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.