Until recently, I had no idea that I might need the Microsoft office suite on my Mac. As befits the typical blinkered OS X user, I used the free iWork apps and was quite happy, until circumstances forced me to use MS Office 2016. And you know, I liked it.
The first of the surprises was presented to me by the client-bank of the bank that issued my card. For incomprehensible reasons, its programmers got stuck somewhere around 2003, and the card statement can only be obtained in RTF format, moreover, RTF is complex and with tables. The standard TextEditor breaks it a lot, and Apple practically cut out support for this format from Pages. So, reluctantly, I had to install LibreOffice and use it to view statements, shuddering at its terrible interface. 
The second blow was dealt to me by a travel company in which I bought charter tickets to Montenegro. In general, without hesitation, they sent me tickets in XLS format, which spread in Numbers, and in LibreOffice it was printed only on 6 different pages. A call to the company’s office with a request to use a sane format, at least PDF, did not give anything, because “it works fine for everyone, it’s only you who have a problem,” but I was strictly warned that without a paper version of this ticket, I might not be registered for flight. I really didn’t want to stay without rest, so I decided to pay attention to the beta version of 2016 Office that was freshly released at that time. Naturally, he coped with both files without problems, and I decided to experiment with it longer.
The latest version of Office for OS X had the proud number of 2011 in its name, when it was released, and quite noticeably lagged behind its Windows counterpart in terms of functionality. With the release of the 2016 version, the situation has changed radically, and now almost all the functions of the package are available in OS X, as on Windows (with the exception of some system-specific macros). 
Launching any of the applications included in the home version of Office (namely, the one I used) causes a slight twinge of nostalgia: we are greeted with a window with a bunch of templates that most often no one uses. Fortunately, it has become much more functional, now documents can be easily synchronized through the OneDrive cloud service, this makes it easy to edit documents on any desktop computer or mobile device. MS did a great job on cloud integration, and now, having finished work on one device, we can continue on the other exactly from the same place. By the way, buyers of the home version of Office get 1 TB of space in the cloud (or 1 TB for each of the 5 users of the "family" package).
The appearance has also been improved: now the old Office no longer looks like an alien alien from another planet. fits well into the overall style of OS X, and finally support for Retina displays has changed tears of pain from pain in the eyes to a joyful smile. 
Of course, Office's "ribbon" interface and window titles painted in application colors (blue for Word, green for Excel, etc.) look a bit alien. But you can quickly get used to Ribbon, and colored headers can be turned off (thanks, Microsoft!).
The package also added some OS X-specific features, such as support for full-screen mode and multi-finger gestures for the Touchpad. 
You can talk about the functionality of the package for a very long time, but, perhaps, this makes no sense. MS Office is simply the most functional office suite of all existing ones, and more than one book can be dedicated to its description, so I will not do this within the framework of the article. But many long-forgotten possibilities made me very happy. For example, using Smart Art, you can quickly and conveniently draw different diagrams, and Microsoft OneNote is a good replacement for Evernote. Another reason for a pleasant surprise gave me Outlook. I have always considered this program to be reserved for corporate users of MS Exchange Server. It turned out that he quite understands most mail services and can be automatically configured, like most familiar mail clients. Of course, it is still overloaded with functions, but it is quite convenient to read mail with it.
In general, after a couple of weeks spent with MS Office, it becomes clear that in the race of office applications, Apple is far behind, not even taking second place. 
All this functional splendor comes with a very affordable price. Office 365 for one user will cost you 229 rubles per month, and the family suite for 5 people will cost 286 rubles. By paying for a subscription for a year, you will save another 16%, and the price will be 2299 or 2874 rubles, respectively. You can buy subscriptions on the official website. In the fall, Microsoft promises to release a "separate" version, available not by subscription, but for a fixed (not yet announced) price.
Name: Office 2016 for OS X
Publisher/Developer: Microsoft
Price: 229 rub.
