Convert MS Word formatting to Pages

[Reddkryten]

Hi there.

I'm trying to import a few files created on Word:Mac to Pages on my iPad and I'm having a bit of trouble. I know that each word processing program is slightly different and moving between them will almost always end up with some formatting problem, so I'm not looking for a magic wand, just a bit of advice.

The files I am trying to import are templates I created years ago for organising a film, the formatting is fairly complex, tables, bullet points within tables etc.

When I import them into Pages, the app adds extra paragraphs, breaks tables apart and makes a document that is one page long, spill over into two.

Is there any way to maintain the original formatting in pages? If I save it in word using a different compatibility mode, could that help?

Any advice at all is much appreciated.

The final thing I can think of doing is to recreate the templates in pages, however this is more than a little awkward, as pages has a "ruler" at the top of the page, but not on the sides, so getting tables to exactly the same length would be problematic, does anyone know a way around that problem?

I know this sounds like a really nerdy problem, obsessing over a table in a document being half a cm out of place, but these templates have helped me so much, every item is exactly where it should be, so throwing them away and starting again isn't exactly something I am looking forward to.

Thanks for any help that you can provide.

 

[poloponies]

Hi there.

I'm trying to import a few files created on Word:Mac to Pages on my iPad and I'm having a bit of trouble. I know that each word processing program is slightly different and moving between them will almost always end up with some formatting problem, so I'm not looking for a magic wand, just a bit of advice.

The files I am trying to import are templates I created years ago for organising a film, the formatting is fairly complex, tables, bullet points within tables etc.

When I import them into Pages, the app adds extra paragraphs, breaks tables apart and makes a document that is one page long, spill over into two.

Is there any way to maintain the original formatting in pages? If I save it in word using a different compatibility mode, could that help?

Any advice at all is much appreciated.

The final thing I can think of doing is to recreate the templates in pages, however this is more than a little awkward, as pages has a "ruler" at the top of the page, but not on the sides, so getting tables to exactly the same length would be problematic, does anyone know a way around that problem?

I know this sounds like a really nerdy problem, obsessing over a table in a document being half a cm out of place, but these templates have helped me so much, every item is exactly where it should be, so throwing them away and starting again isn't exactly something I am looking forward to.

Thanks for any help that you can provide.

Have you considered that a word processing format may not be the best option for this type of document? Seems like a spreadsheet would work better.

 

[Reddkryten]

Hmm, that's a good point actually. I wrote the templates in a word processor because the information I planned to input was mostly words etc.

Also, I am not all that experienced at using excel (sure I've done some relatively simple budgets and stuff in it, but nothing with complex, pretty looking formatting etc.)

The grid like structure should make it easier actually. I'll try that.

 

[richpjr]

I have had miserable luck converting anything other than very, very basic formatting back and forth. I REALLY wish Microsoft would get on the bandwagon and come out with an iPad version of Office.

 

[Reddkryten]

Hell yes, the sooner MS Office comes to the iPad, the better.

Out of curiosity, is this one in the pipeline? I remember MS saying that they weren't planning it, but that was a year ago (and an iPhone version I think) have they made any announcement one way or the other?

Well I had some good luck and some really bad luck. I downloaded a demo of Pages (Mac version) and was able to import my template (one or two things got changed, but easy enough to fix.) So then I sent it to my iPad.... iPages opened it and it was totally totally totally garbled.

Wonderful.

 

[Reddkryten]

Okay, I've assembled new versions of the templates in both numbers and pages, yay. However the bad news is, they keep going over the size I want (for convenience, the callsheet should be one page, not two.)

I've kinda figured out why though (yay) but I don't know what to do about it (boo.)

In my original template, I set the font to Times New Roman 10. In Numbers/Pages because there is no exact control over font size (what exactly does it mean by a small font, is that 10...11...12?) so because of that, everything is coming out far bigger than it should be.

Does anyone have any ideas at all, because I've got nothing.