Should You Use Microsoft Office or Apple Apps on Your Mac? 

I was a long time Microsoft user mainly because work was Windows based and Word, Excel and PowerPoint were what we all used. Now I’ve retired, I find I’m using Pages and, to a lesser extent, Numbers. Happily, the Macmost courses are exactly what I need to show me how to use the Apple apps.

Thanks for the video Gary. I finally pulled the plug on MS OneDrive and Office apps this months after years of using MS. Once I switched to all Apple a few years ago I use Pages and Numbers exclusively. I’m not a power user of office apps for personal use and the Apple office apps are more than powerful enough for what I need.

I haven't used Microsoft Office for 15 years, and I don't miss it one bit.

I am retired and don’t need the complexity of the Microsoft products any more. I am planning to use the Apple apps completely in future. My main reason is they are free!

I find the Microsoft 365 Personal plan, at $70/year to be a good deal, because you get 1 TB of cloud storage as well as access to all of the Office products. I still use Excel instead of Numbers, since that’s the product we always used in the business world. I have, however, gone over to Pages instead of Word, which I always found to be way too complicated.

Thanks Gary for this really helpful video. I’ve been a Mac user for 10 years+ and always used MS apps. I’m now going to give Pages and Numbers a go. Your insights are always encouraging.

As usual, Gary, you are one of the most objective and clearest explainers on RU-vid. I am trying to transition to Pages after years of using Word and am doing so with the "crutch" of LibreOffice. My eventual goal is to do everything in Pages and save files in different formats in the end. I am now getting through your great Playlist of Pages Tutorials.

Good summary Gary. Some things from my experience: 1. I was a big Dragon dictation user (with PC Word) for many years, and initially there was nothing that came close to this on a Mac so ended up using a Windows VM in Parallels which worked fine. Over recent years, though, Apple native dictation into Pages has become almost as good - certainly good enough for me and I am a hard core writer. I also find that PDFs generated by pages somehow look nicer than those from Word. 2. I still use a Parallels Win VM for Excel though. This is to support a range of 10-15 year old VB macros that run very slowly in native Excel on the Mac if the there is a lot of number crunching involved. For day-to-day spreadsheet stuff though, I actually find Numbers more pleasant to use. Apple has done a good job replicating most of the Win Excel keyboard shortcuts. As a tip, I find mapping the modifiers to behave like a native Mac if you have to use Parallels (which is pretty easy to do) 3. We do a lot of charting of data for reporting purposes and Keynote is massively better for that, both in terms of chart creation and the quality for the final output (I would never embed a chart from PowerPoint into a published document, but Keynote graphics are fine). 4. I get sent a lot of PowerPoint presentations by other people (outside the company), but I find PowerPoint itself horribly cluttered, messy and intrusive nowadays, so I generally just open files once and save them as PDFs for general access. If I need to edit the content for my own purposes, then I generally convert it to Keynote and tidy it up. Lastly, as a general comment, when we (mostly) ditched MS Office, we were concerned about exchanging documents with clients for review. We found, however, that providing clients with drafts in PDF format works really well. Everyone can mark up a PDF and best of all, clients can’t tamper with (and screw up) your content - they can only comment :) Summing up (based on my and my teams’ experience): MS Office does more, but once you switch to a simpler environment, it seems unnecessarily complex and clunky when you go back, and the output doesn’t look as good.

Hi. I found Numbers to be the most different to office suite, namely Excel, than the other ones. For small documents, I like the fact that in numbers you can easily arrange different tables and graphs. This is less aesthetic in Excel with the spreadsheet that covers the whole page.

I just love the way you explain things Mr. Gary. I have seen this clip number of times. Thanks.

I used MS Office (mainly Word) when I was working because I had a copy supplied by my employer. I continued to use it (along with Apple's apps) after I retired until changes in OS/X meant I had to get a new version. I didn't want to pay the stupid subscription so I switched over entirely to Pages and Numbers. I find that they are more than adequate for my needs and, as you say, much easier to use (especially Numbers). I also have LibreOffice for those rare occasions when I need some bit of functionality that Pages or Numbers doesn't have.

