Using OFFICE On Apple And/Or Windows Side ?

[Robert11]

Hello,

What a great Forum and folks.
Brand new user with a new iMac, and, frankly, would be lost without
you folks. Not too sharp with this.

Bought and installed MS Office for the Apple.
Seems to be fine.

But, members of my family are truly MS devoted, so will have to
set up W10 for them on this new iMac.
Bought Parallels to help with the switching, etc.

Will I have to purchase, ugh, another OFFiCE to install on the Windows side so they
will also have WORD and EXCEL ?

I think I read somewhere that the Apple OS can "natively" read WORD and EXCEL.
Not too sure what this means.
Can I somehow read, and create, WORD documents and Excel from the Windows side
without another OFFICE purchase ? If so, how, please ?

And,

How do I tell the iMac (Apple side) to read a USB Stick or an external HD ?

Can the USB Stick have "mixed" Apple OS and W10 "stuff" on it ?

Thanks,
Bob

 

[honestone]

First, which "Office For Macs" did you purchase? There are a number of choices.

Secondly, for your Windows/Parallels partition on your iMac, yes, you will need the Windows version of Office 2016 in order for members of your family to read, create, etc. Word, Excel, etc. files/documents.

Third, there are applications for the Mac that can read Word and Excel files. This link shows what apps are included with Sierra:

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH25125?locale=en_US

As you can see, Notes can read files created by Excel (Mac or Windows version), and Pages can read files created by Word (Mac or Windows version). There is a free "suite" for the Mac, LibreOffice and one for $29.95, NeoOffice, and either of them can read Word and Excel files (and some other types of files).

Next, you state "Can I somehow read, and create, WORD documents and Excel from the Windows side without another OFFICE purchase ? If so, how, please ?". That is confusing. On the Windows side, how would Word and Excel files be created? If not Office 2016 for Windows, then how?

For a USB stick or external HD, either of them will show up on the Mac's desktop (when plugged in, of course). However, if either of them are formatted for the Mac OS only, they will not show up on the Windows (Parallels) desktop.

You can "place" Mac files, folders, etc. on a Windows-formatted device, and your iMac will read them fine. (You can format such devices as MS-DOS (FAT) or EX-FAT with Apple's Disk Utility program). I suspect that if for example you "placed" Word or Excel files created by the Mac version of Office, that such files should be able to be processed by the Windows version of Office. Similarly, any Word or Excel files one places that were created with the Windows version of Office (on the Windows/Parallels partition) can be read by the Mac version of Office.

Finally, I have never tried to partition a device, and then have two "types" of partitions on it: one for the Mac, and one for Windows. I can try that with an empty USB stick that I have. But I am unsure how Windows would "react" to such a device. Macs can handle it fine.

Finally, one more comment, if I may. A number of us have been happy to respond yo your posts with help and assistance, but we never hear if you are successful with such advice. It would be good if you let us know such things. Most folks do that around here, ie, if someone offers them help/assistance, that individual responds with a "Thank You" and a status/report of how the advice/assistance was processed, and if it was successful.

 

[honestone]

OK, here is a follow up for you. I have a Lexar 256 gig USB 3.0 Flash Drive, and I just used Disk Utility to partition it into 2 partitions, one formatted as Mac OS Extended, and the other as ExFAT (Windows format). I then copied a word document (created with Word 2016 for the Mac) to the Mac OS Extended one, and another (different) Word Document (also created with Word 2016 for the Mac) to the ExFat one. I then double clicked on the icon for each one, then double clicked on the Word file in each one. Word 2016 launched immediately, and I was able to read the information on each file.

WhatI do not know is how a Windows machine (or Windows/Parallels partition on a Mac) would treat this device. I do know that the Mac OS Extended volume, with Windows as delivered, will not recognize that partition. (I believe there are some third party Windows products that one can use so that Mac formatted devices can be recognized). One would think Windows could recognize the ExFat partition, and allow it to be used normally (read files, write files, etc.). But I cannot test this.