Oct 25, 2010 'Pages' is the program that is like 'Word'. 'Numbers' is the program that is like 'excel' Buy iWork. You will be happy. You can also buy MS Office for mac. You will also be happy. Niether of these come with a new Mac. Both are around $100 new. As far as partitioning: Yes, use 'bootcamp' (in your 'Utilities' folder). Apr 12, 2018 - Throughout history, writers have found many ways to get their words down for posterity: typewriters, pen and paper, styluses on clay tablets.
It doesn’t matter that you don’t think Microsoft Word doesn’t matter anymore. It does—for tens, hundreds, thousands of people, Microsoft Word is an every day event. An indispensable tool for getting daily business done.
And without it, whether you like it or not, much of what must get done in the world of words wouldn’t, if it weren’t for Word. What matters most to those users is how it works. Whether it works well. Whether it will get the job done without getting in the way. What matters to the hundreds of thousands of people who’ve traded up from a PC to a Mac and the tens of thousands of IT professionals who have to support them is whether or not Word on the Mac works in the world they work in. Is it invisible.
With few exceptions, is exactly that. Word for Windows and Mac now look substantially the same, although you may find that not all of the Windows’ features are available on your Mac.
As a word processing tool, Word 2016—which, at present, is only available as part of an Office 365 subscription—hasn’t changed much since its last major release as. (Students, parents, and teachers may be able to get Office for free or cheap. Check out ) How you create, edit, and style text remains the same as it ever was. What you may notice is that Word now supports some Mac OS-only features such as full screen mode, multi-touch gestures, and retina graphics. Microsoft has also added some Mac-only features of its own, including a Smart Lookup feature that integrates Bing searches and other contextually relevant information from the web when you use the tool on selected text.
All of the Office products also include something that Microsoft now refers to as the Task Pane, which, for my money, is an awful lot like Office’s old Floating Palettes, without the floating. In short, the Task Pane provides an easy way for you to make quick formatting changes to text and other document elements without having to rely on a menu or Ribbon element. Need a little more detail on that word or concept? Word’s Smart Lookup pulls in more details from the Web.
Over the past several years Microsoft has undertaken a massive redesign of its Office products for Mac and iOS. These updates have streamlined the look and feel of Office apps, making them more like their Windows versions, but with what I find to be a far less cluttered look and feel. In fact, the new Mac version is as clean as Word on the iPad, which is an excellent app, and it also has some of the same limitations. The upside to this sameness is that, whether you’re working on a PC at your office, your iPad on the train, or your Mac at home, you’ll find the tools you need in substantially the same places. A simple click on the current editing tab hides the Ribbon and gives you more room for words. While there is an essential “sameness” to all these apps, you will still find that some features found in the Windows version are nowhere to be found on the Mac. For example, the option to add a pop-up calendar to a table—a feature you’ll find in the Windows version—isn’t available on the Mac.
But.if you use your Mac to add a properly formatted date to a document with a table including that feature, the field will retain the calendar option when you open it again on a PC. This raises an important point: Word for Mac is top-notch when it comes to collaborative work. This is obvious when it comes to basic document editing. Email a document to someone, have them make changes, and send it back to you. If they’re using the current version of Word on the device they edit with, the transition is seamless. But, better yet, share your document using, or a, and you can have dozens of people working on the same document at the same time, each without interfering with the other’s changes. Word’s collaborative tools also include threaded comments, so you can see and interact with others within the comments on a document.
Word 2016 offers excellent collaboration features with tools for resolving conflicts for edits in the same part of a document. Word 2016 isn’t without disappointments, but they are by no means deal killers. Word takes no advantage of Apple’s Autosave and Versions features.
So you’re stuck with what now seems like a vestige of some ancient past. Have a power failure? Dog step on your power strip?
You’re relegated to the weeping and gnashing of teeth you no longer expect when bad things happen and you have unsaved changes in a document. This also seems to be tied to Word’s collaboration features, which, while excellent, are not as dynamic as I’d like them to be. If you’re editing a document while someone else is also making changes, you don’t see their changes until both they and you save the document. (Compare this with Pages, which updates changes almost as soon as they’re made, no matter who is editing the document.) Finally, Word doesn’t support Yosemite’s option to rename and/or move a document using the menu in the document’s title bar.
Word 2016 doesn’t support Yosemite’s Autosave features, so you can forget about the power going out and your unsaved changes still being in your document. Bottom line Microsoft Word 2016 is an excellent update to what is, for most users, an important business tool. Changes to the program’s user interface make it easy for anyone to bounce from Word on a Mac to Word on any other platform with a minimal transitional curve. Word’s collaboration features make it possible for business users to work on the computing platform of their choosing without making significant sacrifices. While the program doesn’t support some of Yosemite’s more important, user friendly, and bacon-saving features—such as Autosave—the overall user experience is superb. In short, Microsoft Word gets the job done without getting in the way, If Word is your primary tool for getting work done with words, run, don’t walk to upgrade to Word 2016.
