Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 21-25 of 114
 Avoid if you do a lot with tables December 12, 2007
J. H. Mulkey
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
Overall, iWork seems like a very nice software set. My review focuses on one aspect, however, and that is tables. I do all kinds of things with tables in MS Word, and was disappointed to find out that tables in Pages are horribly hard to work with in comparison. I tried my best - read the documentation, read Apple online forums, etc. Pages makes the tables with huge cells by default (like you would see on a PowerPoint presentation) and when you try to resize them smaller, it hides part of your text and an annoying box with a plus sign appears in the cell. The box remains even if you resize the font to fit. Then, the text won't center in the middle of the smaller cell, even when you click the button that is supposed to do this. You can't change the text direction in the cells either (who wants to use text boxes? what a pain!). A table I could fit on one page in MS Word, takes up 2+ pages in Pages, even with identical page margins. I just don't understand why the software is so restrictive in this aspect. I was almost tempted to keep this software, just because I might have other uses for the programs, but now I have to sell it to help buy Office Mac 2004. It's a shame that something as simple as tables could not be better engineered to allow the end user to get stuff done. However, if tables aren't as essential to you as they are to me, then ignore this review and go ahead and buy the software.
 Very disappointing! Still need office June 25, 2008
Jonathan (bristol, ri United States)
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
Pages is not really a word processor at all. It is, at best, a mediocre page layout program. The spell-checking and grammar-checking are basically useless. In my mind, spelling and grammar are as fundamental to word processing as are cut and paste. Apple has been on a real role lately that I had really high hopes for iwork. It doesn't take long to find out this product is just plain junk. I'm sorry I bought it and will go back to office.
 Not for users of Office August 11, 2008
L. Woods (Rockville, MD)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
We purchased this product after buying a Mac. We have been pc/office users for years and we love our new mac. We needed some basic word processing and spreadsheet software for home use, so we bought this based on its reviews. I have been disappointed with it so far. It's missing some of the basic options that are available in Microsoft Office.
My biggest gripes have been when trying to work with documents that either were created in Office or need to be sent to someone with Office. I tried to help out a niece with her resume, and I found it was missing a lot of the formatting found in Word (ie- the ability to set printing area wider than the pre-set margins, creating bullet characters that weren't dots). When I exported the file into a .doc for her, formatting was lost. I also tried to edit a Word file for someone using pages, and when the program converted the file back to .doc, some of the original formatting was lost (my 2 page document became a 4 page document!).
Numbers works ok, but it's not as easy to use as Excel. I may not be using all of the software functionality, but it seems that simple tasks aren't easy. When I try to sum a series of cells, I have to use the drop-down menu instead of the numerous ways that office allows you to sum things.
I'm sure that I haven't explored the full capacity of these programs, but for someone who needs light duty tools and is used to microsoft, I'd recommend staying with what you know. This is definitely not a program to use if you need to work with microsoft files.
 Fantastic August 24, 2007
M. Robinson (Rhode Island USA)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I've been using Apple's Office-type offerings since Appleworks 1, and iWork '08 is the apotheosis of the line. I find the ease of use and visual quality of Pages to be top rate, Keynote continues to blow away Powerpoint, and the new Numbers is a dream to use. Apple continues to advance software development beautifully.
IWorks is deficient March 27, 2008
K. M. Reither (Kingwood, TX USA)
6 out of 25 found this review helpful
When I use Microsoft Word to prepare a letter, I select the addressee and using a simple menu, select envelopes. Word picks up the address and prints the envelope.
There is no way to do that in iWorks, thus the product is deficient. I wish I had known about it before I bought it. I've gone back to using Word.
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