A good summary. For the last 10 years of working life ( MS based) I used both systems when needed but one you didn’t mention is Keynote. I used it exclusively ( mainly because you were presenting with it rather than sharing.) I found it far superior to PowerPoint.

A very comprehensive overview. I handle the accounts reporting for our residents assn using Excel because I know it so well from using it daily at work. I tried hard to do the same with Numbers (for free of charge) but it didn’t have all that I needed. It did however create charts more easily but overall I stay with Office which incidentally is also compatible with iPhone and iPad, and couldn’t be happier.

I've found that Pages scales a lot better on my 13 inch M1 Macbook Pro when I tile it to the right while doing research with Safari tiled on the left. I also find it a lot more aesthetically pleasing and less cluttered than Word.

I like Google Sheets and Pages. Your videos are really making my transition from windows to Mac bearable. Keep coming back for the stuff I'm forgetting. Thanks dude.

I use LibreOffice on all my machines, Linux, macOS, and Windows.

For the last two decades I was a MS user. Now I have transitioned to Pages and Number , and I find them much better because they lack the frills, and are absolutely user friendly.

Another great video Gary! I work in Microsoft environment but all my personal is in Apple. I do find that there is power in the simplicity of the Apple apps in the form of efficiency. When I have to cross over and run an excel file from work it does have some capability issues with font viewing size and formula conversion.

But one could also use LibreOffice, and I'd like to see a comparison here. Many thanks for the concise explanation!

Loved the video and I would definitely class myself a pro-pages person. I really enjoy pages and find it much more compatible with the way my brain works. I wrote my masters and doctorate portfolios in it and then converted to a word document with no hassle. It also became the main programme for word processing and desktop publishing at my last work place because of its ease of use and handling of objects such as tables. I've since learned how to use LaTex and now try to use this, however that's more of a personal challenge and hobby.

What I tend to find as someone well within the walled garden who also works in a small business, Apple apps for personal use, Microsoft for professional. Numbers is perfect for my home finances, pages for CV/resume writing, and since work pays for the Microsoft apps I use them strictly for work-related business.

Excellent video tutorial today and very useful! Thank you, Gary! 👏🏻❤️

I have a sub to office 365 but I've been trying to learn the Mac versions. Numbers in particular I like for smaller tables and graphs since the tables can be resized. Makes for a good print.

This video was very helpful. Answered my long time questions and more. Very wise, practical and thorough coverage of this topic. Thanks Gary.

There are several differences between Microsoft Office for Mac and the Windows version people. Don't expect to do everything exactly the same way. I often lost a lot of time on the web looking for a way to do so to finally discover that the feature I needed didn't exist on Mac.

Happy New Year Gary! Actually I think Microsoft Office (now Microsoft 365) increased Mac’s use in the businesses community. It happened to me. I really enjoy my Mac computers but also make intensive use o Microsoft 365 including Outlook because it is very easy to have a logo signature in it. Microsoft 365 for Mac and optimized for Apple Silicon is really great. It is a beautiful and powerful combination! Cheers!

Thanks for this subject you have touched upon. One of the reasons for me to be tied to Mojave has been this: I am used to Microsoft Word. Tried to shift to Pages but found but was dissuaded from adopting it because I learned that the file sizes are more with Pages than Word documents. Regards.

I have used Microsoft Office for over 20 years on Windows. I was doubly surprised when I installed my Office 2019 pack on my very first Mac in 2021 (a 24-inch iMac). 1) my one-time Office 2019 license for Windows is perfectly compatible, I was able to download my purchase from my Microsoft account and import my license without having to buy a new license and 2) unlike Office on Windows, Office updates frequently in the background on my Mac. However, I prefer to use the mail app rather than Outlook because I find Outlook less well integrated on Mac and more complex to set up. The mail app is so much easier to use!

Thanks bunches. When I first got my Mac, I installed Office 360. But you talked me into learning Apple apps. I have found once the learning curve has passed, I so much more enjoy Apple apps. The subscription of 360 automatically renewed a couple of months ago. Next year, I will not renew.

When I transitioned to mac from windows world, I had issues getting Microsoft office to function correctly. I do not subscribe to Office 365. But, having said that, I did install LibreOffice, the old open office. I found out it was easy to transition from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice. Plus, LibreOffice maintained the format of my files and document.

