New Macbook User needs help opening MS office 2003 files in Leopard

[hml3415]

Hi,

A new user on Macbook Pro with Leopard. Installed Fusion with XP and
office 2003. I am trying to load PC files from an external drive (WD
160gb USB drive) , e.g., powerpoint and word but neither the Mac
office nor Office under Fusion will recognize them and open them. Any
help would be greatly appreciated and help get off of my IBM laptop.

Thanks!!

Howard

 

[Guest]

Can anyone help me please?

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Howard;

I'm afraid it isn't clear what the problem is...

Does the Mac not recognize the external drive? If not the drive may be
formatted in an incompatible manner, in which case you may need to transfer
the files by another method. That seems rather unlikely, though.

If the Mac does mount the external volume there shouldn't be any problem
with user files. You may need to adjust the Settings for your VM in Fusion
as well as your Sharing Preferences in OS X, but if you've configured things
properly both the Mac & the VM should be able to access files on the
external drive. At the very least you should be able to drag the files to
your VM window... so the next question is:

By *files* are you talking about user files - documents - created with PPt &
Word or are you referring to the *programs* themselves? If the latter it
can't be done.

You can't simply copy applications from that drive to the VM any more than
you can copy apps from one physical PC to another. The programs must be
installed from source disks using the respective installer software, product
keys & procedure. Depending on the version of Office you may be able to
download to the VM rather than using the source CD/DVD but the software must
still be installed, not just copied.

If this doesn't address the issue you'll need to be more specific with your
description of exactly what the problem is.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[John McGhie]

Sorry: I use Parallels. But the principles will be the same...

First you have to get the external drive to mount on the Mac desktop.

Once it has, you can then tell VMWare to share that drive with the PC
operating system.

Many virtual Operating Systems cannot directly address the USB ports in Mac
OS. So you may not be able to connect the Western Digital external drive
directly to Windows XP. But you will be able to connect it to Mac OS X,
then share it with Windows as a "Network Drive".

Cheers

Can anyone help me please?

--
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Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]