In-App Purchases: Not
Compatibility: OS X
Link:
The eminent Microsoft Office, created by the Redmond company, has been considered the standard among office applications in the home and business segment for more than fifteen years. Unfortunately, every year the pricing policy does not become more profitable for users, and even vice versa - more expensive, and that is why we have to look for alternatives. Well, let's see how convenient the well-known free analogue is in the face Apache OpenOffice.
In contact with
A little about Office 365 and iWork
Microsoft's greed is starting to get really frustrating these days. The last straw was the release of the latest Office 365 package, which began to be distributed by subscription. Users who decide to purchase Office 365 Home will cost "only $339 per month," or $3,399 per year. The package includes the ability to install all office applications on 5 PC or Mac machines and 5 mobile devices, online versions of applications and cloud storage for documents with a capacity of 1 TB.
The quality of the offered software is really impressive, but you don’t want to pay such amounts every year. Here you start looking for budget or completely free options (oh, this soul of a Russian person).
Apple's proprietary iWork package (Pages, Numbers and Keynote) does an excellent job with only the simplest tasks (there is also a cloud version on icloud.com that works even without installation). However, there can be no talk of any extended functionality (perhaps, iWork will be enough for many features). And there is no analogue of an application for working with databases like Access or advanced programs like Visio or Publisher. A compromise between venerable competitors was the product of the company Apache -.
A bit of history
The development of OpenOffice in 2000 does not begin with the creation of a product from scratch, but with the study and transformation of the developments of the German office suite StarOffice (1999), which gave rise to open free software for working with documents.
The first public launch took place in 2002 and the package could be freely installed and used on home computers, educational institutions and various organizations. The product gained immense popularity in the territory of the post-Soviet space.
In 2010, during the reorganization and creation of a new non-profit company, The Document Foundation, most of the developers broke away, which subsequently began working on their own LibreOffice project (it is often compared to OpenOffice).
In the fall of 2016, the latest current version of Apache was released with an index of 4.1.3, which we will talk about.
What does OpenOffice include?
The composition of the package is characterized by six modules for working with office documents in all directions:
— Writer- word processor and visual HTML editor (similar to Microsoft Word, Pages, AbiWord and other programs);
— Calc- spreadsheet processor (Microsoft Excel, Numbers, Gnumeric and others);
— impress- a tool for creating and editing presentations (Microsoft PowerPoint, Keynote, KPresenter);
— Base- work with DBMS (Microsoft Access, Kexi);
— Draw- graphic vector editor (Microsoft Visio, Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW);
— Math- formula editor (MathType, KFormula).
Well, the hardware is really impressive (especially if you focus on the fact that it is a free product).
Compatibility and formats
No matter how the developers declare support for all conceivable and unthinkable office formats, problems still arise from time to time. The brainchild of Apache still cannot open Microsoft Office OpenXML format documents, that is, *.docx, *.xlsx and *.pptx. If with the help of short dances with a tambourine the problem with importing and exporting to *.docx can be solved, then nothing can be done about the other two formats.
Not quite correct work with formats is also observed in other similar applications of the office suite. Complex Microsoft Office documents opened in will have visible and sometimes significant changes. Apache developers swear that they are constantly working on this problem, but the results so far are frankly weak.
Design and functionality
The design of the software package stopped at the level of Microsoft Office 2003. Ergonomics and clarity of at least the 2007 "office" is far away. Otherwise, there is a typical arrangement of tools and a fairly extensive functionality that allows you to cope with the daily tasks of both a home user and a person working in an enterprise.
The latest current version 4.1.3 has received many minor changes, and it is worth noting the accelerated loading of the program and optimized work with multimedia files and diagrams.
The entire office suite works stably, with the exception of the database tool. There are sometimes crashes and even non-launches on some Macs (more on older machines).
Conclusion
It sits between a rock and a hard place with paid Office 365 and free iWork. The Redmond product has no flaws except for the obscenely high price tag. The brainchild of Apple is rapidly developing and gaining popularity, but still, the focus is still on ordinary users, rather than clerks. improvements are needed. It’s worth starting small: adding support for new formats, making a modern interface and integrating cloud technologies with high quality - today there is no way without them. There can be no talk about mobile versions yet.
