Microsoft applications are killing me...help!!
 

Hey all, i recently made the switch from PC to Mac on the advice of numerous people. However, I work with word, excel and powerpoint all day, every day, and have found that these microsoft programs work extremely poorly on Mac OS X. Not only do I encounter the dreaded "unexpectedly quit" signage seemingly incessantly, ALL other applications slow down immensely when I am using any of these Microsoft applications. Have I made a major error in switching to Mac when basically all I use are these Microsoft applications? Can anyone recommend any other viable programs aside from Microsoft that I can run on Mac OS X without any bother? I have been trying Open Office as an alternative, but have had problems with characters being superimposed on top of one another and involuntary layout changes in PPT. What can I do? I've seriously considered dropping my laptop out my 5th floor window on too many occasions now...Any help/advice would be hugely appreciated....

NeoOffice is good.

Unfortunately, Microsoft software is behind the times with more than just Windows. If you've got a relatively new computer it's probably an Intel Mac, which means that Office for the Mac has to run under Rossetta, so that's slowing you down some. Add to that typical Microsoft QC and it's a wonder it works at all.

Word Processors:
Nisus Writer http://www.nisus.com/ ,
Mariner Write http://www.marinersoftware.com/sitepage.php?page=12 ,
Mellel http://www.redlers.com/ ,
Apple Pages: http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/

Spreadsheets: Sorry, I have no experience with any alternatives on OS X. I've used Open Office on Windows, but the reputation of Open Office on Mac is that it is still unstable, and I've never tried it. Anyway, of the MS Office apps, Excel seems to be one of the better ones.

Presentations: Apple Keynote http://www.apple.com/iwork/keynote/ Keynote blows PowerPoint away in every single aspect.

Trevor

The apps should not crash often. If they do, one thing to look for is a corrupted font in your system.

I have to agree with vidaboa73, Microsoft Word and PowerPoint are really slow compared to the open office alternative. I stopped using them and have been with open office ever since. I am running on a ppc with 2004 version of microsoft.

I wish there were some tips that we can use to make the Microsoft products run faster.

Let's see? you leave micro$oft behind, for whatever reason. Yet, apple users still insist that they need micro$oft software.

to the OP. If you can make the switch to something better, you would find you life much nicer. If you require micro$oft products, then they have admitted to making the OS X versions beta for the windos version.

I only use Excel and Entourage because they are reasonably good products. I have found an alternative to Word and Powerpoint as far as creating documents and presentations. I only need Word and PowerPoint in case it is emailed to me from someone else.

So some of the products I like, the others I can do without. When I am sending documents from openoffice however, I always have to send them in pdf format because Windows users will not be able to open them up otherwise. I hope that the new Microsoft open xml format will resolve this issue.

Spreadsheet alternatives:

Mesa

Mariner Calc

Aabel - high end analysis

Quantrix - modeling and analytics - see the comparison with Excel.

For me, Excel is entrenched. I am not interested in using another spreadsheet at the moment but thanks for the alternatives.

Office should not really crash often in OS X. I use it when I have to, and it runs fine. It may not be lightning fast under Rosetta, but it's fine for general use.

Also, don't forget that TextEdit opens (and saves) Word documents.

I suggest you try to see what else might be causing the problems. Look at the Console logs: /Applications/Utilities/Console.app

I wonder if using Japanese fonts (both reading and writing) could be the cause of the problem then...?

I use bothe Excel and Word with no problems on a continuous basis with a Macbook Pro 2.16 GHZ and 2GB Ram. How much RAM do you have in your machine and what machine is it...

I'm wondering if it would be a Rosetta problem. Office is still PowerPC code at this point, yes? That would also explain the sluggishness: your modern Intel Mac is running MSOffice apps in emulation.

Situation won't last.

Meanwhile, you should not be crashing so much. Me not being an Intel-Mac onwer as of yet, I don't have any clues for what to do to troubleshoot randomly crashing Rosetta (PPC-on-Intel) apps but maybe someone else does.

I use NeoOffice too.

I think that NeoOffice is basically a complete duplicate of MS Office exept it doesn't require money, patientience, or a liking of Bill Gates to work proberly.

PS:NeoOffice is just a Mac version of OpenOffice--and although you can get OpenOffice for Mac, it has has PC keyboard shortcuts (like [ctrl]+[P]), but NeoOffice has Mac keyboard shortcuts (like [command]+[P]).

I never close Entourage, and I run and close Word and Excel many times a day, with no issues. I'm switching to Neo Office though, and liking it a lot.

How much memory do you have?

Yeah, anything running in Rosetta is going to use lots of ram. If you're constantly using a lot of PPC apps, you should probably invest in more ram.

You can find excellent help on the microsoft.public.mac.office.word and microsoft.public.mac.office newsgroups. To subscribe, open Entourage, click on the Microsoft News Server. The newsgroup list will then download.
In the list of newsgroups, click the newsgroup you want, and then click Subscribe button.

I agree with the suggestion to check out NeoOffice. It isn't perfect, but it's fairly quick and stable. The newest version also has a pseudo database, and a Powerpoint clone. It's a pretty comprehensive package...


Roger Michaels
Macintosh Consultant
www.mymacfix.com

I was an Excel user in my former (Micro$oft) existence. Since changing to a Mac I have tried both Mesa and Calc, and I used Calc for about six months, but I'm about to switch back to Excel.

I have no love for MS and I prefer the Mac in almost every way, but I have to admit that Excel is a much better spreadsheet than either of the other two.

I just tried out Numbers in the Apple Store today, and I liked it a lot.

I am no Microsoft fanboy but Excel is by far the best product MS has ever put out, and I am quite fond of it.

Excel is one of the most stable programs I have ever used on my Mac, in fact I can't ever remember a crash, and I've been using it on all my Macs since the Mac Plus in the mid eighties to my 24 inch shiny new iMac.

Interesting that Excel was originally released as a Mac program in 1985, 2 years before the Windows version.

I don't think there were very many Windows versions of anything at all in 1985.

And yes. I had Excel 2.2 on my SE, upgrading eventually to (I think) Excel 4.0 which had workbooks that could contain multiple spreadsheets. My PowerMac had Excel 5.0, reportedly the low point in Mac Excel development but still nowhere near as horrid as its Word compatriot, Word 6. Eventual upgrade to Excel 97, I think it was (?) under OS 9, and Excel X for OSX. I don't always stay totally current but the nice thing is that I have not generally needed to.

I suspect Solitaire and Mine Field were working by then…