[Anonymous]

I am learning how to use excel and I heard terrible things about excel for mac. I want the windows version of excel (2010 or 2013).. Does anyone know how I would go about running windows on my mac? I heard great things about parallels 10.. but would i need to also get windows 7 and excel 2010/2013?

[mtwst113]

I'm not very familiar with parallels. The way I used to do it was through the boot camp utility, which partitions a section of your hard drive so that you can install windows on that portion. You'd have to have a copy of whatever Windows operating system you plan to use, as well as a copy of the Windows based Excel program.

BEC | √
AUD| √
FAR| Spring 2015

[wmcpa]

Hi – I've used virtualbox, but you would need windows as well as office for windows when you're running virtualbox. I guess it's like parallels.

I have a mac, and I use excel all the time. I haven't run into issues yet – for basic functions, etc. Some shortcuts that I know from windows os are different, but I can live with them. A major con for having excel for mac is that you can't use certain add-ons (ex. statistics analysis). It was a pain when I took statistics – but I also have a pc desktop, so I was able to manage it before I heard about virtualbox. At my uni, we had to have virtualbox installed so that both faculty and students were using the same version of software (i.e. office).

It was free/nominal when I was a student. Anyhow – here's a link to the virtualbox. Hope that helps!

https://www.virtualbox.org/

I just glanced at this article – explaining differences among several types of virtualization products. Looked interesting – maybe, it'll help too?

https://www.macworld.com/article/2364514/running-windows-on-a-mac-why-i-prefer-vmware-fusion.html

Also, please feel free to message me if you have any excel questions. I'll try the best I can to help out.

FAR: 83
REG: 69, 69, retake Q1 2015
AUD: Q2 2015
BEC: Q2 2015

[kettlecorn]

I've used Parallels quite a lot. Because its a virtual machine, it's not going to be native. So there are pluses and minuses. You are running windows within the OSX so you have to dedicate a portion of your ram to windows. If you have a lot of memory shouldn't be a problem. Laptop memory is cheap. I would go 8gb if possible but most likely overkill. You don't need much for Excel.

The upside to running parallels or any virtual machine is that you can do all the other mac stuff and just have parallels open for excel. The downside is that it's not native so touch screen scrolling, touchpad gestures, etc. won't work. And if you ever decide to use it for more extensive stuff like photoshop or something it might get annoying. But for only Excel and Microsoft office? No problem. You will need a windows copy/cd to install it.

The other option is bootcamp which just installs a partition (another space within your hard drive) for windows. When you turn your laptop/mac on, you can choose to boot into windows or mac. This will be just like a windows laptop except the mac touchpad features, etc wont be available (obviously since its not osx) but excel and all the windows programs will work. You will need a CD to install also. Bootcamp is free though

[Author]

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