<<1 >>
Mariner Calc 5.5
Another program from the category of those products that it is not clear who buys, if they buy at all. However, unlike Mesa, Mariner Calc is still more powerful. It cannot be recommended even as a partial alternative to Ecxel due to problems with the Russian language. Also, Mariner Calc doesn't know what Unicode is.
Compatibility with xls files is about the same as Mesa - tables open, but no graphics. Plus, the Russian encoding that has flown off without the possibility of recovery. If you try to write something in Russian and save it as an Excel file, nothing will come of it.
The functionality of Mariner Calc is clearly higher than that of Mesa, and the interface is more convenient and thoughtful, but despite the claimed compatibility, do not waste time on this program.
RagTime 6
Having finished with the obvious outsiders of our review, we move on to full-fledged products. And the first package here is RagTime 6. This is also a commercial product, but you can download a demo version. Please note - RagTime does not like it when Russian is the main language in the system, in this case it simply will not start. Therefore, for the time of testing, I had to make English the main language in the systems by moving English to the top in the list of languages in the International - Language panel in System Prefernces.
I found out about this package quite recently, while looking for any other Excel alternatives that I don't know about yet. Therefore, RagTime did not participate in the review of Word, but this application has something to show.
RagTime is a very interesting package with its own specific ideology - a cross between Works-level office packages and a layout package. Imagine that you managed to cross Apple Works with QuarkXpress, adding elements of web editing and interactive work there. Although the idea does not seem to be very fresh, no one has yet been able to really implement it, and the best way to explain what has been said is with an example. Take a look at the picture: this sample file is bundled with RagTime. It would seem that the document is not too complicated in terms of layout, but it is provided with real interactivity - the year number is a drop-down menu, and when it is selected, the values of the table and diagram change! I confess, until I saw RagTime, I thought that this could only be done with something like FileMaker.
The ideology of RagTime is work with a document (Layout), where various components, such as: spreadsheets, pictures, videos, graphs and charts, controls (buttons, drop-down lists, etc.), are integrated and easily assembled into a single whole . You can work with each component separately, and then collect everything into a single document. Unlike other office applications, RagTime's word processor is more like a page layout program. That is, you do not work with a single stream of text, simultaneously embedding illustrations into it, as is the case in Word, but compose a document from various independent blocks, including text ones. With all the difference in approach, RagTime allows you to open MS Word and Excel files, although compatibility is not perfect.
In the screenshot below, you can see what the test xls file looks like when opened in RagTime. The charts are gone, but the rest is still there. Like many other programs, RagTime uses its own charting engine, which is not compatible with Excel. RagTime has very partial compatibility with MS Office, and if you plan to work a lot with other people's xls files, then it will not help you. In addition, it has a somewhat inconsistent interface, in my opinion, difficult to learn and not very intuitive. Although there are obvious finds, for example, the font selection panel - it is visible in the figure. The panel is extremely elegantly made, and even with a built-in search. This is exactly what is required from such a panel, and why so far nothing like this has been done in more than one popular program that requires working with fonts, including the font selection panel built into MacOS X, is not clear.
RagTime is a strange program, you may find it incomprehensible and too complicated, and I do not recommend using it, but it's worth a look. The concept laid down in the program is not perfectly implemented, and this application will not become a hit. But this is the case when, looking closer, you will clearly understand that outside the world built by Microsft, there are other equally interesting worlds. Perhaps Apple iWork will someday turn into something like RagTime (the trend is visible), but into something much more elegant and convenient. RagTime is difficult to work with, but I recommend trying it, it's like Tsialkovsky's drawings, which inspire respect both among contemporaries and descendants - these rockets cannot yet be flown, but they clearly guess the prototype of the future.
openoffice
I wrote about what OpenOffice is in a previous article on alternatives to MS Word. All of the above also applies to working with spreadsheets. OpenOffice is a complete and free replacement for MS Office. Almost perfect compatibility, and the same functionality. The main drawback, as already mentioned, is the requirement for the X11 environment, which makes the work somewhat inconvenient, as well as a "pisish", non-Mac interface.
neooffice
The main contender in the Macintosh world for the title of alternative to MS Office. Based on the OpenOffice project and fully ported to Mac OS X, it does not require X11. And, like OpenOffice, it's completely free. The main disadvantage is the long loading time, which can reach several minutes. But once loaded, it works pretty fast.
