Microsoft Word isn’t the only choice for creating written documents, with good alternatives like Apple Pages out there to use instead. If you plan on switching sides and editing your Word documents in Pages, however, you’ll need to be aware of these things first.

Pages Can’t Open Macro-Enabled Word Files

Apple Pages doesn’t have as many advanced features as Microsoft Word, which is to be expected given how the two apps differ. Word has been in development since 1983 and is packed with features, whereas Apple took a simpler approach with Pages that puts usability over raw power. That, unfortunately, means that you won’t always be able to open every type of Word document, especially if it uses functionality like macros.

Macro-enabled Word files help to automate repetitive tasks, but they can also include interactive features, such as buttons, that just won’t work with Pages. Pages doesn’t have an equivalent feature to hand, so if you want to edit a Macro-enabled Word document (typically in the DOCM file type), then you’ll need to remove that functionality first before you can switch to a different document editor.

Double-Check Your Formatting After Switching to Pages

When you create a Word document, you rely heavily on the infrastructure behind it. Every feature, every font, every preset color choice—they’re all integrated into your document like a tapestry. When you edit your Word file in Apple Pages, it has to export it, switching out all of that Word functionality for its own.

How good of an exporting job Pages will do will depend on your document, and your mileage will vary. If your document is fairly basic, you shouldn’t have any problem switching between the two apps. Some small differences or discrepancies, like errors with colors or font choices, might occur but they can be patced up pretty easily.

If your document is more extensive, however, using features like page borders, WordArt, tables of contents, or background watermarks, expect things to start failing. This might not break your document per se, but it will affect how it looks, so make sure to double-check everything afterward.

Some Microsoft Office Charts and Graphics Will Break During Conversion

Functionality is Apple Pages dirty word—it’s a great word processor, and it’s powerful, but you should watch out for broken objects that appear in your document if you decide to start editing in Pages.

An obvious example of this is objects like drawings or charts. Pages will do its best to convert these for similar functionality, but it won’t always be successful, and if it is, it won’t necessarily look how you expect it to look.

For instance, while Pages does support most Word-style charts, it doesn’t support all of them. As always, go through your document after you start editing to make sure nothing has broken as a result.

Advanced Features Like Bibliographies Won’t Work as Expected

There are a few commonly used features that Pages will struggle with compared to Word.

The first is bibliographies. While Pages does support EndNote bibliographies if you’ve used Word’s citation manager, then this functionality will break when you start editing a Word document in Pages. The text will preserve itself, so you won’t lose anything, but you won’t be able to add or manage those citations in the same way.

Mail merging also presents some difficulties for Word-to-Page conversions. This is a recent addition to Pages, so if you’re using an older version, it won’t work at all. Newer versions of Pages may also fail to convert the mail merge lists from a Word document, so you may need to recreate the mail merge manually in Pages, should you decide to convert from Word completely.

You may also run into difficulties with collaboration. Pages offers some collaborative features, but it doesn’t offer the same like-for-like functionality. While comments, suggested changes, and even drawn-on ink annotations can work in Pages, they won’t work as they would in Word, and may be converted or changed as a result, so double-check your document after you open it.

Word Can’t Open Apple Pages Files (Export in DOCX Format)

There’s one big downside to editing Word documents in Apple Pages, and that comes down to file support. While Apple Pages can open Word’s native DOCX file format, it can’t save files using it. When you open the file, Pages will instead import it into a new file using the Pages (.pages) file format.

This makes it tricky to switch between the two, because just as Pages can’t save to a Word file, Word can’t even open a Pages document. You’ll need to make sure that, when you’re finished saving, you always export from Pages back to the native DOCX format.

Just like exporting from Word to Pages, this might cause some of your Pages-specific formatting or functionality to break, so make sure to double-check the end result by opening up the file in Word afterward. It’s also a good idea to save this as a copy, leaving the original file untouched for you to revert to, just in case.

There’s nothing stopping you from editing your Word documents in Apple Pages, but my advice is to be cautious. Don’t assume that everything will work as intended or that your formatting will appear like-for-like in Pages. The more complex your document is, the more likely that something will break.

With this in mind, I strongly recommend giving Apple Pages a go if you’ve never used it before. It’s completely free to use, and if you’re a Mac owner, choosing between Word and Pages will depend entirely on the type of documents you want to make. Word might be the ol’ reliable, but you can still trust Pages to create amazing, modern-looking documents, too.