UKC

Hi folks,
my wife has a Macbook Air and needs to be able to write pages of reports which she can then email to her email account at work, edit on a normal microsoft type system and then cut and paste into the report template.

Looking on the net, there seems to be quite a few things and I have no idea. Basically something like word would be perfect as she doesn't need to do any tables, graphs etc.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? Also, don't want to spend a fortune.

Thanks in advance, Den

In reply to Denni: I think what you're asking for is Microsoft Word... it's been available in an apple compatible version for some time now.

Failing that Open Office is free, good and compatible with the MS .doc and .docx formats.

In reply to Denni:

iWorks Pages is probably the best choice for straight forward text editing.
Although depending on your wifes tastes and work might be worth checking if there are any deals for MS Office through work.
MS do offers for certain companies (I guess based on overall contract size etc) where the employees can buy office massively discounted eg 10-20 quid for the entire suite.

In reply to dissonance:

Hi folks,
thanks for the advice.
My wife is in the military and she did indeed get a discount for a Microsoft programme for her Mac but it refused point blank to go on her mac and it turns out the problem was the Air is apparently not suitable for that particular programme (I'm sure it was word).

Will have a look at iWorks and word again.

Thanks again, Den

In reply to Denni:


I have "Microsoft Office for Mac" running on my Macbook Air and it works fine.

You could check the compatibility between the OSX version and the Office version.

In reply to Coel Hellier:


Snap - no problems with Word and/or swapping documents between it and my windows work PC.

In reply to Helen R:

Thanks again folks. Looks good but wondering if the amount of work she has to do warrants the price tag. Still, her choice and it will of course already be familiar to her so nothing new to learn

Cheers, Den

In reply to Denni:

Pages is fine, in fact rather better in some respects than Word (though with fewer features). You can export any Pages document as a .doc file for those who are using Word. Also as a Pdf.

In reply to Denni: I'd agree with Gordon. Pages is good and export for word works very well. Word for mac has a lot more bells and whistles but it's a clunkier interface and the bells and whistles aren't used 99.9% of the time

In reply to pneame: How much does Pages cost ? Open Office is free, although the compatibility with MS Word isn't as good as it should be, that said, for simple documents its fine

To the OP - older versions of Office for Mac won't work with the latest editions of OS X (not sure when the changes were made but my Office for Mac 2010 wouldn't install on a Mac bought this year)

In reply to Doug: Open office is fine for straight text, but anything with tables etc. and the .doc conversion starts getting fruity quickly.
MS Office for Mac runs great on by Macbook Air (Lion)

In reply to Doug:
~ £30 - you buy through Apples App store,

In reply to Doug:
You are correct - the problem is not with the office apps per se, but that the *installer* for versions of office before 2008 was a power-pc app, and required rosetta to work on intel machines. Rosetta was removed from OS-X after snow-leopard.
Any version of office from 2008 should be fine on an Air.

In reply to Denni: any reason google docs wouldnt work? It's free, covers all the basics and there's no need to email documents around because they're all stored on google drive.

In reply to Denni:

She can get the full office for Mac suite for £8 through the home use programme, accessible through armynet.

In reply to Denni:

May I suggest Kingsoft

It only works on Windows and Android but I am sure that there are methods that can get it to work with apple.

http://www.kingsoftstore.co.uk/

There is also Libra Office
http://www.libreoffice.org/