Tracking Changes Between Word and Pages

Hi Power Users

I have a new MacBook Air and would like to avoid installing MS Office (I’m trying to keep things as simple as possible and only install the apps I absolutely can’t go without).

The only feature I am worried about giving up in Word is native tracking of changes. I know Pages can see changes tracked in Word, and track changes made within the app, but I’m wondering if anyone is successfully using this for tracking changes between Word and Pages and has found it to be accurate.

It would be painful if the change tracking wasn’t 100% aligned between the apps for obvious reasons.

It’s not 100% aligned. You’re going to lose at least some formatting change tracking and some comment metadata might be lost. If your Word users are just doing basic text suggestions, it should be fine. If possible, test passing a real-world doc between this computer and another one with Word.

I understand what you’re trying to achieve, but I personally would accept the lack of simplicity for robust change tracking. I assume that this is important to you.

The only way to guarantee that is to install Word, which is excellent as a word processing product, and the de facto standard for many professions including Lawyers.

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Apple has neglected its suite of apps on macos for many years and MS is better. Just look at the user ratings of apple’s apps compared to office.

Besides, when it comes to sharing I almost always find people have Word but not Pages.

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Can you not use word in the browser on your Mac to avoid having to install the app?

I suppose you could.

Why not install? Far better than the browser.

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I hate, Hate, HATE all of the browser based apps from Microsoft. They’re like half versions of the proper desktop apps, Especially Excel and Word.

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I haven’t used excel in about five years, but wasn’t the online version created so users can collaborate on the same document?

You can do that in the Excel app on Sharepoint, but the online version still isn’t anywhere near as full featured as the proper app.

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