r/software • u/Sleptwrong65 • 1d ago

Looking for software MS Word?

I’m not sure if I’m posting this question in the right place so please be kind- if I should post it somewhere else let me know.
I am a Mac user and have always used Pages for all of my word processing needs and it’s been fine. Now, however, I have a really big project coming up and I’m struggling with some of the limitations that Pages has. One small example is that I must include tables in my project- well pages has great tables! BUT I also must include footnotes within the table itself and there’s no way to easily do that. I could jump through a bunch of hoops I read in online suggestions but I’m worried that my tables will not look consistent.
So my question is would MS Office be the way to go? It’s expensive and a yearly expense too. I’m just not sure if it would be the right move or if anyone has any suggestions for a better solution.
Thanks for reading and again my apologies if I’ve posted in the wrong place.

Edit/Update

I tried Libre Office and even though I have only used it for less than a day so far I think it’s going to work for me. I was able to make a table with footnote citations. It wasn’t 100% straight forward but it was pretty easy to make it work.
Libre Office seems to have a lot of features I’m looking forward to exploring. Of course the fact that it’s free is great!
Thanks everyone for the suggestions and I am going to look into them as well.

6 Upvotes

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u/Grillparzer47 1d ago

Look at Libreoffice first since it’s free. I don’t have extensive experience with it so can’t help with your specific problem.

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u/alexdeini 1d ago

you can get a non-subscription version of Office (Office 2024 for Mac) for under $20. Do a Google search. The only downside is it will not have Co-Pilot AI built in. If you need AI, then it's Office 365 or another Office alternative. I use a Mac and have Office 2024 (paid $12)... Not sure if this is the answer you are looking for, but hope this helps...

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u/wanderangst 1d ago

> The only downside is it will not have Co-Pilot AI built in.

This is an upside, not a downside

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u/alexdeini 1d ago edited 1d ago

That depends. I use it for work. It helps me capture meeting minutes on conference calls, create reports, to-do lists and action items, create summaries.
It helps me summarize reports and provide bullet points
It helps me create PowerPoint slides that I can present to executives. It’s a very polished tool if you know how to use it.
There are those that are not comfortable with AI, which is fine. As with any new tool, how you use it and how it helps you defines its value.

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u/Sleptwrong65 1d ago

Ok I’ll look into it. I don’t think I need them.

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u/soundman32 1d ago

A $20 version will be a stolen/volume licence, that may stop working at any time.

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u/davesFriendReddit 1d ago

If it’s for work or you’re collaborating with others using Word, I would recommend getting proper Microsoft Word.

Anecdote. My intern prepared his PhD presentation using libreoffice. Spent a lot of time making excellent graphics and animations and everything. One day before his presentation they told him to use their Windows PC (with the university’s videoconferencing software) not his Linux laptop. conversion to PowerPoint did not go well. so the night before the most important presentation of his life, he spent all night remaking everything by hand in PowerPoint.

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u/Sleptwrong65 1d ago

OMG that sounds like a nightmare! I hope he got through it alright.
My project is different- in fact I can’t collaborate. I have to do it all on my own.

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u/hazeru 1d ago

You can try Libre Office as mentioned earlier. I also have an "older version" that I can share.

0

u/whoslaughingnow 1d ago

Switch to Asciidoc and have everything you need and more.

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u/Sleptwrong65 1d ago edited 1d ago

I have never heard of it. But I just looked it up and I think it may be more technical than I can handle. 😬

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u/whoslaughingnow 1d ago

It's basically like a superpower version of markdown where you write your documents in plain text with minimal syntax and the processor converts that to output formats like HTML or PDF.

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u/whoslaughingnow 1d ago edited 1d ago

And if you throw your files into a git repository, you can have other editors collaborate by making changes to those plain text files similar to how you might control source code in a programming project. If you use something like GitLab, it has really nice editorial tools for commenting and making suggested changes to the document for editorial review. You can also enable CI/CD to have the processor build the latest version of your documents so that you can download those and check them out as artifacts of the build. But everything can be done locally on your own computer without any need to use source control or the internet.

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u/Sleptwrong65 1d ago

Oh wow! Thanks that sounds great!