OfficeMac 2008 Compatibility

[RGH]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: Intel

I have studied the forum but cannot see quite the same problem as I have.

I installed Office Mac 2008 (upgrading from 2004) on a MacBook Pro about two months ago, now updated to version 12.1.1. When I send Word documents in 'Word 97-2004 document' format to PCs operating Office 2003 one person with a stand-alone Windows PC can open it whereas others who operate on a big company system with Service Pack 3 installed can't. If the stand-alone user modifies my file and forwards it to the SP3 users they can open it.

All the users can open documents if I use 'Word 4.0/6.0/95 compatible' format ie .rtf, which is OK but I can't then use all the features.

I never had this problem with Word Mac 2004, and I am thinking it might be better to abandon ship and go back to using NeoOffice which has the advantage of being free. I only changed to MS Office because I wanted the assurance of complete compatibilty. Some hope!

 

[Kirk Krekeler]

I was having a similar problem. I just bought a MacBook Pro with Word for Mac
2008 and sent a document (saved as Word 97-2004). The recipient using a
company-wide installation of Word for Windows 2003 with Service Pack 3 could
open the document, but there were page breaks after each row of text. The
10-page document was over 100 pages. Another document I sent was 700KB when I
emailed it; after the client opened the document, made a change and saved it,
the document grew to 15MB! What's weird is that documents I send to people
using Word for Windows 2002 are fine. I think (hope) I've solved the problem
by unchecking the SAVE PREVIEW PICTURE WITH DOCUMENT when saving the
document. As far as your Word 2003 clients not being able to open your
document at all, the only think of is that somehow the .doc extension was
missing. Company-wide installations of Word may not be able to recognize Word
docs without the extension.

At any rate, I share your frustration. I've been exchanging Word documents
created on a PC with companies for 20 years and never ran into any
compatibility issues. Now, I'm never sure my Word for Mac documents will be
formatted correctly. I don't know if it's a Mac vs. PC issue or a Word 2008
vs. Word 2003, but I wish Microsoft would fix it.

 

[John McGhie]

I Think Kirk is on the right track here -- I think the networked user's mail
program is set up wrongly, and it is not decoding the file you are sending
properly.

Make sure you are sending in MIME format (not AppleDouble!!). Make sure you
add the extension. And Zip the file before you send it.

Also: Tell the users that if they use File>Open from within Word, the file
should open straight up. If they try to double-click it from within their
email program, the operation is likely to fail, because their email program
is mis-coding the file.

Hope this helps

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: Intel

I have studied the forum but cannot see quite the same problem as I have.

I installed Office Mac 2008 (upgrading from 2004) on a MacBook Pro about two
months ago, now updated to version 12.1.1. When I send Word documents in 'Word
97-2004 document' format to PCs operating Office 2003 one person with a
stand-alone Windows PC can open it whereas others who operate on a big company
system with Service Pack 3 installed can't. If the stand-alone user modifies
my file and forwards it to the SP3 users they can open it.

All the users can open documents if I use 'Word 4.0/6.0/95 compatible' format
ie .rtf, which is OK but I can't then use all the features.

I never had this problem with Word Mac 2004, and I am thinking it might be
better to abandon ship and go back to using NeoOffice which has the advantage
of being free. I only changed to MS Office because I wanted the assurance of
complete compatibilty. Some hope!

--

Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

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

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