# Pages & Numbers vs. Word & Excel **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 12, 2011, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pages-numbers-vs-word-excel/596050 "2011-09-12T14:15:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![tumbleddown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9bcb4/32.png) [@tumbleddown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tumbleddown)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2011, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pages-numbers-vs-word-excel/596050/1 "2011-09-12T14:15:21Z")
The Microsoft Office suite I currently have will no longer run if/when I upgrade my Macs to Lion, because it’s one of those pre-Intel legacy software things. This coupled with a prof this semester who continually posts documents in a format that older Word versions (including mine) can’t open (even though the official college requirement is Word **97** or newer), has me feeling like it’s time to upgrade my productivity software. I’m thinking of buying Pages and Numbers from the Mac App Store, rather than paying more than twice the amount for Office, since I don’t use Powerpoint and would rather throw my computer out a window than use Outlook. My question is: is there really full compatibility? When my prof posts notes from Word 2011 in .docx format, will Pages open that document and actually let me read it? Will I be able to take the budget spreadsheet I currently have as an .xls and still have all the formulas and references work if I open it in Numbers? I’m not a heavy duty user, especially of Excel. Even in Word, the most I do is create a simple document, I’m not writing the great American novel or a doctoral thesis or anything. My biggest concern is “will this file from this other source work?” ---
**Author:** ![Hunter\_Hawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/50afbb/32.png) [@Hunter\_Hawk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hunter_Hawk)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pages-numbers-vs-word-excel/596050/2 "2011-09-13T04:32:26Z")
> [@tumbleddown](#): > > I’m thinking of buying Pages and Numbers from the Mac App Store, rather than paying more than twice the amount for Office, since I don’t use Powerpoint and would rather throw my computer out a window than use Outlook. Out of curiosity, where do you get the “more than twice the amount” from? Presumably you’re a student, so it looks like the academic pricing works out to maybe twenty bucks more than iWork. Granted, it’s still more, but it’s not a major difference. [http://www.microsoft.com/mac/office-academic](http://www.microsoft.com/mac/office-academic) ---
**Author:** ![AaronX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pages-numbers-vs-word-excel/596050/3 "2011-09-13T04:40:50Z")
Even the Win and OS X versions of Word aren’t 100% compatible. If you edit a long document, you’ll find the paging is different, because lines break at different places. This becomes worse if there are pictures, since which page a picture ends up on has a big difference. Not sure if Excel 2011 is better, but Excel 2008 was terribly slow with moderately large graphs, which the Win version could handle easily. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pages-numbers-vs-word-excel/596050/4 "2011-09-13T05:26:24Z")
Personally, I wouldn’t buy anything. Download OpenOffice for Mac, which is free. As a broke student, you have many other things to spend that money on. ---
**Author:** ![WotNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e19b73/32.png) [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2011, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pages-numbers-vs-word-excel/596050/5 "2011-09-13T06:25:36Z")
> [@Hunter\_Hawk](#): > > Out of curiosity, where do you get the “more than twice the amount” from? Presumably you’re a student, so it looks like the academic pricing works out to maybe twenty bucks more than iWork. Granted, it’s still more, but it’s not a major difference. > > [Your request has been blocked. This could be due to several reasons.](http://www.microsoft.com/mac/office-academic) I think the difference is that you can buy Pages and Numbers individually, rather than having to buy the whole suite.