Document/Format Compatibility

[Phillyzero]

I think this is where to post this topic. A lot of documents (especially .doc and .txt) that I transfer from windows to leopard, and especially from leopard to windows change my formatting on me. As in, the font, size, and even sometimes the spacing changes when I open up certain documents in differing OS. Is there anyway around this? I thought by saving my documents in Leopard's Microsoft Office as .doc that nothing would change...

Also, is textedit not a particularly good program (anything better I could try?), there's no real option (that I see) that allows me to save as a .txt (unless I change the extension...which I don't think is advisable all the time).

 

[PlaceofDis]

text edit is basically like notepad in windows, its not meant to be a full fledged word processor at all.

i think word should have a check compatibility option in the save dialogue too that might help you. it also depends on what versions you're going between. but images and tables are the hardest formatting to keep across machines and different versions.

you could try saving in a different format, such as rich text too

there is also NeoOffice which is a version of the OpenOffice program suite.

 

[NAG]

Wait, are you switching formats? Your nomenclature is kind of messy so I don't know what you're talking about. .doc is the Microsoft Word format. .txt is a plain text format.

Not that you did this (a lot of people do) but to actually change formats you have to actually open up the document and save it as another format. You can't just change the file extension (eg: if you change the filename from sometext.doc to sometext.txt it is still in the Microsoft Word format, you just changed the name).

Additionally, not all Microsoft Words read formatting the same. For instance, Word 98 reads formatting different than Word 2004. I don't know why but it does. Power Point is even worse in regard to this.

Edit: And TextEdit isn't really Notepad. It is more powerful than Notepad but it is primarily a rtf editor (rich text format).

 

[karenflower]

Also, is textedit not a particularly good program (anything better I could try?), there's no real option (that I see) that allows me to save as a .txt (unless I change the extension...which I don't think is advisable all the time).

In TextEdit, choose 'Make Plain Text' in the Format menu, and it will be the .txt format when you save it.

 

[Roquefort]

I've had trouble moving Microsoft Office documents from a PC to a Mac and vice versa because they had different versions of MS Office and they had different installed fonts. I've had the same problem when moving Microsoft Office documents from one PC to another and it's for the very same two reasons.

Text files, on the other hand, are much more portable.

 

[Phillyzero]

Thanks for the replies, I'll try that 'make plain text' thing when I get my macbook back. I've been using the newest version of Office (2008?) for OSX and I usually use 2003 Office on Windows, is that the likely problem?

 

[NAG]

Well Word 2008 uses the docx format by default instead of the doc format that the previous versions used. Word 2008 understands doc files but 2003 won't understand docx.