iWork and Office: Can they work together?

Apple says iWork is compatible with Microsoft Office. But what does that really mean and is it true?

It's true that you can move documents between iWork and Office. But when you do, they may look or function differently than they did in their parent programs. In Macworlds recent feature comparing Word and Pages, Excel and Numbers, and PowerPoint and Keynote , we discussed the differences in features between those programs. But (as several readers pointed out in comments to those stories), we didn't cover the file-compatibility or interoperability issues that arise when you're trying to move documents from one suite to another. That's what I'd like to do here.

Office Files in iWork

When you attempt to open an Office file in iWork using File: Open, iWork doesn't really open them: it imports them instead, creating a new translated file in Pages, Numbers, or Keynote format and leaving the original Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file untouched.

iWork applications can import files in Microsoft's newer Open XML file formats (which use the filename extensions .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx). These are the default file formats of Office 2008 for Mac, and Office 2007 for Windows. Office 2004 can only create the older Microsoft formats (.doc, .xls, and .ppt), but iWork can import these as well.

If you have both Office and iWork installed on your Mac, and you want Pages to open when you double-click a Word file, select the file and chose Get Info from the File menu. Expand the "Open with" section and chose Pages from the popup menu.

When it imports or exports Office files, iWork tells you what got lost in the translation. When importing an Office file, iWork will often bring up a Warning box telling you which aspects of the original document were removed or changed. And when it does import items, they will often appear differently in iWork. The more complex the Office file, the more likely you will lose something in the translation.

One major Office feature that iWork does not support is Visual Basic Application (VBA) macros from Office 2004 for Mac and Office 2007 for Windows. When you import a file containing a macro, any macro in the document is lost.

You can recreate much of the functionality of an Office macro using AppleScript. The catch is that you have to create the script mostly by hand. There is no way to automatically translate macros into AppleScripts. Which means you're out of luck if you need to trade a macro-laden file back and forth with Office users.

Don't feel left out. Office 2008 users have the same problem as iWork users: Office 2008 for Mac does not support macros. This is one reason why some Mac users are not upgrading from Office 2004. Microsoft seems to have noticed this and has announced that it will put macros back in the next major version of Office, which probably won't be anytime soon.