Office to iWork and the Other Way Around

iWork is fast becoming popular in the Mac circles while Office is the standard when it comes to documents, spreadsheets and presentations. What happens when you want to share an iWork file with someone who uses Office or vice-versa?

Well there are compatibility issues. It’s not to say that you can’t move files to and from but there will be problems. John Rizzo wrote a great article on MacWorld to describe what potential pitfalls you might encounter when shuffling files from both suites. Depending on how much work you’ve done on a particular file will determine how well it will translate to the destination app. Read his article to see what you should and should not do.

The last paragraph of his article sums it all greatly.

In general, the simpler the document, the greater the compatibility between iWork and Office. Complex documents don’t do well moving back and forth between been Office and iWork, because you’ll lose something with every translation. In particular, going from PowerPoint-to-Keynote and back to PowerPoint can result in the loss of a lot of effects and general deterioration of the look of the presentation. If you need to have multiple rounds of edits with Office users, you may have to bite the bullet and install a copy of Office.

But for reading Office files and sharing your documents with Office users, iWork can be completely adequate. How much compatibility is enough is up to you

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