A writer is only as good as his or her tools. And when it comes to writing tools, Mac often leads the way. A Macbook is the dream system if your work involves anything to do with graphics and images. It is often the goal for anyone with a creative streak, but Apple Pages isn’t a one-size fit all tool for writers. As a result, many Mac owners end up using third-party word processors. MS Word in particular is a popular choice.
It has long dominated the field of word processors and what they’re good at, which is producing documents. The expensive licensing fees and the almost annual new versions, bugs, and fixes means a lot of MS Word writers are trapped in a love/hate relationship. Our stories, our writing, our creative results—they’re like our babies.
Better Time for Writers In recent years the pendulum is swinging. Writers have made an impact on the world, or maybe it’s just that technology and software developers have finally reached beyond a one size fit all approach to software. Distraction-free software and customizing your experience when writing, whether it’s a text editor or a free word processor for Mac, is trending. And since we all know the story of the struggling writer, it doesn’t hurt to cut out those fees either. So, if you’ve been waiting for the day when you’d have a choice between more than just two or three tools for your writing, or the day that you could cut the purse strings between you and recurring licensing fees, this could be it.
Below are just some of the free word processors for Mac. Pick a couple of these that you like but do some additional in-depth research.
Choose the best tool to help you focus on telling your story. You may simply find a better tool to help you release your creative side, or you may find the motivation needed to finally make the big switch from PC to Mac. Microsoft Word for Mac Word for Mac is now available. It’s not a for Mac users, of course, but it’s worth mentioning. So, if you do happen to be an MS Word lover, you can subscribe to Office 365 for a low monthly fee of $9.99 month. Reviewers are raving that looks and acts like MS Word for the PC. So, if MS Word is what you’ve been pining for, your wait is over.
For the rest of us, below are some free word processors for Mac that will get the job done for writers: WPS Writer by Kingsoft by Kingsoft is a free suite of software available for multiple platforms including Windows, iOS, Linux, and Android. Part of the WPS Office 2016 suite is WPS Writer, the word processing component of the Office suite. WPS Writer supports multiple languages in addition to English, including French, Portuguese, Polish, German, and Russian and its mobile apps boast registered users of more than 400 million. It’s free, and you can import and export from a wide range of file formats. However, exported files will include a watermark, and printing is only available to paid subscribers.
LibreOffice Writer LibreOffice Writer is open source software, which means it’s available for Mac OS, Windows, and Linux operating systems. There’s also LibreViewer for Android. LibreOffice Writer supports for over 100 languages. For those who have been using MSWord, you’ll find the interface for MS Word very similar. If you prefer to get a head start, LibreOffice offers a variety of great built-in templates to choose from. One of the things you’ll like about LibreOffice is that it can handle different document types, so you’ll have no trouble at all opening those MS Word files.
To learn more about how this stacks up against Word, read our article. AbiWord Another pick of free word processors for Mac users is AbiWord. Available for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux users, its easy to use interface is one that former WordPerfect users will love. Some users report that the scrolling is not ideal, so it’s probably better suited for keyboard warriors who are used to scrolling using the arrow keys. You can edit and save in multiple formats including encoded and rich text, Open document, text files and more. Is included, and there are easy to install plugins. Support is via email, so it’s not lightning fast.
There is an option to hide menus for writers looking for distraction-free writing sessions. Google Docs Google Docs is free and cloud-based, so it works well on any system. It’s become a popular option for many small businesses and consultants who need to work collaboratively on documents.
Google Docs saves your changes as you type and you can even look at revision history and see who made changes to your document. As a writer, the biggest draw to Google Docs is the ability to work collaboratively in real-time with someone else, perhaps a co-author, contributor, or even an editor.
You can install a Chrome app that lets you open, edit, and save MS Word files. Personally, I could never get past the panic of not knowing for sure that my changes were saved. But if you can be comfortable with never having to save a document again, or if you have a need to work collaboratively in real-time, then Google Docs may be a good fit. Lyx Another free word processor for Mac you may not have heard of is. It’s available for Windows and Unix/Linux users too, so no one is left out.
It’s open source, and you can import and export to other document formats such as HTML, PDF,.doc, and rich text formats. Also, it’s actually a “document” processor rather than a “word” processor.
This is mostly down to semantics but it means that Lyx writers can forget about formatting and focus on writing. There are loads of longer document templates with automatic formatting to help with consistency. If you just want to write without having to figure out things like footnotes, references, or how to do a table of contents, Lyx may work well for your needs.
BEAN For the more daring among you, walks the tightrope line between a full-featured word processor for Mac and a bare-bones text editor. It’s free, but there have been some bugs to work out as far as compatibility goes. So, make sure you choose the right download for your OS X system.
If you don’t need the formatting capabilities of a word processor but miss the live word counts and other features some text editors don’t have, Bean may be a good fit. Best Free Word Processors for Mac: Conclusion In conclusion, I want to be transparent about the fact that I’m not yet a Mac user. I still dream of the day when I’ll have the Moxie to make such a transition. The information above has been provided through researching company websites and Mac user reviews. I did my best to be thorough and provide accurate information.
But when it comes to choosing one of these free word processors for Mac, please do your research.