Virtualization For MS Office

[hobartimus]

My wife has to exchange complex Word documents with people at work who use Windows. She has big problems retaining formatting when going between Mac/PC. There are of course font issues, but also rules, item positioning, and other page layout problems.

Would running MS Office for Windows under Parallels resolve this for her?

[trevor]

Yes, it would as long as she is using the same version of MS Office for Windows as the people with which she is sharing documents. If she's using a different version of Office, then it's likely she'll have the same problem.

Trevor

[hobartimus]

Oy, that's what I was afraid of.

Thanks,
Howard

[cwtnospam]

I hate to recommend any MS product, but you might be better off getting the latest version of Office for the Mac, assuming the PC users are using the latest for the PC.

[anthlover]

How complicated are the documents. I find NeoOffice sometimes does a better job of maintaining compatibility then real office. That is I had better luck opening in Neooffice and retaining formating then I did when I opened Office X documents in Office 2008.

You did not mention which office products your using (On the windows and Mac Side) and which Applications (Word, Excel, etc.). This has an effect on whether your best choice is Office 2003, 2007 (Windows), Office 2008 (mac), Office 2004 (mac) or Neo Office. For example VBA stuff was stripped from Office 2008. Many people still use office 2004 because of it.

Please note also you have many ways you can run windows software:

3 VM options 1) (Virtual Box [Free] and now very good. 2) Parallels and 3) Fusion. From these I would recommend Virtual Box for your needs and can can not beat free. You still need a copy of windows and the appropriate version of office though.

There is Apple's Free Boot Camp but it requires starting up as a PC. Its easy but not as simple as running Windows in a VM from within OSX in a window, rather then restarting as a PC.

Lastly there is Code weavers Crossover Mac. This wonderful product lets you run many windows Apps with no copy of Windows.**** They offer a Free Demo just as the VM vendors do. Mind you that Crossover provides a list of Apps that work and the level of compatibility. Many Apps not listed work fine too. Their specialty is actually Office apps.