Office for Mac Vs. Pages?

LottieLou

I have scoured the internet for reviews and people's opinions but have got no further in finding an answer!!

I got my MBP last year and was eligible for the £70 apple gift card as I am still classed as a student.

I have started doing a 15,000 word research dissertation and thought I would get Office for Mac, but I have been putting it off as it isn't exactly cheap. Some online 'reviews' have mentioned to get Pages instead. It looks ok, but I'm dubious as to wether it will turn into more hassle when following uni guidelines on how they want the work set out.

Que the confusion.

Has anyone got any experience with either programmes? I have just over £50 credit left on my apple card, so Office would work out as approx £50 and Pages £14.99

paddyrg

Pages is fine if you never want to send the document to anyone or use any advanced features. Office for Mac includes Word which is an absolutely super word processor plus Excel which is the industry de facto standard, plus power point for when you want to present your work.

There is also Libre Office which is free and massively better than Pages and Numbers which really are not great and barely compatible with anyone or anything else. Libre Office is very compatible with Microsoft Office, especially if you use the .doc and .xls etc formats. Personally I think MS Office has the edge still, but for £0, Libre Office is probably your best bet.

Olza23

I agree with Paddy

There is nothing wrong with using Pages for your uni work but I bet your uni has Microsoft word 2007 or and oldish version! The layout of the pages will be different and it will look all seamless on your MBP it may be off centre for example when they open it.

Does it have to be sent electronically? I know you can save pages files as word files but it's never 100%. In the past I've saved them as a .PDF and printed them....kind of defeats the object.

TheChillPill

I'm a Mac fanboy, and even I would agree that Office is a better proposition. Yes, it has a lot of stuff that I would class as 'fluff', but it's a solid product that has had plenty of development.

Pages has price on it's side, and it's a good product for creating stylish documents. It works well if you want to save as a PDF, or simply print them out - and if that's all you want to do, I'd go with Pages.

If, however, you want to share documents with PC-users, then Office is definitely the way to go. Also, if you ever want to use spreadsheets, Excel is a long way ahead of Numbers.

LottieLou

Thank you for you're replies!

I think you have all made it pretty clear for me that Pages probably isn't suitable for what I need. I would only be sending small sections of my work to my tutor, and I am submitting it in printed form but office overall is seeming like the better option (whilst I have the discount). I may as well check out Libre Office first though.

fishybusiness

I have started doing a 15,000 word research dissertation and thought I would get Office for Mac, but I have been putting it off as it isn't exactly cheap

Whichever you use will be a hassle, 15k is a big document for Word. It is not the actual writing, but the finding of information, moving around the document in a speedy fashion, and formatting, plus sorting the citations.

I wonder if you have thought of using something like Scrivener for drafting it out, and also using a citation manager if you are likely to use a large number of sources (mine was over 120!).