The Mac comes with Text Edit for free which is a respectable basic word processor and Mail which is a good email program.
It does not, as far as I am aware have a free spreadsheet solution. Personally I would counsel that if you are a heavy Office user then at the very least you will have a steep learning curve to learn the Mac way of doing things. Providing your needs are basic you will have no difficulty with meeting Office needs on a Mac. If however, like me , you need to do serious Table analysis and manipulation there is no serous option for doing this on a Mac apart from fairly clunky work around involving using a word processor and the Numbers spreadsheet simultaneously. I also found Numbers a steep learning curve and did not have the time to learn to switch from Excel usage because of the steepness of this curve. Apparently tables is less difficult but I am afraid I went back to using Excel on a Windows platform as I needed to get work done. It depends on what your expectations are. If your needs are creative art based, music , basic word processing, web browsing etc the Mac is a very good solution. If you have serious Office productivity needs for spreadsheet and tables in particular you will probably need Fusion at the very least to retain a Microsoft Office solution. This is why I have been unable to break from Windows and even this email is sent from a Windows laptop as I am taking a break from work. The learning curves could be made less steep with better guides. For example I am not aware, apart from basic Voiceover documentation, of any guide which systematically works you through switching from Excel to Numbers. Pages is also very different from Word and a similar guide would be useful . However a lot of Pages help is available on this list. David Griffith -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of George Cham Sent: 01 February 2013 09:03 To: Mac OSX & iOS Accessibility Subject: Re: Word processing software Thanks, so if pages opens word documents, does it open excel as well? And if microsoft office is not required, does the Mac come with an email program? George, Sent from my iPad On 01/02/2013, at 8:00 PM, "Anne Robertson" <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello George, > > You can open MS Word documents with TextEdit or Pages. I work with Word documents all the time as a freelance translator and I use Pages since it keeps most of the formatting correct. The only problems I have are with missing fonts and a few anomlies in the way text boxes and tables are handled. However, the fonts problem is minor and the layout problems are rare in what I do. > > Cheers, > > Anne > > > On 1 Feb 2013, at 08:58, George Cham <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi Ann, >> Will pages and keynote open Microsoft word documents ? > > <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> > > To reply to this post, please address your message to > [email protected] > > You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: > <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> > or at the public Mail Archive: > <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/>. > Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: > <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> > > As the Mac Access Dot Net administrators, we do our very best to ensure that the Mac-Access E-Mal list remains malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free. However, this should in no way replace your own security strategy. We assume neither liability nor responsibility should something unpredictable happen. > > Please remember to update your membership preferences periodically by visiting the list website at: > <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/> > <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to [email protected] You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> As the Mac Access Dot Net administrators, we do our very best to ensure that the Mac-Access E-Mal list remains malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free. However, this should in no way replace your own security strategy. We assume neither liability nor responsibility should something unpredictable happen. Please remember to update your membership preferences periodically by visiting the list website at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/> <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to [email protected] You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> As the Mac Access Dot Net administrators, we do our very best to ensure that the Mac-Access E-Mal list remains malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free. However, this should in no way replace your own security strategy. We assume neither liability nor responsibility should something unpredictable happen. Please remember to update your membership preferences periodically by visiting the list website at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/>
