If you are regularly exchanging Word documents with Windows and other Mac users, then you will want MS Word in Office 2016 for Mac for its native document handling capabilities. If you are not migrating AppleWorks documents, and you do not have the iWork '09 suite - then its time to sit down and make a list of must have word processing features, and then look at Nisus Writer Pro, or Mellel as examples of fully featured, bet the business on functionality applications.

Pages '09 v4.3 is a dead application once Mojave (10.14.1) is installed. While Apple’s Pages word processing application is becoming more commonly used, there are times when you might need to convert a Pages doc to a Microsoft Word doc. Apple still has the iWork 9.3 Updater for download that brings all of these applications to their last revision. The retail iWork '09 DVD is available from Amazon and Ebay resellers. I don't believe that there are any additional, currently maintained third-party applications that can open AppleWorks files now.

Apple does not provide access to full installers of past applications. If you do not already have Pages v5.6 through v5.6.2 on El Capitan (10.11.6), then your are stuck with the iWork '09 applications, or LibreOffice. The free LibreOffice will also open ClarisWorks v5, and AppleWorks v6 documents in varying degrees, with the same criterion as for the iWork '09 application suite - that the documents are not a conglomeration of data from different AppleWorks applications. You can open pure AppleWorks v6 word-processing, spreadsheet, and presentation files in iWork '09 applications. AppleWorks support ended with OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8.

Apple word processing pages vs word