Thank you for this video, I have a pages doc and did not know I could export it as a word doc to send to others who do not have a MAC.

I've had MS Office 2019 on both my MacBook and iMac for over 3 years after obtaining a volume license that cost me something like $50 (no subscription). I needed it to support old legacy version of data/files I had prior to my Macs when I ran Windows and found it easier to use over the Mac native versions (Pages, Numbers, etc.). I'll probably never upgrade them, nor will ever need to, as they do everything I need. I would, however, give my right leg for a cheap full version of Visio! I miss it so much and was an expert at doing so for my job (network & data center engineering documents).

I moved to mac a couple years ago, however could not get used to pages & numbers, so I kept word and excel.

I work in a corporate setting that is MS centric and I use Apple (numbers, pages, keynotes) exclusively and import in and export out to the MS format seamlessly. I was. a MS user for years but like the usability and some of the features within the Apple suite better.

Very nice and concise comparison, so useful!

There is one glaring issue with the MS suite for Mac: not all functions of the Windows version of the suite are available on the Mac versions. Would running Windows on the Mac solve this issue? It’s an added cost, but you do not have to have a Mac/Windows setup.

Thanks Gary for the topic and the great explanation!

Very helpful video...now to actually get them installed and use them. I have not used any document program in about 10 years!

As always, Gary, great video. In the past, Apple products didn't seem to be nearly as good as MSOffice products. But recently, they seem to have improved a great deal. I use Apple products for my own stuff because I just enjoy them more. They do everything I need. I only use Word and Excel for compatibility with others who use them.

I just started this week to migrate from Excel to Numbers. The current Office license I have comes to an end. I think that for my purposes Numbers is a good alternative for Excel.

Really excellent, Gary. I"m stuck with one foot in each camp (Mac & Windows)

The only thing I wish numbers had that excel does is the ability to highlight columns and use the tab to move around in just those highlighted areas

I like that you you state that MS Word and MS Excel are the most powerful. I am using MS office on my Mac Mini, iPad and iPhone. I do use Apple Numbers for converting my contacts to CSV for transfer to the Apple Contacts. I cannot get Excel to convert the contacts to CSV properly. contacts will not recognize the CSV files from Excel. (i.e. I have both Numbers and Excel). Overall a very non partisan view of MS office vs the Apple Apps.

New Subscriber! You are very helpful to me with my new Mac. Thank you

Good summary. Thank you. After a lifetime of Windows at work we subscribe to Office. However I have found Keynote to be better and more creative than Powerpoint. Some of that may be because most people are overloaded with Powerpoint presentations and Keynote’s look is fresher for them.

Very nice video! Thank you!

Very useful and practical advice. Thanks Gary!

Excellent video. Very precise explanation. I am really thankful for this.

I second the notion of using LibreOffice!

Thats a fair summary Gary, thanks for sharing.

Having recently retired, I don't have to worry about sharing files with colleagues, so Apple's apps work great for me - they've got more than enough features for my needs, are simpler to use and easier on the eye. I keep LibreOffice as a standby in case I get sent any problematic MS Office attachments/forms, but so far I've not needed it.

Excellent content! Thank you

I miss a referencing tool in pages. Except that pages meets my other requirements.

Gary, what movie app do you use for making your videos? I think it would be really helpful for you to do a tutorial showing how you create your videos from beginning to upload.

As a professional I used MS Office from inception until 2010 (retirement.). There is no need to give MS your personal data if you don't have to use MS Office due to employment related reasons. I am perfectly happy wiht Apple's apps. Some features I missed at first, and felt awkward trying to learn a new system, but, overall Apple does everything I need.

Thank you for this video, much appreciated!

Our family is all Mac/Apple. When my kids went to university I subscribed to Office365 Family for the Office Apps and the cloud storage. Nowadays its Apple One Premier. The reason I still subscribe to Microsoft365 Family is for the enhanced email. We all have Outlook email addresses and I like the enterprise grade security.

