Pages and Word

[Lodesman]

Hi There,
As a recent (late 2013) convert to iMac, it is taking me a while to become comfortable with the differences between Win and IOS.

May I have your advice, learnéd ones, on the way Pages seems to reformat Word documents.

I will receive a Word document (I know, I know, but the world still uses Word as the standard), work on it in Pages and send it back as a Word document (no-one in my part of the world seems to use Pages, or be able to recognise it), only to find that the document has been formatted differently and, if diagrams are involved, rendered useless.

Almost every time I receive a Word document I am told that Pages does not recognise the font and has replaced it. This is not problem for me, but is this why the document reformats oddly ?

If I buy Word for Mac, will the font differences continue to be a problem ?

If it is any help, I do like Pages, I find it very easy to work with, but the incompatibility problem with the rest of the world (i.e.Word) is driving me nuts !!!

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[maflynn]

That's one major issue with using a different app then the rest of your team.

There's nothing you can do to get around this.

As for word complaining about fonts, I'll create a document on my computer and use a arcane font and load it into word and report back.


Edit:
I just tried it and got the same error so if you don't have the fonts on the iPad, you'll get the same message about a document not looking the same because of the font

 

[Lodesman]

Thanks Mike,

It looks as though I am going to have to shell out for Word on my iMac.

Shame really, as I thought that I would be able to use all the Apple Apps for all my needs in the future.

If I have to install Word then there will be little point in using Pages for anything at all, unfortunate, as it is a competent word processor.

Tom

 

[Lodesman]

Sorry Folks, I have started this thread in the wrong forum. It should be in the iMac Apps section.

Oops !

I'll delete my input and start the thread in the correct section.

 

[MisterMe]

Sorry Folks, I have started this thread in the wrong forum. It should be in the iMac Apps section.

Oops !

I'll delete my input and start the thread in the correct section.

Oh, for Pete's sakes. There no need to start a new thread on the same subject. It is bad etiquette. The proper course of action is to ask an administrator to move this thread, not create a new one. Hopefully, the admin will merge the two threads.

Having said all that, your problem has nothing to do with Mac, Windows, or iPad. It also has nothing to do with the differences between Word and Pages.

The problem is that you have two computers with different sets of fonts installed. The fonts used to create the document are not available on the computer used to read the document.

This is a common problem. All too often, it is caused by the person who created the document used free fonts downloaded from the Internet because they "look nice." When I encounter this problem, I try to identify the fonts used to create the document. I am often able to find the fonts on one of trhe many free font websites.

If your computer is an iPad, then you just have to accept the poor formatting of documents created using non-default fonts. For those people who distribute documents created using the non-default set, stop and don't do it again. If your document absolutely must be distributed using these fonts, then distribute is as PDF with all fonts embedded.

 

[maflynn]

[MOD NOTE]
I moved the thread to the Mac apps forum

 

[Lodesman]

Thanks for the assistance in moving the thread. I apologise for not complying with the Forum rules but will be somewhat more careful in the future.

Sorry if I ruffled anyone's feathers.

 

[Lodesman]

Hi MisterMe,

I understand your comments regarding fonts, although the fonts I have found Pages unable to use are pretty standard Word ones that have been in the Word font locker for ages.

The other formatting difficulty I have come across is the inability of working with various forms of diagrams that come to me, courtesy of Word.

If I work on them in Pages and send them back in Word format (to enable others to continue with their input) the reformatting that takes place renders them useless.

As I actually like Pages, I would be delighted if there was a method of moving them between the two formats without this taking place.

It's a workaround I am looking for.

 

[vkd]

Hi MisterMe,

I understand your comments regarding fonts, although the fonts I have found Pages unable to use are pretty standard Word ones that have been in the Word font locker for ages.

The other formatting difficulty I have come across is the inability of working with various forms of diagrams that come to me, courtesy of Word.

If I work on them in Pages and send them back in Word format (to enable others to continue with their input) the reformatting that takes place renders them useless.

As I actually like Pages, I would be delighted if there was a method of moving them between the two formats without this taking place.

It's a workaround I am looking for.

You could install a copy of Word, either a native Mac OS version, or a Windows version (that you may already own) accessed via an emulator like VMWare Fusion or Parallels, and use that for the shared documents that you seem to need to work on. For the rest of your word processing, you can continue to use Pages.

 

[Lodesman]

Thanks VKD, I'll look into that.

 

[davedev100]

The Word to Pages font issues I have are always because of missing MS fonts usually Calibri.

I mostly read doc documents in Pages or if I am sharing, its low level documents so its not as much an issue, but in the end I don't think Pages and especially Numbers is really meant to be fully sharable since they do things there own way.

More compatible and cheap options include Open Office and Neo Office which level-up the compatibility.

 

[MisterMe]

The Word to Pages font issues I have are always because of missing MS fonts usually Calibri.

I mostly read doc documents in Pages or if I am sharing, its low level documents so its not as much an issue, but in the end I don't think Pages and especially Numbers is really meant to be fully sharable since they do things there own way.

More compatible and cheap options include Open Office and Neo Office which level-up the compatibility.

Calibri and the other fonts bundled with Office work just fine in the "general fonts population." They may be moved outside the Microsoft subfolder into the general /Library/Fonts folder without issue.

 

[davedev100]

Some of us don't have them on our system because we have never installed an MS product. Hence, we get the missing font message in Pages.