Sure we can:
Export those resources to comma-delimited or tab-delimited text files, and
then we'll help you get them into Mac Office.
You may not even need help! Entourage will happily import addresses and
contacts from a tab- or comma-delimited file. Just use the File>Import
command.
Your Quick Corrects are a greater "challenge". We can get them in, but we
would need to see the format that they come out in first. You may end up
simply exporting the file to Text, then spell-checking it and using
Tools>AutoCorrect to define AutoCorrect entries for each one.
Basically the macros are a lost cause. You *can* convert WP Macros, but
they're written in Pascal to a different object model, so even if you get
them converted, they are useless.
Besides which, WordPerfect people tend to make hundreds of macros for things
you do not need macros to do easily in Word. Encourage your wife to
vigorously investigate Customize, particularly, customize Keyboard,
AutoCorrect, and AutoText in the Word Help. Most of what WP users do with a
macro can be done with one of those without needing a macro. Macros in Word
are, if anything, more powerful than they are in WP. But you would normally
create one only when the macro needs to make "decisions" about the text it
is processing.
The Medical Dictionary is easy. WordPerfect dictionaries are plain text
files. So are Microsoft Word custom dictionaries. Look in the Help under
"Custom Dictionaries". You need to create a new custom dictionary, named
Medical Dictionary or whatever. Then you Edit the Medical Dictionary, Copy
the content of the WP dictionary, and Paste it into the Word one (must be a
single column: if you have more than one column, use Table>Convert to
convert it into a single column first). Major Hint: Do NOT assign a
"language" to your custom dictionary. If you do not, it is available in all
flavours of English. The moment you assign a language, you have to maintain
a separate custom dictionary for each flavour of English that you meet.
Word can handle a large number of custom dictionaries, so use this to
simplify Dictionary Management.
Tell your wife to concentrate on learning Templates (that's where she sets
up all the "Document"-specific things like headers and footers and paper
size) and Styles (that's where she defines all her text formatting).
Some points of difference: In WordPerfect, any formatting command is in
effect from its position in the text until it is cancelled or overridden by
another similar command. In Word, there are no "commands" at all. Each
word or paragraph or document section has a "property" container. The
property container sits AT THE END of the text that its properties apply to.
The properties of a paragraph apply to all of the text between the previous
paragraph and the paragraph marker we are looking at. The properties of a
section break apply to all the text ahead of the section break in the
document, up to the preceding section break.
Tell your wife not to waste time looking for 'Reveal Codes' in Word. Word
has no codes to reveal: its formatting is not stored in the text, and it is
binary information that is not human-readable! Your wife will
(eventually...) become comfortable that what she sees on the screen is
what's going to happen, and if she doesn't like it, she needs to correct the
formatting properties.
I find it essential to learn to think of a Word document as a vast set of
Chinese Eggs: 'containers', nested one within the other within the other. A
document contains Sections which contain Paragraphs which contain {Text,
Graphics, Tables, Text Boxes} which contain Word which contain Characters
which contain Font and Formatting. Working out what contains which
properties is the key to using Word easily and quickly.
Hope this helps
This responds to article <
[email protected]>,
from "gfdaught said:
Greetings. My wife, who works as a medical transcriptionist from home,
finally made the switch to Mac (1GHz eMac)! Well, at least we're in
the process of getting her completely switched. She is a longtime user
of Corel WordPerfect 8 (PC). As an interim step, she is continuing to
WordPerfect through Virtual PC (6.1) w/WindowsXP Pro. It is a workable
solution, but it is occasionally tempermental, and printing is
sluggish!
We have Office X, and ideally she'd like to migrate to it (Word), so
she can work completely in Mac OS X (10.2.6). However, she has
accumulated several hundred addresses in her WordPerfect Address Book,
and has macros and an ever-growing medical user dictionary, Quick
Corrects, etc. that she obviously does not want to lose. Obvious
question: can someone help us with the procedures (if they exist) for
faciliating this migration? Many thanks in advance!
--
All Spam and attachments blocked by Microsoft Entourage for Mac OS X. Please
post replies to the newsgroup to maintain the thread.
John McGhie, Microsoft MVP: Word for Macintosh and Word for Windows
Consultant Technical Writer <
[email protected]>
+61 4 1209 1410; Sydney, Australia: GMT + 10 hrs
