[twdawson]

Hi all

I have been using Microsoft word of late but am having no end of problems with it crashing, should expect that from using something that was written by them. Is there anything else that is just as good.
My system came with Appleworks on it and i have also got pages, so are these any good. If not what else do you guys use and what else can you recommend.

[SVass]

If you want to transfer files to others, anything will work (as long as you give them pdf or rtf files). I have used Appleworks for 15 years and it still works. Neither of the other two will let you embed spreadsheets within the text. sam

[EndlessMac]

You can also try Open Office. It's basically an open sourced office suite like Microsoft's but it's free and suppose to be compatible with Microsoft. If you need support with Open Office on Mac then go to this forum. As SVass has said if you save your files as rtf (rich text format) then your files should be compatible with most programs. This means you can really use any word processing program.

[mpancha]

Personally I use Microsoft Office on the Mac, I've never had trouble with it. I haven't used Apply Works since the mid 80s, or maybe it was late 80s, whatever it was it was a long time ago. I've tried Pages, and I didn't like it. To me, its still Beta software. open Office is useable, but is more geared for the techies IMO (I'm saying this as a techie).

Have you tried just reinstalling Microsoft office? no matter what anyone says, OS X does require the very occasional reinstalation of software.

[brettcamp]

I got tired of Word's crashes and bloated, unintuitive feature set, and there are plenty of superior alternatives. First, try TextEdit; it comes with your Mac, is simple to use, and has a surprising number of WP functions for an app that used to be pretty basic. But if you need features like footnoting or review/comments or serious outlining/navigation, it's not enough.

If that doesn't work for you, try NeoOffice, the free, open source OSX version of OpenOffice that's more Mac-like than its cousin and has most of the features MS Word does. I have to admit the interface is pretty ugly and some find it slow, but it's really plenty powerful enough for almost any Mac user, and always evolving and adding more features. It's great to have something so useful available for free. There's also another open-source WP called AbiWord that some people like.

In the unlikely event those free choices don't work for you, and you don't like the 30-day Pages demo that came with your Mac, the three pay-for WPs I hear the most about are Nisus Writer, MarinerWrite, and Mellel. I tried them all and wound up getting Mellel, which is primarily aimed at academic writers and others who work with long documents, though it's good for almost everything. It has great footnoting and outlining/navigation, but I found the styles hard to use. So except for my book, I generally just use TextEdit (often with OmniOutliner) or DevonNote, which is really an info organizer but has decent word processing functions, too.

BTW, always good to do a search before asking a question; there's already a couple of threads on this subject in this forum here and here.

[ghporter]

Never had problems with Word on any platform. But I will note that OpenOffice, like NeoOffice, is free, has a good selection of features, and can be configured to even save to MS Office-type file formats by default (as opposed to having to manually select that each time, which some suites do). It does not "look like" Word, but it works well and it's well supported.

[midwinter]

Originally Posted by twdawson

Hi all

I have been using Microsoft word of late but am having no end of problems with it crashing, should expect that from using something that was written by them. Is there anything else that is just as good.

There is, quite simply, nothing that is "just as good." There are options that are servicable, depending upon your needs. I am in the process of moving all my writing over to Nisus Writer Express, which is getting awfully good. Lots of people like Mellel, which is pretty powerful (but has a hideous interface). Mariner Write is still around and has lots of features. It really depends on what you need to do with Word.

My system came with Appleworks on it and i have also got pages, so are these any good. If not what else do you guys use and what else can you recommend.

Appleworks is fine, but the text rendering is poor. Pages is beautiful, but I don't care for the interface, since it's designed for people who want to use templates, not those who write for a living.

Try Nisus and Mellel.

[threestain]

I've found that the buggiest part of word is in fact the spell checker - had no end of problems when writing a thesis (100+ pages) last year, but turned it off, and when I wrote another this year had no problems, until... I spell checked at the end of the writing and it crashed as the spell check finished... so my advice is to turn off spell checkers and try again...