In the last article, I wrote about NeoOffice version 1.2, but now version 2.0 Alfa has become available for download. If you are seriously going to work on NeoOffice, then I advise you not to rush to download Alfa for the time being due to possible instability. Although during testing it proved to be quite reliable, this is not yet an indicator.
However, switching from the first version to the second, as soon as a more stable version of it becomes available, is worth it. Here is a small list of changes: Finally, the ability to work with databases has appeared (this will be written in the article dedicated to alternatives to MS Access). The interface of the application for version 2.0 has changed a bit, in particular, the toolbar buttons have become less reminiscent of MS Word 95 for Windows, which is good news. Compatibility with MS Office has been brought to a level close to perfection. Pay attention to the screenshots taken from both versions. In version 1.2, the frames around the charts disappeared somewhere, the division price changed, the chart step went not through 500, but through 250. In version 2.0, this "glitch" disappeared, although the opening of charts is still not quite perfect.
NeoOffice is the same as Excel, only for free. Unfortunately, there are not many advantages and finds. It is worth noting better implemented export to PDF. Without Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft programs can only export documents to pdf format using Mac OS X itself, but this may seem insufficient.
If you need MS Office to work, but the price seems too high, and you don't want to get on the slippery slope of piracy, then NeoOffice is the best option.
Think Free Office
The only commercial full-fledged alternative to MS Office on Mac. The Excel counterpart is called ThinkFree Office Calc. The more I look at ThinkFree, the more I like it. This is a serious and complete package of applications. It does not mindlessly copy Microsoft, like OpenSource products, but great attention is paid to compatibility. To work with it, you do not need to retrain, but due attention is paid to the interface. It looks just like a Mac office program should look like, trying to replace the familiar MS interface. The same, but much more elegant. It's not loaded with the huge amount of complex features that only five percent of users might need, but it's functional enough to satisfy the other ninety-five percent. I really liked that in Calc there is the ability to select, then copy and paste cells that are separated from each other, which I miss so much in NeoOffice. As well as the ability to copy cells by simply dragging the mouse is implemented much better - at the level of MS Excel.
At the same time, ThinkFree Office Calc showed the best compatibility of all the programs reviewed, and there are no complaints even about the diagrams.
In general, the main drawback is the fee. Well, what did you want?
ThinkFree.com
Having finished with the usual off-line applications, let's move on to on-line services. Let me remind you that we are talking about Internet resources, where, using only a browser, the user can work with office documents, as if he were working with a regular office application.
In the last review, the part of the ThinkFree.com service responsible for working with doc files did not show the best results. However, the Internet implementation of ThinkFree Office Calc is far less problematic.
If you look at the figure, you will see that Calc on the web is no different from its offline twin. It is the same program using all the same algorithms, although implemented in Java. All the compliments about ThinkFree Office Calc can be attributed to ThinkFree.com Calc, especially since the latter is still free.
The main inconvenience is speed, more precisely, slowness. You must have a powerful enough computer to run Java and a fast internet connection. But in any case, I do not advise you to work with large or complex documents - the Internet version will not pull them yet.
Zohosheet.com
zoho.com is a direct competitor to ThinkFree.com, a suite of office Internet services. An on-line spreadsheet for this package is available at Zohosheet.com. If zoho's word processor outperformed ThinkFree.com in the last review, this time it's the other way around.
Zohosheet.com did not show the best compatibility, and especially for the charts that it converted to its format. In addition, the Russian text flew off in the diagrams. The functionality of Zohosheet.com is also significantly inferior. Also, to work with the service, you will have to use FireFox, not Safari, which not all poppy users will like. The interface is noteworthy, it is concise and much more suitable for an Internet service than a complete copy of the off-line counterpart, as in ThinkFree.com. One way or another, the formula for success for such services has not yet been found, so we are waiting for the development of both products.
