I'm always getting asked by PC colleagues at work to convert the newer word/excel formats into old which I do through iWork

From that, I gather that iWork 09 will open files in the Office 2008 format but which Office format does it use when saving back to Word/Excel? Can you choose between new and old?

Also, assuming Numbers 09 is scriptable, is it recordable with Script Editor?

lct

Unfortunately not the answer you'd like. iWork '09 can read MS open formats but export only to the older format. Numbers is scriptable in that it has an extensive dictionary but it doesn't seem to "record" with script editor - I don't use the record function but I just tried it, unless I'm doing something wrong.

To be honest, if you need to interface on a regular basis with PC users using Office I'd still keep a copy of Office for compatibility. iWork 09 has come along nicely, in many ways Apple's workflow is better than Office but the old compatibility headaches between Mac and PC still exist.

I still use Office 2000. I recently started to have problems with people sending me files from the latest versions of Office with the new file extensions.

If you go to the Microsoft download pages and get a copy of "FileFormatConverters.exe" it updates old versions of Office to accept the new extensions.

Saves having to save multiple times in multiple formats.

Yeah, I mean for what I use iWork 09' is perfect. Only really use Pages to write university notes and reports.

That's handy, thanks.

I use pretty much all the iWork apps, I like Keynote's ability to export as HTML so I can keep my design and pass to PC users to open in a web browser, or else PDF. Apple's presentation, the software, generally results in my work standing out from the PC crowd at the Office, I often get the "wow, how did you do that" comments to which I reply "made on a Mac, you could do it too, it's really not difficult". The crunch of it really comes down to OSX and the wonderful software we have at our disposal.

Thanks for that, bosie.

Not surprised about the recordability - not many apps seem to be Applescript recordable these days - Office hasn't been since X. Shame, I've always found the capability quite useful.

Unfortunately, PC compatibility is a bit an issue for me - means I have to have two partial copies of Office on my Macs; Excel X (last decent version, in my view) for my own use and Word/Excel 2008 for OpenXML compatibility.

I'll keep an eye open for new versions of iWork and see if compatiblity improves.

lct