I'm thinking about getting a word processor for my Mac. The two most popular options are probably Microsoft's Word or Apple's Pages. Before I decide to buy one I need to make sure that it will have all of the features I need. Aug 09, 2016  Apple Pages is just one component of Apple’s iWork software suite. It’s the main word processor for Mac and though it’s quite popular with many Mac users, it never really gained a foothold in the business world, quite possibly because there were just so many people tied to Microsoft Word. Sep 16, 2016 Which is the best word processing option for iPad and iPhone: Microsoft Word or Apple Pages? Our Pages vs Word review tests both iPad and iPhone text editors. We discover which iPad or iPhone word.

We’ve redesigned Pages, Numbers, and Keynote to work even better with Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Now, more features are supported, including commenting, conditional formatting, and bubble charts. And each update adds greater compatibility. It’s never been easier to take a Microsoft Office document from your Mac or PC and import it into Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. So you can keep the workflow flowing.

See all the ways our productivity apps support popular Microsoft Office features.

Free Microsoft Word For Mac

Mac Pages vs Word: a reader asks…

Hi Chris, I’m in the process of switching from Windows to a Mac. I’ve been using Microsoft Word for a long time now, but am not too happy about having to pay for the program again just to use it on a Mac. My new Mac has this program called Pages which does word processing, can I use that with my Word documents? Are there any ‘gotchas’?

One of the really nice thing about moving from a Microsoft Windows PC to a Mac is that your new Mac comes with a whole bunch of programs to do most things you want to do without adding additional software. One of those things is word processing. Apple’s answer to Microsoft Word (part of the Microsoft Office suite of software) is Pages. Pages is a full-featured word processor, but operates a little bit differently than the Word you’re used to.

Apple’s Pages has full import and export functionality for various types of word processing programs including Microsoft Word. You can certainly import a Microsoft Word document into Pages, but there are a few compatibility problems. For a complete list, check out the table at this Apple support website. But in a nutshell, you’ll see issues in these seven areas:

Microsoft Word For Apple Mac

• Fonts: Apple does a good job of choosing the nearest Mac font to whatever font you used in your Word document, but it may not be an exact match.
• Tab settings: Apple will import your tabs into Pages, but they may not look the same and need adjusting.
• Text settings: Apple’s Pages doesn’t support linked text boxes, text effects, or vertical text. If you used WordArt in MS Word, you’ll see the text you used, but not the special WordArt appearance.
• Fancy bullets and numbers for lists: Pages will give you bulleted and numbered lists, but your exact format may not convert over. Also some paragraph styles may look different than the original in MS Word.
• Graphics/Images: Pages supports many types of images, but not everything. And if you used Microsoft’s SmartArt Graphics, that won’t transfer over.
• Tables and Charts: some types of pie and line charts may not look the same when you bring them over, and you can’t import surface or radar charts from MS Word to Pages. And don’t expect your tables to come over cleanly either.
• Misc: page borders and backgrounds in MS Word won’t transfer over, neither will borders and watermarks, equations. And you can’t use Word Macros, they don’t come across. Nor do Word themes, ink annotations, ligatures, and OLE objects. If you’ve an image embedded in a table, the image might not be imported, but you can re-do that in Pages. If you’re a big fan of ‘Track Changes’ you’ll miss that, as well as linked Table of Contents (e.g., Bookmarks). Finally, bibliographies and citations will be imported, but they can’t be managed like you did in MS Word.

Apple Pages Vs Microsoft Word For Mac Download

Apple Pages Vs Microsoft Word For Mac Download

Pages is great when you’re creating documents, once you get to know how it works (it isn’t hard). But it is quite a bit different than Microsoft Word, so you’ll have a bit of a learning curve to get over before you’re comfortable in the Mac world. You’ll see the same types of compatibility issues with Numbers (Apple’s answer to Excel) and Keynote (Apple’s answer to Powerpoint). All these programs work great, but there’s going to be a transition period where it may take you a bit to get comfortable with how these Apple programs do things.

Free Word For Apple Mac

If you routinely work with others and have to deal with Microsoft Word documents, then it might be worth the investment in an Office 365 subscription so you can continue to use Word and not have to deal with compatibility issues.