I recently changed my ageing laptop for MacBook Air following a recommendation from an IT guy at work and despite my initial reservations (I am a PC and Android guy until now) I am really pleased with it.  However some of the stuff I use if for means I need a word processor and spreadsheet which is compatible with MS generated documents.  I have tried using 'Pages' and 'Numbers' the Apple equivalents but they end up messing up the documents.  Google docs is okay but I cannot get it to work in offline mode despite having set it up to do so and I need offline capability.

 

I am loathe to fork out for the MS Office Mac 2011 package when it is likely that the 2014 one is due out in the near future.  Can anyone suggest a suitable alternative?

 

I will need to be able to save the documents back into Word and Excel format so that the other people can use them.

 

Thanks

Freebie here, but might have some install issues to get around...

 

http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/installation/mac/

Freebie here, but might have some install issues to get around...

 

http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/installation/mac/

+1

Downloaded and installed.  Didn't have any issues as I'm not on Mountain Lion which it seems to say is the main issue.

 

Will have a play around and see how it goes.

 

Many thanks for the swift responses.

If your employer has a volume license agreement for Office, you may be able to get a copy for your mac for £10. It's worth asking at work.

If your employer has a volume license agreement for Office, you may be able to get a copy for your mac for £10. It's worth asking at work.

I already have a copy of MS Office 2013 for PC under the Home User Programme so cannot get another.  However the renewal date for the programme is Apr and I am hoping that the new version of the Mac Office will be out and I should be able to get a copy of it via that route.

You can buy a mac copy even if you've already had a PC one - that's within the rules.

In addition, if you have slight variations on email address at work, such as a .co.uk and a .com version you can use the other one to get an extra copy

When I looked at it it wouldn't allow the two different copies.  It does allow having a copy of one on a Desktop and Laptop but can't get it to allow the purchase of separate copy which the Mac version comes up as.  I'll have another look at it though just in case as it is by far the cheapest official route to go down.

There's also Open Office http://freedownloads.us.com/products/openoffice2/suite.php?pk=11153&c=FreeD_OOSuite_CCUK_All&aid=boost&gclid=CPe_npCasbwCFYYBwwod_lEAyQ

I tried the mac office apps... still wasn't quite the same as the old windows ones. It was close enough to be frustrating.

 

Then MS released the new 'improved' interface so I felt lost no matter which. So I ended up going with libreoffice, a fork of openoffice.

 

But even that does not work for some things, if clients mail me an xls... if it's got any macros in it, I'm 99% dead... hence I brought a windows machine as 99.9% of my clients use windows so I get xls files to 'webify'

 

I'm going the other way, away from apple. Finally swapping to a linux laptop... failed twice before and sucumbed to shiny. The Air is lovely though

I used to use Linux, following the usual dreadful Windows Vista experience, which put me off Windows for life.  Used to use Ubuntu, which I loved.  Use a Mac these days as my old laptop wore out

 

LibreOffice is excellent.  I do have office for Mac, but I prefer Libre personally.

My Mac at work has Office 2011 on it. The interface is an unpleasant hybrid of 2010/2003 I think. It's not very nice anyway.

 

I do everything typing/numbers based in a Windows VM with Office 2010. Much better! (All I use the Mac for is Chrome, terminal/ssh and iTunes really, everything else is Windows)