Google Spreadsheets
Rumors that Google is preparing its own alternative to MS Office, implemented as an Internet service, have been circulating for a long time. Finally it happened - just the other day a test version of the Google Spreadsheets spreadsheet was released. After several attempts, I managed to register as a tester and see the Excel killer with my own eyes. Microsoft can sleep easy - the mountain gave birth to a mouse.
In terms of functionality, Google Spreadsheets is seriously inferior to its already working counterparts ThinkFree.com and Zohosheet.com. From the point of view of compatibility with Excel - too. This resource could have made a splash if it had been released first and two years ago, but now it will cause more irritation. I would like to get something more interesting from Google than an overly simple, not to say primitive, interface, little spreadsheet functionality and a complete lack of charts. Moreover, Google Spreadsheets itself is hidden in Google so deeply that you won’t find it right away, apparently the creators themselves are embarrassed about it ...
Instead of conclusions
As you might expect, work with spreadsheets on Macs is not limited to MS Excel alone. There is not as much variety here as with text editors, but the subject matter is much more complex. And as a winner, I would name NeoOffice, which gained a lot of weight in its second version. ThinkFree Office Calc could also be recommended if you are ready to use a commercial product, but it comes with ThinkFree Office, and as we remember from the review of Word analogues, ThinkFree Office Write showed far from the best results.
Intelligence
- This update fixes critical issues and helps improve security. It contains fixes for vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to replace the contents of a computer with malicious code. For more information about this update, see .
The information in this article applies to: Office 2011; Office 2011 Home and Business Edition; Word 2011; Excel 2011; PowerPoint 2011; Outlook 2011; Office for Mac 2011 Standard Edition; Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 Home and Student Edition; Microsoft Office for Mac Academic 2011.
System Requirements
Supported operating system
Apple Mac OS X; Macintosh
- Operating system versions: Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later
Note. To check if your computer meets the minimum system requirements, in the menu Apple select item About this Mac.
- Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 SP1 (14.1.0) This update can be downloaded for free from .
Note. To check if this update is installed, open any Microsoft Office 2011 application and check its version number. For example, in Word, open the menu Word and select the item About Word. In the dialog box that opens, check the version number indicated opposite the inscription Last installed update.
- Operating system versions: Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later
Installation Instructions
- Installing the update
- To use this page when offline, print it.
- Close all programs, including Office applications, Microsoft Messenger, and Office notifications, that may be preventing the update from installing.
- Check if your computer meets the minimum system requirements.
- Click the button Download or click the link for the desired language version.
- Follow the on-screen instructions to save the file to your hard drive. If you are using the Safari browser, the downloaded file will be saved on your desktop or in your Downloads folder. You can select another folder in the dialog box Settings Safari browser. To view your selections, open the menu safari, select an item Settings and go to the tab General.
- To place the Microsoft Office 2011 14.7.6 Update volume on your desktop, double-click the file you downloaded in step 5. Then double-click the volume to open it. This action may be performed automatically.
- To start the update, in the volume window of Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 14.7.6 Update, double-click the application Office 2011 14.7.6 Update and follow the instructions on the screen.
- If the installation was successful, the update installer can be removed from your hard drive. To do this, drag the volume Microsoft Office 2011 14.7.6 Update and the downloaded file to the Trash.
Removing an update
This update does not contain a component to remove. To restore the application to its original state, remove it from your hard drive and reinstall it from the installation disk, and then install the updates you want.
- Installing the update
additional information
- If you experience problems installing this update or subsequently using Office 2011 applications, follow these steps:
- Make sure the Microsoft Office 2011 folder is in the Applications folder on the boot volume. If it is in a different folder, move it to the Applications folder on the boot volume, and then try installing the update again.
- Restart your computer and try installing the update again.
- Use an administrator account when authenticating the update installer. For more information about administrator accounts, see Mac system help.
- Make sure that the correct language version of the update is loaded for the copy of the Office suite you are using.
- If the files in the Microsoft Office 2011 folder are renamed or changed, the updates will fail to install. To resolve this issue, drag the Microsoft Office 2011 folder to the Trash, and then reinstall the Office 2011 suite using the original installation disc.
