To what extent Pages compatible with Word 2007?

[mobi1]

Can someone advise to what extent Pages is compatible with Word 2007?

I understand there will be definitely some formatting loss but what are those formats?

I am mostly interested in following

- general bold,italics, underline - I guess that will be preserved
- font style (color, size) - I guess that will be preserved

- paragraph style i.e. if a word is defined as Heading 1 in Word, when opened in Pages and saved and re-opened in Word, will Word still recognize that word as Heading 1?

- Outline numbering e.g. 1.1, 1.1.1 etc.

- header/footer/page number

- images

- tables

- bulleted lists

- table of contents

- page break/page layout (e.g. A4, legal, letter etc.)

Currently I work with Office 2 HD and it screws up formatting pretty much anything other than bog standard rich text formatting (and there is no concept of page layout!)

I wonder whether Pages will be a good alternative.

Thanx

 

[Tim SPRACKLEN]

Can someone advise to what extent Pages is compatible with Word 2007?

I understand there will be definitely some formatting loss but what are those formats?

I am mostly interested in following

- general bold,italics, underline - I guess that will be preserved
- font style (color, size) - I guess that will be preserved

- paragraph style i.e. if a word is defined as Heading 1 in Word, when opened in Pages and saved and re-opened in Word, will Word still recognize that word as Heading 1?

- Outline numbering e.g. 1.1, 1.1.1 etc.

- header/footer/page number

- images

- tables

- bulleted lists

- table of contents

- page break/page layout (e.g. A4, legal, letter etc.)

Currently I work with Office 2 HD and it screws up formatting pretty much anything other than bog standard rich text formatting (and there is no concept of page layout!)

I wonder whether Pages will be a good alternative.

Thanx

One of our members carried out a survey of Office apps for his company; you can see his conclusions in this thread...

http://www.ipadforums.net/new-member-introductions-site-assistance/22431-hi-all.html

The Apple iWorks Office suite for the iPad has a set of useful Help pages that show their capabilities here...

Pages is Word compatible and can read .doc and .docx files and save in .doc and .pdf

Keynote is PowerPoint compatible and can read .ppt and .pptx files and save in .ppt and .pdf

Numbers is Excel compatible and can read .xls and .xlsx files and save in .xls and .pdf

http://help.apple.com/iwork/1.3/mobile/interface/index.html#tan724868a9


I have 'Pages' and superscript and subscript are partially supported. An imported document with superscripts and subscripts is displayed correctly but there is no option to insert 'new' superscripts and subscripts. A (very ugly) workaround (sit down before you read this!) is to have a 'reference' document available in your Pages 'My documents' with a single superscript and subscript in it (which you've imported from MS Word). You can then copy and paste this to the document you are working on. The superscript and subscript can be any character (i.e. they don't have to be the one you're actually wanting to use because, bizarrely, once you've inserted it, Pages lets you edit it - i.e. if you backspace through the superscript or subscript and then forward type the character you actually want to use, it is inserted correctly.) Indeed, if you keep on typing, multiple superscript or subscripted characters are inserted indefinitely, so it pays to paste your sub- or superscripted character in the middle of 'regular' text - i.e. with non sub- or superscripted text on either side, or you can't 'get out of' sub- or superscript mode!

Similarly, footnotes are correctly displayed but there is no facility (that I've found) to insert new ones. Maybe there's a similar ugly workaround, but I've been unable to use the 'subscript technique' to do this. Clearly I don't have a devious enough mind.

I've not done a comprehensive analysis of symbol font, but certainly most Greek characters are displayed correctly (pi, alpha, gamma, kappa etc) as well as the 'trademark' and 'registered' character (are they symbol font?) so I'm assuming the copy-and-paste technique would work.

Certainly Pages 'struggles' on very complex formatting and I wouldn't want to try to read a copy of the solution to Fermat's Last Theorem in Pages (let alone try to author it) but for more mundane documents it does a reasonable job.

Tim