Is there any way, by default, to have iWork save your spreadsheets and documents as .doc and .xls extensions?

You can by changing the default settings, but it is not a good idea. Those extensions are used by the operating system to know what program to use them with.

Opening a file with the wrong program can damage files to a point where the files are unreadable by even the origional program.

The new iwork (09) has an option in the save dialogue to save an office extension copy along with your iwork document. Effectively, you should get 2 files on a ”save as”...

I imagine that the option would be preserved across saves…making it a de facto default.

If what you really want is to edit and save Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel documents, why don’t you just get Microsoft Office in the first place?

@cwilbur,
Oh, I don’t know…because iWork is a ton better: Interface, speed, the fact that Apple doesn’t port Windows app behaviors to a mac…, the inspector, good looking charts/graphs, non-cheesy cool looking presentations in both print and screen mediums….

@blastfamy: oh, I know why you’d use iWork instead of Office.

But if what you really want is Office and Office compatibility, using iWork is only going to cause you pain.

Unless you’re doing something crazy with formatting or embedded objects or slide transitions, I have never had a problem with saving to word. My point is that the new version saves a copy in office formats automatically, and so long as you don’t do anything particularly weird, you will never have a problem.

No, there’s no way to make saving in .doc format automatic.

If you save a copy of your document as .doc, Pages will still prompt you to save it as a Pages document the next time you open it. When you try to save it, you’ll have to click “Save copy as Word document” and you’ll have to overwrite your original file. You’ll even get a warning that asks whether you’re sure you want to replace the original.

To make matters worse, on my system I get a document import warning when opening some .doc files that were originally saved by Pages itself.

If you only need to share them with Word users once in a while (or after you’re done working with them), then the Pages export is fine. But if people need access to your documents all the time and you need to save them as .doc, it’s going to be a hassle to use Pages. Plus, you’ll have the odd case where your formatting or fonts or whatever get messed up by switching back and forth between formats. It would be great to have a universal document format, but that just doesn’t exist yet.