Cannot Read Word 2004 Files with Track Changes enabled on Word 2003

[zupmo]

I'm seeing an issue where a PC user running Word 2003 cannot open
documents from a Mac user running Word 2004 with Track Changes enabled.
The two people are editing the document together and want the Track
Changes data to be visible to one another. When the PC user receives
Word documents from the Mac user, each document is broken into two
files, neither of which can be opened. The Mac user's email program is
not configured to break apart attachments for any reason, so that is
not an issue here.

Does anyone have any idea why the Mac user's documents are being split
into two unreadable files?

Thanks.

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

I'm seeing an issue where a PC user running Word 2003 cannot open
documents from a Mac user running Word 2004 with Track Changes enabled.
The two people are editing the document together and want the Track
Changes data to be visible to one another. When the PC user receives
Word documents from the Mac user, each document is broken into two
files, neither of which can be opened. The Mac user's email program is
not configured to break apart attachments for any reason, so that is
not an issue here.

Does anyone have any idea why the Mac user's documents are being split
into two unreadable files?

Mac files (well, traditional ones like Word's) have a resource fork as well
as a data fork. Windows computers can't deal with resource forks and see
them as separate files. They also don't need them for anything, and these
can be ignored. The .doc file is the one you want. They should open easily.

Are the files being sent by email? Often Windows users expect to be able to
open all attachments from the email without saving them first. That won't
work when there's no extension (.doc) on the file. Mac users don't need the
extension - Windows do. Tell the Windows user to save the files to her disk,
and add .doc extension. Then one of them should open as a Word file. The
other will be empty.

Tell the Mac user, the next time she saves a new Word document - or Save As
an existing document - and check the "Append file extension" checkbox
there. It will stay checked for future saves. Now her Word documents will
all have the .doc extension and the Windows user should be able to open them
easily. (To be extra safe, tell the Mac user, if she uses Microsoft
Entourage as her email program, to go into Entourage/Preferences/Compose and
check the box "Append file extensions".)

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

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PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.