Another home run, Gary. Very well explained, and you showed no partiality (even though we all know you are an Apple guy 🙂, but I digress). Like you and most people, I use office mainly because it is given to me by my employer. For me, iWork apps are much easier to use and understand. Microsoft tends to take something good and change it for no reason and complicate things as they've done with Word (ribbon) and Onenote (2016 vs. windows 10). I think that getting into the business world via software and partnerships was a brilliant move on the part of MS as, at this point, there are so many options out there that do the same thing (albeit without all of the bells and whistles) that had it not been for these partnerships I wonder how much of the market share they would have. Also, to your point, they have been around for so long that many people see no reason to switch to another platform and stick with what they know.

I just recently came from microsoft and now using a macbook. I find pages very different and difficult to use. Hopefully I can persevere to learn it.

When I was a university student, I relied on Pages for note taking bc of how simple it is and its uncluttered look. It’s easy to hide the formatting panel. I noticed a lot of students were using Pages as well. I’ve never liked Numbers so I use Excel bc I’m more familiar with it. I have a hard time with Numbers for some reason.

When I was a windows user my office program was Libre Office. And that I still use on my Mac Mini and MacBook. Works great. So I can work on the same documents with other people, for instance in DropBox and I don’t have to have two files (pages and docx) of the same document. As converting all the time is not ideal. That’s why I still haven’t managed to learn to work with pages and numbers and keynote. Problem is that I haven’t found a good app for my iPad. Advise is welcome.

I love Apple Suite however for school there's no way I can use it most school software will not recognize the extensions resulting in professors unable to grade work. It's a hassle to export all your files in a .pdf document every time you do a change. Hopefully that changes soon

Great video Gary. One comment regarding that Apple Apps are free. If you need cloud storage, with Office 365 family, you get 6x1TB for $99 per year, which is way cheaper than iCloud + free Apps.

Gary, love you, been watching for over a decade! Have you ever covered alternatives for MS Access on a Mac??

Used to have Microsoft Office but somewhere in a Mac OS upgrade, lost or it wouldn't recognize my license. Wasn't going to do a subscirptiion. Went to Pages and Numbers, the more I used Numbers the better I liked it and FREE with any upgrades !!!

I use Pages in Mac (no 3rd party apps in it) and I have a PC laptop with MS Office if ever I want to use it.

I use Numbers and Pages for my private documents because it's much easier to use it for me and for all the other reasons (Handoff, Collaboration with others etc.) At work because we use Windows Machines I'm stuck there with the MS Office Apps. The Problem between MS Office on Windows and on the Mac is, they are 2 different Programms. So lot of functionality that you have on windows doesn't mean you have them also on the Mac version.

I agree! I used to do a lot of work in Word and Excel. I still have them on my Mac, but now that I'm retired, I prefer to use Apple apps. Yes, Excel is more powerful, but there is one very important thing I can do in Numbers that I can't do in Excel. They both have tabs, which I make extensive use of, but in pages, I can have multiple tables in the same tab. In Numbers, each table has its own column and row bars. I can change widths and heights in one table, and it doesn't mess up the layout of a table next to it. In Excel, you're stuck with one set of width and height bars for the entire tab. Maybe there's a way to do this in Excel, but I've never seen an example of it.

the problem is "continuity". i'm advanced excel use with its vba. i can't do my work on mac unless i install it.

Thanks gary. I am new to mac and was really worried about not being able to open pages and keynote files in windows. I don't want to purchase Office365 and you saved my subscription.

Great information....thanks so much...

One thing I use in Numbers is the "Checkbox" column. Excel does not have an equivalency when converting a Numbers file to Excel.

Hey Gary, when I first purchased my Macbook Air M1 chip, I was clueless about operating and setting up my computer until I came across your channel. Learned so much, thanks to you. I reviewed your video on How To Store Your Music On an External Drive which I think was about 2 years ago. Could you do an update on how to play music using an external hard drive? I tried your method from that video, but unfortunately, it's not working. Would appreciate it if you could, thanks

i use both iwork and microsoft office and there’s benefits for each, any time i ned especific stuff from one, i can export to another

I bought office in 2013, spending 150€ and soon it was the old version. And other people i knew were still working with the even older doc format. So I had to export using doc instead of docx. Using Apple Numbers and Pages just made my life so much easier, if necessary for work I export to xlsx and docx, mostly I provide pdf. Privately I like making spreadsheets now and have a much better understanding of my finances.

