Pages to Word doc Loses Formatting

[adam-green]

For years, I've been sending work to clients in MS Word .doc format by exporting from a Pages file. I've never received any complaints about formatting issues. Never.

Until today, that is. A client just told me she has the newest version of Word on her PC and that the document I sent her contained no bold or italic text. What I sent her, however, should have contained instances of both.

I write for a living, so it's really important to me that formatting issues like this disappear completely. Are Word document exports from Pages '09 somehow ill-equipped to be read on PCs with the latest version of Word? If so, should I bite the bullet and start using MS Word for Mac instead of Pages?

I'd be disappointed if I had to do that. Pages has been my no-frills, go-to WP for years...

 

[old-wiz]

New versions of software, be it Word or Pages, often have trouble with documents created in previous versions of anything.

If you are sharing with clients and have formatting problems, I'd switch to Word for Mac.

 

[MisterMe]

...

I'd be disappointed if I had to do that. Pages has been my no-frills, go-to WP for years...

The fact that you have been doing it for years notwithstanding, using Pages to produce the final draft of Word documents is an incredibly bad idea.

Your saving grace has probably been that your clients probably receive crappy Word documents from so many other sources that one more has not made a difference.

Be professional. If you must send clients Word documents, then send them documents produced using Word.

 

[jojoba]

Be professional. If you must send clients Word documents, then send them documents produced using Word.

This. I also prefer Pages, but I work in a Windows environment where everyone uses MO, so when I have to collaborate on or share documents, I always use Word for mac. Like you have experienced, you can't trust the formatting to stay.