UKC

As a Mac user, writing my latest book (well, it's taken me 6 years so far!) in Pages 09, I've recently upgraded my OS to 10.12.6 Sierra. Generally, Pages 09 works fine for most of the time, but crashes about every 2-3 days, and to get it to work again properly with 09 rather than the latest crap Pages, I have to reboot the computer. Because of this pain in the arse I'm very inclined to go over to Word for Mac. Question is: How robust is Office 2016 with Mac Sierra? What is Office 365? ... I think it is a kind of annual rental scheme? Googling this is all quite confusing – I've seen dire warnings NOT to do it through Amazon, for example, so thought I'd turn to the wisdom of UKC. Any recommendations for the best way to go? PS. I'm using a MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid-2014).

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Office 15.37 is as good as anything since Word 5.1a

It is only available on a rental basis now. You can get it from the Microsoft store for about £8 a month. https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/store/b/officeformac?icid=Cat-Office-mosaic...

I have a few screen drawing issues in Excel with big datasets and Microsoft's concept of a paragraph style is a joke, but in general it works.

Alternatively you could consider Scrivener or Mellel.

HTH Steve

In reply to SouthernSteve:

Thanks for that. I only need it for myself, so presumably I could get the Personal rather than Home version (for up to 5 users) for 5.99 a month? I can't see any difference except the number of people who can use it.

I have Scrivener, but find it just too complicated, and it's very slow making back-ups. I tend to use my Mac desktop a bit like a customised version of Scrivener anyway.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

I bought an office license off eBay (item 282615916339) for £14 (now gone up to £25) and it works perfectly. No subcription needed. I use office and excel regularly with no crashes so far (3months).

Also if you need anyone to format your book for print give me a message, I've just finished a couple

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Libre Office is free (donations accepted) and is great on a Mac! I use the excel part to do my accounts, and I'm sure the word processor is just as good. Fully compatible with office users too

In reply to jonny.greenwood:

If only...
frequent problems with formatting, especially of tables.

In reply to Doug:

Which way Doug? Opening xls file in Libre? Or t'other way?

In reply to jonny.greenwood:

Both in my experience. The files always open but don't always look like you expect them to. My experience is with text files (docx) and presentations (pptx) mostly, less with spreadsheets. My attempts to use Access files with Libre Office have never been succesful

In reply to BAdhoc:


Thanks, I'll take a look. Can you confirm it works fine in OS Sierra?


Actually, that's something I can do. I've page set a whole book already using InDesign.

This book has to have a big, established publisher, really.

In reply to jonny.greenwood:


Yes, I've looked at that. But 1) really I need MS Word/Office because that is standard in the publishing world, and if I do it in something else like Pages I need to be able to check out exactly what it looks like when exported to Word. 2) Libra doesn't have Outline View which I find absolutely essential as a writer.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

When you say Pages crashes, does it crash midway through or not open properly?
There was a strange bug that caused the latter which was fixed by rebuilding the font library. Both my dad and sister had this with their machines (an iMac and an MBP, both on El Cap) and it was an easy fix after some puzzled googling. Pages has been fine since, and the newest version I quite like by comparison to the half-arsed prior version.

Otherwise I can confirm as SouthernSteve that Office for Mac is actually good these days - yes it is bloatware but it is at least similar to everyone else's bloatware which must be good! Very minor interoperability problems between OSX and W10 versions, usually formatting in powerpoint is the main issue. I haven't come across any real issues with word outside of our corporate IT dysfunction ones.

b

In reply to ben b:

Thanks for very helpful reply.


During use – typically after several days, as if triggered by a ?memory problem. The file for the icon on the directory window then turns black (loses the Pages logo) and, if you re-open it on Pages 09, it opens as a blank page. It can only then be opened with the latest Mac Pages. It then as to be exported/saved again as a Pages 09 file. Then all is well again.

One obvious problem is that I have both versions of Pages on my computer. The catch 22 is that I can't get rid of the latest one (which is far inferior to 09) because I need it to open files which give difficulty, as above.


Biggest snag for me is that it hasn't got 'Document Outline' view. Which is just about indispensible when writing a huge historical biography, as I am now.


Agreed with all this, which is exactly why I want it on my Mac now. So I will go ahead and get.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

I have just ordered a new Mac Book Pro with Word for Mac, and bought it outright. You don't have to rent the Word software.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Hi Gordon,

My understanding is that Word isn't ideal for really big documents, unfortunately. Few word processors are... my understanding is that LaTeX in various forms is the most stable for big documents (and less risk of Microsoft related viruses etc).

I have used LaTeX in small documents (papers) and found it quite good once the initial learning curve is negotiated.

Also has the advantage of being free, and I gather well liked by typesetters etc.

HTH

b

In reply to ben b:

Agree its not so great when documents get too long but is fine if each chapter (or similar) has its own file. Needs a little care with getting the numbering of pages, figures etc right but easier than dealing with large unstable files

In reply to veteye:

Have you bought Word or the full office outright - the full office appears to be over £212 which is about 2 years subscription and with all the horrors of having to ring MS if you need to reinstall more than a couple of times. Before 365 I have been on the phone for long periods proving we were the owner and not using a pirate copy and then being cut off, whereas now you just log in, disable an installation and away you go.

In reply to ben b:

I never got into LaTeX, but we could reminisce about Framemaker for Mac (RIP c 2005). This was such a competent tool for long structured documents, although I always lamented that it didn't work with Endnote, which Word does well. We use Indesign for output now and an Adobe Creative Cloud Subscription makes the Microsoft office ones look very reasonable!

In reply to SouthernSteve:

Yes, Adobe Creative Cloud subscription is a right old rip-off.

In reply to ben b:


I think the first draft will be about 900 pages, with no pictures, so should be OK. I do need to have it on one file. It'll be on Pages, a Pdf, and rtf as well.

For typesetting I imagine it will be put on to InDesign (as I've done in the past). But that's only at a very late stage when the thing has been completely copy-edited.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

That's pretty huge. What's the rationale for one document? I would be making hundreds of back-ups and trying not to use too many other resources on the computer when using the document. Things that you already know I am sure!

However, I just made a 1200 page document by duplicating a recent set of student notes (with images and tables) a few times into one document and it was just as responsive as a small document (MBP with 16GB RAM) even after some edits, so I think you will be fine.

In reply to SouthernSteve:


The rationale is simple if you're writing a book that has any kind of artistic merit: every word in the book quite literally relates to every other word. The thing is a whole. Subtle metaphors and themes will run through the whole book. You have to avoid repetition and yet there are times when a theme inevitably has to re-emerge. You have to be able to see exactly how you referred to it before/ you want to be able to refer easily, back and forth, over the whole book while you're working on it. A modern word processor will let you do that. Genius writers of the past had to rely on their own memory, or spend hours searching back over what they'd already written.

Yes, I make a quite ridiculous number of back-ups while I'm working. I'm also now using this thing call ForeverSave2 which does it automatically however often you set it, e.g every 2 minutes.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:
Yup running Sierra, seems to be fine. Haven't used any massive files tho.

And no problem, 'shy bairns yet nowt' and all that, keep me in mind for any smaller projects

And good luck with your book!

Edit: ps from my experience much easier to format in indesign with it split into chapters.