[JKT]

FWIW, OpenOffice.org is no more for techies than MS Office is. Its dependence on X11 makes its learning curve a bit steeper, but that is why NeoOffice is available (which is based upon OpenOffice.org 1.1.5). Incidentally, NeoOffice has recently received a major (in terms of the nuts and bolts) upgrade and is now version 1.2. This version is significantly faster in many respects than NeoOffice/J 1.1 and its RAM footprint is smaller. However, for best performance, NeoOffice does require a significant amount of RAM Anything less than 512MB system RAM is going to lead to relatively poor performance. It is usable, but not desirable.

You can also improve the look and feel of NeoOffice using NeoIconer X. See the trinity.neooffice.org forums for more info.

[Mastrap]

Another vote for Nisus, which is an excellent product.

Oh, and Thomas: No animation in signatures please.

[ghporter]

I've never had Word crash on anything. If you're having such major problems with a significant part of the program, it sounds like it's been corrupted and you should reinstall it. It can't hurt, it doesnt' take that long, and it could easily be the fix you need...

[saint_theodora]

i would use mellel all the time if it weren't for the tracking changes features that word has, and the fact that everyone and their mother can open a .doc these days and see something relatively close to the intended product. but as you say, it can be buggy, and on a slower machine, once you get past a certain number of pages, it hangs quite a bit. i tend to use it mostly to produce a final product after doing all my work in another word processor, and recreate formatting after going mellel -> rtf -> word.

mellel is easy to use, has wonderful multilingual support, and plays very nice with Bookends, which i use to manage citations and bibliographical information. it also has a neat outline view, which is useful for navigating longer documents, which it handles well. i am writing my master's thesis in it, and have had no data loss, and only one hang. i recommend it highly.

[osxrules]

I still go for the likes of LaTeX for any big documents. All input is stored as plain text so saving and loading huge documents is instant. It made my big university documentation so much easier. It also helps you organise your document too. I might not use it for design though because output tends to be harder to control and it seems geared more for techincal papers.

For that sort of thing I wouldn't use NeoOffice, Word or Appleworks, which all suck. I'd probably use some sort of app like Photoshop, Freehand or Illustrator.

[ghporter]

Has LaTeX been upgraded to the point that the user no longer needs to know arcane keyboard shortcuts to change formatting? I kind of gave up on learning it a long time ago because of that and some other issues. If it is "new and improved," they need to advertise better; as far as I've ever heard, there's nothing that beats LaTeX for its capabilities in formatting for publication.

[SVass]

By the way, if you use Microsoft Word, turn FAST SAVE OFF. Otherwise, it saves every editing change at the end of your document creating a bloated document. Also, the FBI (and your Aunt Edith) can read all of your revisions. sam

[Dr.Michael]

I wrote my PHD thesis chapter wise with Word to avoid crashs.

In the meantime I use plain text editors. There is nothing as rock solid as BBedit or JEdit. But you cannot use images, tables or spreadsheet. Forget also about index, contents, footnotes etc.

[JKT]

So did I, but even that didn't save me (though this was in Office '97/'98).

[Shades of Gray]

I have used Word since 5.0, but was frustrated when I began a book in 1999. I used Nisus Classic, and now have Mellel as my primary word processor. For page layout and some word processing I have recently purchased Papyrus. It has indexing and cross-referencing, and I am in the process of laying out another book. I sent the first chapter as PDF to a printer last week and the photos were superb.

I also like RagTime Solo (free for personal use), or ~$110 for Academic version, and has high end word processor, page layout, and spreadsheet. They have a Beta for version 6 you might want to try. Had I not purchased Papyrus, I would have purchased RagTime.

[Dr.Michael]

Originally Posted by JKT

So did I, but even that didn't save me (though this was in Office '97/'98).

I used Word 6 on Win 3.11

[JKT]

Originally Posted by Dr.Michael

I used Word 6 on Win 3.11

Double shudder... Word 6 and Win 3.x... nightmares are made of this.

[Dr.Michael]

Originally Posted by JKT

Double shudder... Word 6 and Win 3.x... nightmares are made of this.

Completely agree