How do I read OSX documents in Word 2001

[Christine]

I am still running OS9 and I frequently get sent documents by e-mail
that I cannot read in Word 2001. I have updated office with the latest
patch but still have the problem. Is there a patch to read OSX word
documents with office 2001?
Christine

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Christine,

Word X documents are completely compatible with Word 2001 documents (and
earlier). You should have no trouble reading them (or PC Word documents,
for that matter).

When you say you can't read them, what do you mean? Do they open? Have you
tried opening them from File>Open within Word instead of double-clicking?

Do the documents have the .doc extension in their names? You can try adding
it onto the end of the document title, although it shouldn't really matter.

Do they have a .sit extension? If so, they're still compressed. Stuffit
should automatically decompress them for you, but there could be a problem.

Who sent them to you and are you *sure* they're Word documents? In the
File> Open dialog, change the Show box to "Recover text from any file". If
they open now, but wouldn't when you had Show set to open Word or Office
documents, then they weren't Word documents.

IMPORTANT: The "Recover text from any file" setting is sticky. After using
it, you must go back to the File>Open dialog and change the setting back to
All Word or All Office documents. Otherwise your Word documents will show
all kinds of code gibberish when you open them.

Any additional information you can give us will help.

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/WordMac/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>

 

[Christine]

Hi Beth-
Thank you for your response. Here is what happened: I have a
collaborator in Sweden and we had a 30+ page document going back and
forth between us. We had similar exchanges in the past, when she had
the OS9 operating system, and never had a problem. But lately, the
documents are all in code gibberish- the 30 page document comes out
with many more pages and unformatted. I open it with double-clicking
as well as from inside Word and I tried all possible ?open as? ways-
some come out garbled, others, not surprisingly, don?t open at all.
We tried to circumvent the problem by saving in rtf format, problem
was we lost the field codes and comments. Needless to say, it?s a
pain. I tried to open the documents on a PC (word 2000) as well as on
a different Mac, but was equally unsuccessful. In addition to this
collaborator, lately I seem to be less and less able to open Word
documents I get via e-mail- even from the US. If I can?t open a
document, I actually ad the doc extension if the document does not
already have it, and if I know the document is a word document. I
even rebuilt the desktop. So I figured that the older Word versions (I
have 2001 on the Mac) might not be able to read the new ones, since
we?ve had that in the past (Word 97 versus 2001). By the way: I access
a secure e-mail server on the net via Microsoft Outlook, and I use
Eudora on my computer- both bring out the documents with the same
problems. Any clues?
Christine

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Christine,

The following versions of Word share the same file format and are completely
interchangeable (although later versions will have features not present in
earlier ones).

Windows: Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002 (XP), Word 2003
Mac: Word 98, Word 2001, Word v.X

So there's no reason why you should be unable to read these documents.

First, go to File>Open in Word. What is in the Show box? If it's "Recover
text from any file" change it to "All Office Documents". The "Recover text"
setting will add code to a document. It is also "sticky" and you *must*
reset the option after using it.

Next, have your friend stuff/compress the document before sending it. She's
in OS X, right? So that shouldn't be a problem. Depending on how you have
your system set, the document should automatically unstuff when you receive
it. If not, open Stuffit and drag the .sit file onto the Stuffit Expander
icon. Any problem now?

By the way, you do have Office 2001 fully updated, don't you? Check here to
see: <http://www.microsoft.com/mac/download/>

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/WordMac/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>