So. Weird. Scary discrepancy between Pages and Word.

[apple_iBoy]

Can someone out there please open the linked .doc file here and tell me how and why there is a spelling error when opened in Microsoft Word, but not when opened in Pages?!?!

pages.drexel.edu/~mdc47/evaluation.doc

This is confusing the hell out of me and making me rather afraid about when I send PC users .doc files!

 

[angelwatt]

They use different dictionaries. Pages likely uses the built-in dictionary OSX has, while Microsoft keeps it's own dictionary.

 

[apple_iBoy]

What I mean is that when I open that document in word, there is a typo "AOMMENTS." When I open it in Pages (or in Word on a PC), the typo is gone and it appears correctly as "COMMENTS."

Has anyone tried this on their own machines?

 

[apple_iBoy]

This is the same file, opened in the two apps.

No one else finds this curious?

 

[Littleodie914]

That is pretty weird, but isn't it just the fact that Pages automatically corrects some spelling mistakes, whereas Word asks you first?

 

[Cromulent]

That is pretty weird, but isn't it just the fact that Pages automatically corrects some spelling mistakes, whereas Word asks you first?

Yep, Pages just corrects common typos. Look in preferences for the settings.

 

[apple_iBoy]

I don't think aomments is frequently misspelled word though, even if Pages were auto-correcting?

Plus, the person who sent me the complete document (generated in Word on a PC) swears up and down that the printouts she made all have "comments" spelled correctly.

 

[apple_iBoy]

Yep, Pages just corrects common typos. Look in preferences for the settings.

I really just don't think that's the answer in this case. This isn't like a correction of "teh" to "the" or (c) to the copyright symbol. There's something else going on here.

I also just tried opening the file in TextEdit, and it shows up there correctly as "comments."

 

[portent]

Looking at the file in a text editor, the word is spelled correctly ("Comments")

I think you've found a bug in Mac Word. (It's hardly the first one.)

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/default.aspx?pid=feedback

 

[IJ Reilly]

Long shot: It could be a font encoding issue. Did this document originate from Word for Windows, by any chance?

 

[Makosuke]

Hmm... that's an interesting one. I'm poking around this one just because I find stuff like this interesting.

The character in the file itself is DEFINITELY a C--if you open the file in a raw text editor, as portent did, it's a C. If you copy it and paste it anywhere else, it's a C.

It's definitely something Word is doing; if you type a C over it it looks fine until you save--then it turns back into an A. If you add one or more spaces before it, then save, it will turn into all manner of other letters--R, I, T, E, S, and even a C like it's supposed to.

Since copying the text into a new document doesn't replicate the error but copying the whole single-cell table brings the weird character over, that narrows it down to either a really weird Word bug, or something wrong with that table in Word's internal system.

I've seen "paragraphs of death" that had gotten internally corrupted such that you could view them fine, but any document that contained the paragraph would crash word upon saving. Generally speaking you can clear that up if you do a save as, if you can get Word to save without crashing. No such luck here--it carries through save as operations.

I'd be really interested in finding the actual cause, but I'm going with Word bug at this point.

Probably related: There appears to be several blank lines then Page and Page 2 below that table in the file itself, and that's what Text Edit shows when it opens it.

Anyway, interesting.