Pages question

[Warhawk15]

Ok, so I will need to work on some drainage inspections for my dad.
At my house I used Word 2007, so the files are .docx.

Now I can only use my air and don't have Word on it.
I tried to open the file in Open Office and Libre Office, and neither worked.
I recently downloaded Pages in hopes it wouldn't have any problems.
However, there are a few errors and unsupported graphics and whatnot.

I took a screenshot of preview opened on the left(how it should look) and Pages open on the right. Ignore how on the Pages I deleted the slope percentages, I was just messing around with Pages.
You'll notice some things different in Pages. Such as my dads signature isn't there, some of the borders are wacked up, it should only be 1 page, but Pages has it as 2, etc.

I also have a second screenshot of the errors I get.

Is there anyway I can make it the same as the original?
Maybe there are some plug-ins or something to make it more compatible?
I'm no expert at Pages and this is my first time using it, so sorry for my noobyness.

 

[Dave Braine]

AFAIK there's nothing that you can do. Pages opens Word docs to the best of it's ability and sometimes, as you've found out, it can't reproduce everything that Word produced.

 

[Consultant]

Why doesn't your dad just buy office for you? It is a business isn't it?

 

[MattLafferty]

Short answer: I think you'll have to reformat the document in Pages manually, i.e. tweak every margin and box and field to get it to look just right.

Long answer: when I talked Wifey into switching over to Lion, I didn't realize that her old version of Word needed Power PC capabilities, and suddenly that was all gone with Lion. Her Word documents opened in Pages... but as many of those documents were very specifically created to suit her job in a doctor's office, the perfect little tweaks didn't make the transfer. It was rough going--for me.

I read on Slate.com a while ago that Word has tons of architecture behind it--there was some crazy example, like to write one word required a page of code. Even if Pages is just as guilty, the complex architecture doesn't transfer nicely, especially for a unique document like yours.

 

[spacepower7]

The simple answer is don't save in docx, 95% + of word documents don't need to be saved in docx and it creates a hassle for the majority.

I would estimate that 99.9999999909% of the average consumer docx files written could be saved as .doc without losing any formatting.

Docx has no advantages for the average consumer but helps MS convince people to upgrade by saving as docx by default.

I have never come across a docx that couldn't be saved as a doc, and I open them all as doc rather than docx, which is an option in word for Mac.