Need Writing Program for MacBookPro

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DKM

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I live in a rural area, have only limited internet access. Looking for a free or low cost writing program--there are some nice writing programs for my MacBook, but the emphasis is on having a constant internet connection, thus Google Docs, the newest MS Word won't work. Unfortunately, my OS (Yosemite 10.10) will not handle the requirements for Pages either. I've tried searching sites for free, older writing programs, but keeping running into links that steer me in the wrong direction--trying to sell virus cleaners, etc. I'm not fussy, don't need a lot of bells and whistles either. Does anyone know a site where I can get an older version of MS. Word or Pages?
 

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For a free program, have you tried TextEdit, which comes with your Mac?

An alternative free program is Bean.

I think (but you should check) that the older version of Scrivener for Yosemite (macOS 10.10) is free. The current version won't work on your system.

Mariner Write is a good Word Processor, and will run on Yosemite. You can download and try it first. It's $29.95. It has some basic layout/table tools, and supports footnotes, etc.
 

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I use Scrivener on MacOS, and love it, but it's fairly bells & whistles heavy.

If you want a very basic text-editor, where you can just type what you want, with maybe italics or other simple text effects, with maybe the ability to pick any font to use, then I agree that TextEdit is worth trying. Worth the price anyways. :D

Where something like Scrivener shines, is taking what you've typed and exporting it for submission. Many places want Courier, double-spaced lines, no fancy text effects, etc. Scrivener is very configurable for that export step. It can export to different file formats -- Word, Rich Text, PDF, etc. It can even be configured to do things like convert double spaces between sentences (which at this point my fingers are hardwired to do) into single spaces. The learning curve is higher, but it's a fine editor with many useful features beyond exporting.
 
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