Mac question

I think OpenOffice will run on the Mac. I'm not a Mac user, so I've never tried it, but my understanding is that it runs on all platforms.

 

It is. They have it for OSX 10.4+ and X11.

 

There is also NeoOffice, which doesn't require X11 to run.

 

Yes. Slower, but a very good Office based program.

 

I think TextEdit can read Word files, although I wouldn't recommend using it as an editor...

 

The only problem I had with NeoOffice was that when I used it to write term papers (we had to submit them as .doc compatible with Microsoft Word 2000 or better) the authenticators they used to check for plagiarism always failed it because the document was not considered a valid document. I used OpenOffice and the problem was resolved immediately. They may have fixed that since then, though.

 

yet for many years there was a job that even Microsoft wasn't Microsoft compatible.

 

OpenOffice should be what you need. The most recent version is native rather than X11 so you don't need that either.

 

The other alternative is to email the file to yourself (provided you have a Gmail account) and open it in Google Docs. That way you don't have to install OpenOffice.

 

I use Numbers which is part of iWorks.

 

Which version of the Mac OS are you using? Quick Look in 10.6.x (maybe 10.5.x as well, can't remember) will let you view .xls files. Won't let you do anything with them, but you can at least view them.

 

^Quicklook is built into OSX. Just right-click (assuming you have that enabled) on the file in question and select the "Quick Look filename" option and hey presto!

Still, OpenOffice is a good solution too.

 

Is Quicklook that thing you get when you select a file or set of files and hit the space bar?

 

^Yes.

Wonderful feature. I can't remember what the OS was like before it.

 

On topic (Mac Question) but a separate issue --

I have a program installed on my Mac called iBank. I recently downloaded the latest version, unzipped and all that and dragged it to both my Applications folder and the Dock. The problem is that I executed it from the Dock and now an image of a drive mount is on my desktop. If I unmount it, it reappears when I reinitiate iBank. This has never occurred any other time I've downloaded a new version of the application, so I don't understand what I did wrong.

 

Remove iBank from the dock. Then go to the application folder and drag iBank from there into the dock.