- If you have problems opening Office applications after installing this update, restart your computer. If the issues persist, reinstall Office from the original installation disc, and then install this update again.
- If you experience problems installing this update or subsequently using Office 2011 applications, follow these steps:
Office2011-1476Update_RU-RU.dmg
Publication date:
Thoughts: iWork || Neo Office || Open Office || Sun StarOffice || Lotus Symphony || MS Office for Mac 2008
About 5 years ago, MS Office was installed on every Windows PC in any office, often from the Office Programs 25 in One 2004 disc, and no one really thought about alternatives. Raids of "men in black" from Microsoft, and after them people in uniform, on large and medium-sized organizations did their job - some poor (or greedy?) companies "moved" to free office suites, the leader of which can be safely called OpenOffice. The most advanced (often small ones) moved to Google Docs, to these Internets of theirs.
I was completely satisfied with MS Office, I also used it at the level of a rural music teacher, using at most 15% of the possibilities. However, with the main task - open a “foreign” Word or Excel document and see it the way the author intended it- the package coped completely. I also really liked MS Outlook, which I still miss.
The main task has not changed since then., since for my "creative needs" the rtf format is quite enough, and I manage not to use spreadsheet processors, I'm getting around for now. I am not often spoiled with particularly complex documents, but it happens. Here, Excel delivers the most trouble with some outlandish macros and calculations - it happens.
In general, I choose office programs according to these criteria:
- to open and display MS Office documents as correctly as possible
- so that it is convenient (habitual) to use and not scary to look at
- universal requirement - to be free or inexpensive
A seemingly natural choice in the form Microsoft Office for Mac dropped according to two criteria at once - it is expensive ($180-$400) and terribly uncomfortable. I hate "floating" toolbars that aren't linked to the main window, a la Photoshop. Once I searched for a long time for a toolbar that I definitely had open - I ended up finding it on another desktop in Spaces. Compatibility, by the way, is also not all right, in any case, I often saw warnings on this topic - formats, encodings, fonts for Win and Mac versions do not really match. Well, the main nail - there is no Outlook, and the Entourage appointed to his role is a completely different song, nothing like it.
Three from the chest, the same from the face - OpenOffice, StarOffice, NeoOffice. All these programs are based on openoffice is a cross-platform package heavily mixed with Java. There is one for Windows, Linux and Mac. It occupies something from 5 to 7 percent of the office applications market and holds the title of the main competitor to Microsoft Office, mainly due to the law-abiding West. Staroffice- distributed by Sun paid ($35) version of OpenOffice, differs, as I understand it, in the presence of support. neooffice is a spin-off from OpenOffice, aimed specifically at Mac OS. OpenOffice itself for Mac originally required X11 to run, while NeoOffice originally used the Aqua GUI. In the latest versions of OpenOffice (and StarOffice too) for Mac OS, it also moved to Aqua, but somehow not completely. You can learn more about the differences in this NeoOffice vs MS Office vs OpenOffice Aqua comparison, there are a lot of letters.
What they all have in common is the “vintage look” of the old MS Office almost 97. As can be seen from the same comparison, compatibility with the new formats Word 2007 (.docx), Excel 2007 (.xlsx), and PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx ) leaves much to be desired, as they say. Reading these files does not implement all the features of the format, and writing, if there is (in NeoOffice), is still inferior - it's more like an export than an honest write without formatting loss.
For clarity and for a smooth transition to the next candidate, I will give a picture. These are the formats in which you can save a text document in each of the editors.
The most modest list of formats - the next contender called IBM Lotus Symphony. In fact, this free office suite is also based on some version of OpenOffice, but it looks a little different and, in general, differs from the previous three quite significantly. Both for the better and for the worse. Let's take a closer look.
The start screen, it is also the container of all open documents. Yes, there are bookmarks in Symphony, they are also “tabs”, and for me this is a significant plus.
Available formats, as we have already found out, are few, but there are basic ones. It is possible to open files of new formats (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx), but not to write. Support for OpenOffice, of course, is present in full, MS Office at the level of others, and the rest of the exotic is of little interest to me.
