Transition from Word (2024 MS 365 for Mac) to Apple Pages…

Pages was never designed to be a Word replacement as it is not a Word clone. When you open a Word document in Pages, for better or worse, it translates that Word content into Pages native document format. You cannot open and edit a Word document in its native document format within Pages, and exporting back to MS Word is another document translation. Apple does not guarantee translation accuracy and features unique to either application can be dropped during the translation process.

A big caveat emptor is if you are exchanging business documents with other Word users or book content with publishers that use Word.

Pages is remote from being able to do everything Word does and to state otherwise is just plain naive and misleading. I have used Word since it was v4 on DOS and Pages for the last 16 years and I can tell the difference in implementation functionality between the two.

Yes, Pages is free, but then again, so is the LibreOffice Office suite, an application whose great grandparent was StarOffice in the 1985 and later timeframe. LibreOffice, as was StarOffice, is specifically developed to be an MS Office clone. Still a substantial learning curve from using MS Office, but the Document Foundation provides detailed PDF documentation of the LibreOffice suite components. Far more detailed and helpful than Apple's Pages documentation: Pages User Guide for Mac - Apple Support

Some that have left Microsoft behind have also been satisfied with Softmaker's Office product which is also a purposeful clone of MS Office right down to the user interface and ability to directly open Word documents.

What do you mean by "emulate Word".

What exactly do you need it to do?

Pages is a word processor, it does pretty much everything Word does , it will even open Word documents. Things may be a little different in how they work or how you access them in Pages than what you did in word, but for the most part it does the same things.

All you can do is start using it and see how you get along with it.

Just for clarification, Pages will not be a 1 for 1 replacement, and as mentioned there may be differences between Word and Pages created documents, but unless you need specific support and access to

Word's more advanced features, or 100% compatibility between users of Word and yourself with no space for variation, Pages should work fine for the vast majority of users in more normal circumstances.

Editors, Publishers and other very niche users of word processors may find the differences unacceptable and the translation between Pages and Word documents less than functional, but for the vast majority of every day word processing users, and if you don't need 100% support of Word's more advanced features it should work just fine.

If you need a 100% equivalent experience to word with support for 100% of its features and functions, then sadly none really exist. Everything will have some degree of variation.

As I said, you need to actually use it, and see how you get along with it. What you need it to do, and if you need to translate documents back to Word with 100% accuracy for someone else to use or not. Its not like its going to generate vastly different things when it translates to Word, but is some use cases it may not be acceptable.