Free word processing software for PC that's Mac friendly
nightofjoy
Posts: 63 Forum Member
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I'm borrowing a PC from somebody to write an essay. The laptop is only a couple of years old, but because it's never used, doesn't have Microsoft Office on it.
So I need a very basic, free piece of software I can install which will allow me to type basic pages, but save them out to a format which i can then open on my mac, either in Pages.app or a a plain text file.
Any suggestions? For the sake of these little jobs I don't want to bother trying to get hold of a cheap copy of Microsoft office...
Thanks.
So I need a very basic, free piece of software I can install which will allow me to type basic pages, but save them out to a format which i can then open on my mac, either in Pages.app or a a plain text file.
Any suggestions? For the sake of these little jobs I don't want to bother trying to get hold of a cheap copy of Microsoft office...
Thanks.
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Comments
Use wordpad already built into Windows. You can save as a text file or rtf format etc.
Will that - or Libre save out files from the PC laptop that I can process on my mac at home?
Thanks.
if word processor alone will do try abiword, full office suite try libreoffice 5
or, grand solution - install libreoffice on both pc & mac
Thanks for all the advice
The latest version of LibreOffice, 5.0, just added some basic support for the Pages file formats (i think it's import only though).
Mac OS X did have some support for the open document format that LibreOffice (and OpenOffice) use, but i don't know how good it is. You can export a .doc file from LibreOffice and open it in Pages though.
based on your orginal post, these are sledgehammers to crack a nut, but good alternatives to Word.
Actually do you know you can use online versions (cut down) of MS word anyway.
Similarly to Google Docs and Microsoft Office Web Apps, Apple also has an online office suite at iCloud.com so you can directly write in Pages Web App and things will be familiar to you if you use Pages on your Mac.
Pages via icloud.com is great, but it now insists on you having icloud drive enabled.
Be careful you check what is invloved there before saying yes to enable it.
OK, So I went with LibreOffice. Which file type do I need to save out as to be able to open in pages on mac? Options below. Thanks.
Text
Microsoft Word 2003 XML
ODF Text Document
Unified Office Format Text
Microsoft Word 97-2003
DocBook
Flat XML ODF Text Ducument
Text - Choose Encoding
Microsoft Word 2007 - 2013 XML
Rich Text
ODF Text Document Template
HTML Document (writer)
Microsoft Word 97-2003 Template
Office Open XML Text
Rich Text (.rtf files) are certainly transferable to Mac.
Based on your original requirements. This would work.
I think Libre Office is available for Mac anyway, so I assume any will do really.
Thanks.;-)
They do versions for Windows, Android, Mac, IOS, so there should be no compatibility issues between platforms.
One advantage of using OpenDocument format (which I think LibreOffice uses by default) is that it's what everyone supports - even Microsoft in later versions of their Office - so (in theory) if you had to email something to a Windows user with MS Office it should let them open and edit it too.
(and it's the format that the UK government uses now, for this reason)
It was mine until the latest updates that made the free version next to useless thanks to watermarks on printing and PDFs. Using Libre Office 5 now. Although that's not a bad thing, as my company I work for use it also (as many seem to be these days).
Mark
Any of them as I thought the point was to have the same software on PC and Mac
(just say your post above but thought I'd leave this comment here for all of those PC only people who appear to know very little about Macs but still seem to feel it worth misleading you)
If you read the threads properly, you would see OP has chosen Open LibreOffice and asked the question about formats before realised the question was irrelevant as he could put same in both. I see no tangible evidence of anybody trying to mislead the OP.