Papyrus Office: Worthy Competition For Microsoft?

If you’re a computer user, Mac or Windows, you have to admit that a bit of competition is good for the user.

Microsoft sat on their collective buns for five years and never moved Office or Windows forward (too busy quashing bugs and counting profits), and now the competition has heated up.

You’re the winner. On the Mac side, Microsoft Office still rules because compatibility with the Windows version is excellent.

Arguably, Apple may have a larger installed base of AppleWorks users than Office users because of bundling the aging ‘works’ with iMac, Mac mini, and iBooks.

Regardless, Apple and Microsoft are not the only developers to publish excellent ‘office’ tools.

Papyrus Office comes along with a mature, capable office suite of tools that work well on the Mac, loaded with features, and priced much closer to AppleWorks than Microsoft Office.

For example, the basic ‘office’ functions usually include a word processor, a spreadsheet, and on the Windows side a database and PowerPoint; on the Mac side, PowerPoint.

Papyrus Office offers everything except a PowerPoint equivalent, bowing to Apple’s low priced, loaded-with-features Keynote.

For the basics, Papyrus does itself proud with word processing that has a look and feel and comfort level not unsimilar to Microsoft Word.

Files can be saved in a variety of formats, and Papyrus reads multiple formats, too. In fact, Papyrus has a sufficient number of features on the ‘word’ side to be used as a desktop publishing application.

True ‘office’ balance is attained with the other embedded applications, including the spreadsheet.

Nothing rivals Microsoft Excel for spreadsheet features, but most of us use basic calculation functions in the standard row and column format. Papyrus spreadsheet recognizes that and offers up over 100 calculation functions.

Most of the time I use less than a dozen. Anything beyond that is overkill.

Microsoft Office has one huge hole for many Mac users. Database. AppleWorks has a database component that’s worthy for lists and basic data storage, but isn’t relational and doesn’t do much beyond the basics.

Papyrus does more than basic database. It’s a full relational database with a search engine; good enough for simple databases such as email addresses and names, or more complex database design.

In testing, I found Papyrus to be fast, simple, but with a pleasant layer to the features; they unfold as you need them. The suite has been around many years on the Mac and is now at version 11.

If you find AppleWorks too confining at $80, Papyrus at $99 may be an excellent replacement, and comes in a few hundred dollars less than Microsoft Office.

Click Here for a look at Papyrus Office and the download link.

Bambi Hambi
I was actually impressed with Papyrus. This appears to be a labor of love. Low end users should also consider NeoOffice/J.

Jack D. Miller
Sometimes I’m surprised that there are so many quality applications on the Mac; besides Apple’s and Microsofts.

Carol Mary Miller
AppleWorks is showing age and I look for Apple to introduce an updated iWork suite that contains a spreadsheet, too.

Check out the daily list of our 9 Word mini-Reviews at NoodleMac, and Kate's daily in-depth Mac software reviews at PixoBebo.