I love the new outline view on Pages, it will help organise my thoughts as I am writing. Most of the other things seem evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Three things massively disappoint though.
1. STILL no Autosave! Why, o why won't they give us an autosave????
2. STILL no support for footnotes on pasting. If free software such as openoffice can allow you to copy a piece of text and its footnote goes with it, why cant Pages? Would make it work much more nicely with software such as Logos Bible Software.
3. The new iwork on the web is a great idea but crippled by the lack of an ability to edit the actual text on the site and then "track changes" comments are nice, but editting the text would make this a must-have rather than something that has amused me for a few minutes.

14 of 17 people found this useful

iWork

A mixed bag...

Written by FB from London

12-Jan-2009

Numbers09 finally delivers error bars! Pages09 still doesn't cope with tables very well. You can't get a TOC and TOF in the same document, but EndNote X2 is supported. Keynote 09 fixes an export bug that caused presentations with presentation notes to be unreadable in Powerpoint. C'mon Apple... you're nearly there!

163 of 200 people found this useful

iWork

Great Improvement

Written by PG from Liverpool

02-Apr-2009

Pages '09 wipes the floor with M'Word. And a vast improvement on iworks '08. Definite must have for any Mac. Only four stars because unlike M'word it doesn't have an equation editor built in, and if you want that your told you have to fork out an extra £50 odd to a different company.

75 of 84 people found this useful

iWork

A pretty good purchase

Written by DG from Tullamore

24-Aug-2009

Bought this a few months ago because Office for Mac just didn't work for me and I really didn't like it, it just seemed to be too slow. So got iWorks and its a treat to use.

Pages, is very nice to use, the inspector has all the functions you need when writing your docs and you can drag it around the screen to suite your needs. Pages all in all is a very nice piece of software for the price. The layout of the UI is very intuitive and just feels like every thing is where it should be. Any advanced functions you need are in the inspector and you don't find yourself spending too long searching for the option.

Keynote, is very good if not better alternative to PowerPoint. The templates are very crisp, clean and very pleasing to the eye when your doing your presentations. When its connected to a projector it has pretty much the same functions and display as PowerPoint on the second screen

Numbers is very good at working with small sets of numbers. The graphs that you can create again are more clean and crisp then the Office counterpart. But when you have large data sets in the range of thousands, Numbers gets very very slow, much slower that it should be. It is still usable but you could be waiting for 2-4 seconds for any mouse click or update.

All in all, a great alternative to Outlook, the fonts, graphics and design of the UI make it very nice to use and a pleasure to work with.

51 of 54 people found this useful

iWork

Pages still limited

Written by PS from Rangeworthy

19-Jan-2009

Pages still doesn't support multiple tables of contents, for table of tables and tables of figures. Supporting a single bibliography tool is not great especially when that tool is endnote, which costs more than iWork. Other than that it's nearly there.

Disappointing really. Perhaps iWork '10.

25 of 30 people found this useful

iWork

great product

Written by PD from Inverness

19-Jun-2009

have only limited usage but, so far great product.

feature rich, smart and pleasing interface, this does the business for sure. share option, is very clever, particularly as you can then decide to send as pdf, work, excel etc. is good

opening up old ms office files, does lead to some loss in functions/format (hence 4 stars).

if you have loads of ms office files, with lots of custom formatting, then perhaps the way is with MS; if you have simple/std ms files this is a excellent buy

numbers is particularly good

well worth the money

18 of 22 people found this useful

iWork

iwork beats office

Written by MF from Barnet

25-Nov-2009

Pages is far better for documents than word and its page layout is for my purposes is much easier to get results than top end quark or indesign.

Keynote is also superior to powerpoint, although I find excel easier to use than numbers. My main irritant is the use of separate pallete for fonts ( menu) and text alignment ( inspector). It would be much easier in the same place.

9 of 9 people found this useful

iWork

Great Product

Written by DS from Rochdale

06-Jan-2009

Great update to the previous version. Now includes additions such as the ability to undelete actions at last! You can now send documents directly into e-mails as PDF / Word / Excel formats and also publish documents to iWork for others to add notes and also to download. Pages now includes mail merge with numbers, a great full screen view and lots of other additions which makes it more intuitive to use. Numbers at last gives the average user much easy ways of adding formulas and table categories to spreadsheets.

As an average user who uses the software for home and small business, it does everything that i need and now with the easier ways of sharing documents in the mainstream formats i can completely ditch office for mac.

282 of 300 people found this useful

iWork

Absolutley Fantastic Product! Worth every penny!

Written by MK from Carrickfergus

11-Jan-2009

I have been using Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 up until this point because iWork wasn't stepping up to the mark! With this release of iWork 2009, it not only steps up to the mark, but goes beyond. Welcome additions and easy to use! Love it! Great work apple!

196 of 221 people found this useful

iWork

Outstanding

Written by NK from AALBORG

27-Jan-2009

Normally, I had to switch to my old Windows-computer to make spreadsheets in Excel, because Numbers simlpy lacked some important features - with iWork '09, I don't have to. Oh, and Pages' full-screen mode is perfect for people (like me), that are easily disturbed by anything other on the screen!

54 of 55 people found this useful