[SterlingSpring]

Alright I will be as fast as I can but I have an issue...I have a HUGE essay I have to do and Microsoft Office was the program that would solve it...BUT I was using a trial version before and I just DON'T have 150 dollars for Microsoft Office...it's an absurd price for only 1 program I would ever use personally. I tried but it won't allow me to use another trial with another email address...regardless I will be in the same boat next quarter if I did. Now...my problem the formatting when I am using footnotes to source things. I am using a format called 'Turabian' for my papers and when I source materials. I am able to do this with OpenOffice but doesn't do so in a hyperlink...for instance if I press the 1 at the end of the sentence I sourced..it would go right to the footnote at the bottom of the page so my instructor would know exactly where and what I sourced. The other issue with the footnotes was it would not allow me to tab them or edit them at the bottom of the page. And when I tried to fix all this by using Word at my university...it completely messed up all the formatting and left my essays herky jerky. So the best solution was to just make the essay directly from Word from the beginning and it all worked fine and allowed the to edit the footnotes and did the footnotes just fine. So this seems to be a limitation of OpenOffice...so is there a way to fix this? Can Pages possibly do this advanced footnote editing like Word can? Because I tried the trial version and couldn't figure it out (The Footnotes). Now 20 dollars for Pages 09 is something I would be willing to pay for if it can do all this. OR can OpenOffice do this with something I don't know? I have OpenOffice 3 for Mac...my essay is due in 10 days and I need to get started ASAP because it's a LONG LONG LOOOOONG essay. Please help!!! And sorry...I will not pirate Word. I need a legal and cheap solution here. And I can't do my paper at school...I just don't have the transportation to go there 5 days a week...

[Cashfan]

are you sure your university doesn't have a better price for Word? At the Univ. of Washington, all Microsoft software is currently free to eligible students. that is fairly recent. we used to have to pay a little bit but certainly not the full student price advertised by Microsoft.

[Spheric Harlot]

As far as I know, the trial and full versions of iWork are identical.

However, there have been murmurs of a new version being in the works — it's possible that we'll see a major update together with iCloud, come late September/early October.

Also, please consider using paragraphs. University professors love paragraphs. They tend to help people actually read what you've spent so much time writing.

[Thorzdad]

Originally Posted by Cashfan 

are you sure your university doesn't have a better price for Word?

This.
Even my daughter's tiny midwest university got a better price on Office than $150. If you're a full-time student, you should check with the school bookstore and see what the student price is. There's probably a downloadable option.

[cgc]

If your college doesn't have discounted Office software you can buy the Academic version for $99.95 (link: Office for Mac Academic Discount | Office For Mac). If you're taking college classes you really should consider this part of the deal...like those $150 books with about $10 of info in them.

[SterlingSpring]

Turabian is VERY specific...I do use paragraphs but I still need to use footnotes with sources. So can Pages do this like Word can?

[besson3c]

At what point does Google Docs enter the discussion as a possible MS Word replacement?

[SterlingSpring]

Sorry not familiar with Google Docs...can it do what I'm asking?

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by SterlingSpring 

Sorry not familiar with Google Docs...can it do what I'm asking?

Probably not.

It would help if you described your issues better (be precise, use whitespace and be less verbose).

I tried Pages and double-clicking the little 1 of the footnote does bring me to the footnote in the bottom. So they are "hyperlinked". Of course I can also click into the footnote section and edit them there. What is it exactly that you need to do that you couldn't get to work in Pages?

Note that if you have to deliver your essay in Word format, whenever you create it with Pages or OpenOffice or anything other than Word itself, there might be some stuff that shifts around when exporting to Word. When you have to deliver a Word document, you probably have no chance but to use Word. But in that case your university should have a deal in place to give you a cheap Word license.

[Eug]

+1 on asking your university software licencing office for a better price. At my institution, it's about $75-90 depending on the licence. In some universities it's much lower.