I use libre office, it's free, compatible with Microsoft Office files and can do everything both options do.

Great video as usual!

Thank you Gary 🙏

You are a lifesaver! Thnx!

Thank you. I’ve been driving myself crazy trying to figure out if I needed to buy windows.

Thanks for your overview on Microsoft office which is the legacy workplace standard. I was stunned to learn that you were forced to use MS by your publisher. That really sucks. I’m writing a book and I think that I have a new publisher red line.

Stll have to use MS Word within the company I work for, but have hated it ever since they introduced the ribbon (can never remember where things I use occasionally are). Main problem I have is when I want to open a MS Word document on my Mac to send to my printer. The documents usually have images and different page layouts that Apple’s Pages can’t seem to handle properly. Still, I won’t pay for MS Word on my Mac because if there is anything I hate more than MS Word’s ribbon it is subscriptions on software and the one-off payment is far too high. Informative and nicely reasoned video, as always👍

I did use always microsoft products however after watching your videos year ago I changed to apple products. It was hard to transition and learn it however I now like it more and find it easier and a bit hate microsoft UI. However I do get from my team a lot of excel where numbers cannot see the formatting and formulas set. Also it’s annoying the need to export as excel every time I save. Quick question here, every time I download an excel it pops up and opens in excel instead of numbers. Is there a way to change the default app it opens with for any new download? (Not particular file)

Thank you, I have the Microsoft office because I have a company and I do my bookkeeping with it. I recently have written it in numbers, and with the help off you I managed for 90% the whole bookkeeping with the formules in it. So thanks a lot for it. The reason was that I couldn’t look at my IPad because I had to pay for it extra but I didn’t like that. And now I can look everything I want too. And my checkbox always is up to date. Funny thing is that watching your video’s and learning a lot from it I get smarter. Normally I asked my husband for something about the computer and now it’s the other way 😀😀😀👌👌. Hope to still learn from you about pages, keynote and numbers. O, and by the way, I had a problem with all my devices, got stuck, had to do always restart every device but yesterday I looked a video of you about changing the e-mailadres on th Apple ID. Tried it, did it and all worked well again so thanks for that! Keep them coming!

Very helpful. New Sub. 😁

Thanks great video

First computer: Osbourne. First GUI OS: Windows 2.0. However, this loooong time user of Microsoft is now totally fed up with them. I have switched to Mac. I will ONLY use Mac software and no longer be held hostage by Microshit. Love your tutorials, dude.

Very balanced and reasonable opinion. Thanks

I use VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) with Excel. Is there an equivalent with Numbers?

I got office 365 last week and there is no Access on both windows os and mac os. I use Parallel on my Mac and sign in there. There is still no Access. Can you tell me what thet problem is?😢😢😢😢

I use macros in bigger Excel worksheets at home, so I would need to keep office since numbers can't open Excel files with macros.

Very helpful

1) Does Ms excel comes with Power Query in Mac? 2) Can we Install Power BI in Mac?

I've been a Mac user for years. Just recently purchased Microsoft 365 and am very frustrated using it. It is missing a lot of the ribbon functions, particularly in design. Customer service doesn't have the answers.

After MS basically abandoning Publisher, I switched to pages. Word is brutal when it comes to inserting and editing images precisely in documents. There is definitely a learning curve but it’s well worth it.

The only reason I can’t use Pages in because of citations management applications integration. Pages only supports Endnote which is expensive!

I think I’ll stick to pages, and just submit all my homework as word documents. I also find that Pages has more features than Google Docs, but still unsure about Microsoft office.

Is text reflow an issue when my presentation created on a Mac is opened up and viewed on a PC? I realise the PC user has to have the same version of the fonts I've used - but is reflow a problem?

For me it's Pages and Keynote for documents and presentations due to their ease and friendliness of use. Excel for spreadsheets because it's just more powerful than Numbers.

I was rooting for Pages, but I make a lot of invoices from fillable forms. I'm fond of hitting tab, tab, tab to create them. Pity! Otherwise "almost" all native OS this time.