Pages to Word conversion

SusanMats wrote:

I'm considering buying Word for Mac, but the reviews are NOT glowing.

It has been my observation that online reviews are less and less to be trusted. Much of the time, people seem to post, especially the bad reviews, because they enjoy the feeling of self-righteous indignation. Also, people are more likely to post a negative review than a mildly positive one.

I've been using Word for Mac since...... well, sometime in the last century. With the exception of, I believe Word 6, which was so bad that, as I recall, MS started selling Word 5 again, Word is fine. It does not induce a life-changing sense of joy but, it reliably gets the job done. It's roughly on a par with Word for Windows so sharing back and forth between platforms is almost seamless.

And, no, I've never posted an online review for Word.

Best of luck.

I use the current version of Microsoft Office for Mac and find it to be excellent. But there are other options that are free and are also more compatible with Office apps than Pages is.

You can either subscribe to Microsoft 365 or you can make a one-time purchase of Microsoft Office. See: https://products.office.com/en-us/buy/compare-microsoft-office-products-for-mac?ms.officeurl=mac-compare-redir

Or use the free and very good Libre Office https://www.libreoffice.org/

or the free Microsoft Office on the web: https://products.office.com/en-us/free-office-online-for-the-web

or Google Docs: https://www.google.com/docs/about/

The difference between current versions of Word for Mac is that they open, edit, and save Word content all in its native document format. Pages, not being a Word clone, depends on translation from a Pages document into whatever results as a Word document. Apple does not guarantee the accuracy of that translation, nor its appearance when viewed in MS Word.

When you are sharing Word documents with others that are using Word, then the less embarrassing solution is to use MS Word yourself and share the original, native Word document that was not translated from a different word processing application.

Not what you want to hear, but if applicable, it is why corporations have application and data policies so there are no surprises with document exchange between employees, suppliers, and customers.

I also see too frequently where there is a recommendation to just use the free LibreOffice Suite to create or share with Word users. If they are truly simple documents, then it would probably be ok, but there are features in LibreOffice Writer that do not exist in MS Word or may be implemented differently, and you can see the potential exposure there as well.

Hi Susan,

The essential advice is to Use the tool that is best for the job. Ig your communications and file sharing is primarily with Windows users, using Word, your best comparability will come from using Word for Mac, with LibreOffice a less expensive, but capable option.

Pages will do successful translations to Word for simple documents, but, as you've found, not for those using Pages features not supported, or supported differently in MS Word.

Regards,

Barry

As you may already know SusanMats, you cannot purchase Microsoft Word for Mac as a standalone application. You have to buy (or actually rent) the whole Microsoft Office Suite which will cost you $70 bucks a year for the rest of your life (maybe it's worth it). The iPad version of Word I believe is still free as is the online version but not the Mac version.

jakegittes1974 wrote:

As you may already know SusanMats, you cannot purchase Microsoft Word for Mac as a standalone application. You have to buy (or actually rent) the whole Microsoft Office Suite which will cost you $70 bucks a year for the rest of your life (maybe it's worth it). The iPad version of Word I believe is still free as is the online version but not the Mac version.

You can make a one-time purchase of Microsoft Office for Mac for $149.99 (in the U.S.) without paying annually for the rest of your life. See: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/buy/compare-microsoft-365-products-for-mac

The iPad version is free to download but it requires a Microsoft 365 subscription to create or edit documents unless the iPad screen size is not smaller than 10.1 inches.

I use Word for Mac but Libre Office is also a very good option: https://www.libreoffice.org/

You can buy Word separately for the same price as Office 2019 Home & Student ($150) which is simply not worth the price.