The main consolation is the document editing interface. The button bar is on the top, the properties and settings management is on the right, sometimes an additional panel appears on the left. Nothing creeps anywhere and does not fall off. Of course, the toolbars of OpenOffice can be customized to your liking, but it is impossible to achieve a similar look of the right column.
By the way, here is the left column in the presentation editor. I don't use these things very much, I hardly made more than 10 slide shows in my life, and even those were clumsy to the extreme. In general, there is an opportunity, but it’s not for me to judge convenience or power.
The initial launch of all of the listed successors of OpenOffice, including Symphony, takes a lot of time, but then individual documents open quite quickly. By this parameter, I can not single out anyone. In terms of memory consumption, it is also difficult to name leaders, none of them are particularly modest. It's a shame, but on Snow Leopard all packages work in 32-bit mode.
This is one of the jambs I observed - Symphony crashed when trying to resize the right panel. A very unpleasant thing. There was another one, very funny - the same right panel stretched along with the content, and disproportionately, fonts floated and everything else - but I did not have time to take a picture.
I've never dealt seriously with Lotus Notes/Domino, so Sympohny's immersion in this environment is a mystery to me. There is a certain Enterprise Management Agent in the settings, but the following error prevented me from getting to know him better:
What can be said in general about the glorious OpenOffice family? Free, of course, is a pleasant thing, but this is the only thing you can calm yourself with. Otherwise, all these products are typical for the world of Linux - terrible on the face, buggy inside. The appearance is unimportant, a hodgepodge of free "spare parts" inside does not get along well with each other and is not very friendly with Mac OS. Symphony stands a little apart, I really liked the interface with tabs and sidebars, but that was it.
I was very puzzled by the standard text document template in OpenOffice - it does not have vertical spaces between paragraphs, that is, a new line is no different from a new paragraph. But in it headings of 1-3 levels are placed by pressing Command + a number from 1 to 3. In Symphony, the same combination increases the line spacing, in my opinion MS Office for Mac behaves just as badly. By the way, the set of keyboard shortcuts (shortcuts) in Symphony is very different from the other three, and in all of them - from the "generally accepted" ones in Mac OS, this is really annoying. However, the same problem exists in MS Office and in all Adobe products, so we have to put up with it.
All packages have a spell check, in Russian versions - Russian (NeoOffice I have English). There is even type ahead - a funny thing, like T9 in phones, sometimes it gets in the way, really, but you can turn it off.
All, except Symphony, offer tools for creating databases (analogous to MS Access?), a formula editor and some kind of drawing tool, I don’t remember what Microsoft called analogues, I didn’t use them.
What do we have left for sweets? iWork, of course. Pretty, cute, yes. The Pages and Keynote templates included are very attractive. Comrades Luke and Phil, of course, correspond to the entourage of Mac OS. The concept of "single window" is naturally absent, "Inspector" hangs on the side, but he himself is comfortable and pleasant, it is quite possible to put up with him.
What about our tasks? We try to open an ordinary .doc - it does not open. It is necessary to update to the latest version, there is something improved. Okay, update, indeed, it opens both .doc and .docx and Excel files too. But OpenDocument (.odt) doesn't recognize it as a document at all. This is strange behavior for a small marginal product - you need to support your own!
In general, I'm starting to remember why I refused to use iWork in the first place, and the price did not play a significant role here. This is a product for those who are not involved in the exchange of documents with different people, platforms and formats. Prepare a document and print it - please; make a presentation and show it at the seminar - it will be in the best possible way. But working with other people's files, sending your own by e-mail - it will be difficult.
Well, the digestif is a dark horse named ThinkFree Office version 3.5 for $50. Also multi-platform, also java inside.
The comrades did not break their heads much, they made their own version of MS Office 2003, they did it diligently, as close as possible to the original. So close that in Mac OS it looks like a completely foreign element, it even has a “not where it should” menu, just like a Win XP application running in VMWare Fusion in Unity mode. This fact, the price (it exists, which is already bad), as well as the lack of a Russian version (or at least a Russian spelling checker) turned me away from further research.
