PC - MAC compatibility

[Phyllis Warner]

I recently bought a MacBook Pro for business use in a PC environment and I
will be sharing EXCEL and WORD files remotely with a person who has a PC.
Before buying I was unaware of compatibility problems between Microsoft
Office for MACs and PCs. I have transferred many years of files to this
computer from my PC, which is on its last legs. Yesterday I encountered a
problem with dates, which depending upon how they originally were entered,
may or may not have been corrected by changing a setting. I called Microsoft
tech support about this problem and also to ask about what other
incompatibilities I might encounter, and he suggested this newsgroup. I
would be interested in hearing from others who use Macs in a business
environment with PCs. What compatibility problems can I expect if I run
Microsoft Office for Mac? Should I partition my hard drive and install XP
and Office? What has been others' experience with Bootcamp or Parallels? Do
I need to replace this computer with a PC? I need to have confidence about
the accuracy of the information in files that I open, use, save, and send,
and I need to be able to work in EXCEL and WORD on a stable,reliable
computer. Thanks for any help.

 

[William Smith]

I recently bought a MacBook Pro for business use in a PC environment and I
will be sharing EXCEL and WORD files remotely with a person who has a PC.
Before buying I was unaware of compatibility problems between Microsoft
Office for MACs and PCs. I have transferred many years of files to this
computer from my PC, which is on its last legs. Yesterday I encountered a
problem with dates, which depending upon how they originally were entered,
may or may not have been corrected by changing a setting. I called Microsoft
tech support about this problem and also to ask about what other
incompatibilities I might encounter, and he suggested this newsgroup. I
would be interested in hearing from others who use Macs in a business
environment with PCs. What compatibility problems can I expect if I run
Microsoft Office for Mac? Should I partition my hard drive and install XP
and Office? What has been others' experience with Bootcamp or Parallels? Do
I need to replace this computer with a PC? I need to have confidence about
the accuracy of the information in files that I open, use, save, and send,
and I need to be able to work in EXCEL and WORD on a stable,reliable
computer. Thanks for any help.

Hi Phyllis!

I'm sure others will chime in. I'm by no means an expert in Office for
Mac and Windows. But I suggest that you also consider testing your files
on another PC with the same/similar version of Office. Some problems may
be related to the settings of each machine rather than compatibility
issues between Office for Windows and Office for Mac.

Hope this helps! bill

 

[John McGhie [MVP Word, Word Mac]]

Hi Phyllis:

The main compatibility "problem" you will strike between Mac Office 2004 and
PC Office is "user stupidity" from people who tell you that there's a
problem

I strongly suggest that you avoid "telling" ANYONE that you are using a Mac.
If you don't tell them, they will never know and your files will "just
work". If you tell them, they will start doing strange things and cause
your documents to fail.

Microsoft Office 2004 is fully and completely compatible with PC Office.
It's not just "compatible", the file formats it uses ARE the PC File
Formats. They're not just "equivalent", they are the exact same thing.

That said, there are some functions that PC Office has that Microsoft Office
on the Mac does not have. You are unlikely to find any unless you are a
seriously-advanced power user. For example, MS Access is not available on
the Mac. If you need a database, consider FileMaker Pro in its place, but
if you must have Access you're going to need to dual-boot. Similarly with
Outlook, Visio, Groove, FrontPage, and MSN Messenger. There are no Mac
versions (well, there is a version of Messenger, but it's useless: it is
limited to text only, use iChat!!).

Mac Office contains Entourage, which replaces Outlook. It will connect to
an Exchange Server and if you ask we'll tell you how. I find it faster,
easier and nicer to use than Outlook, although Outlook has more
industrial-strength bells and whistles.

* It is difficult to make sound work between PowerPoint on the PC and
PowerPoint on the Mac.

* Graphics will change slightly when you go back and forward from PC to
Mac.

* Files containing graphics may become twice as large because they need to
express the graphics in both PC and Mac formats.

* Complex Visual Basic Programming written on the PC may not work on the
Mac (Mostly it does, or it is easy to fix, but PC VBA is two levels ahead of
Mac VBA).

* Currently, Mac Office cannot read the new PC Office 2007 XML formats, but
the converters are coming very soon now.

* To minimise the changes between PC and Mac, use the fonts Microsoft
provides on the Mac: these fonts are specially engineered to render as close
to the same-named fonts on the PC as possible. Macintosh fonts will change
their dimensions slightly on the PC. If your documents are properly
formatted, you will never notice this: if you rely on spaces and hard page
breaks to lay things out, stuff will move around slightly.

That said, Bootcamp is a good idea, and Parallels is a seriously good idea
Both run well and Parallels is worth the money you may just for the
convenience of being able to copy and paste from Windows to Mac.

However, I wouldn't buy either until Mac OS 10.5 comes out, rumoured to be
in October. You may find that it has both built-in. Certainly the version
of Bootcamp that arrives with 10.5 should load Windows Vista -- the current
version won't.

Hang on to your Windows XP and Office PC CDs (and don't lose the Licence
Keys!!). You will be able to use both in Bootcamp or Parallels.

Hope this helps

--

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

http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Phyllis -

I won't go into a great deal of detail since John has pretty well covered
the subject, but I did want to interject a few things.

The Office apps are somewhat *different* on the two systems - keyboard
shortcuts are a prime example - but that shouldn't be mistaken for
*incompatibility* and need not be problematic. The main reasons a
compatibility issue is perceived are that:

A) There are a host of users (on each side) who have no idea how to use
their respective versions correctly. Therefore, their documents don't
transport very well - even to other users of the same OS,

B) IS/Support people *rarely* know much about anything outside their
respective OS or the apps themselves, so when questions do arise they tend
to blame the other OS for incompatibility because it's the easiest way out.

The date issue, for example, results from the respective use of the 1900
date system used by PC Excel as opposed to the 1904 date system on Mac. As
you've apparently discovered, this is a file-specific setting & can occur
just as easily between PC users or between Mac users as it can
cross-platform. IOW, it isn't really a Mac v. PC compatibility matter. (You
won't find a WinSide user who will admit it, but the reason Mac uses the
1904 system is that the 1900 system is _wrong_ - it allows for a leap year
day that didn't exist or some such.) Regardless, it is a well-known issue &
can be easily adjusted for, but it typically only presents as a problem when
copying/importing between files that are set for different date systems.

As long as you learn to treat the Mac as a Mac & don't try to use it as "a
PC with a different logo" you should find that it will prove to be far
closer to the "stable, reliable computer" you're looking for than would be a
Windows box. And the "learning curve" is not at all steep Let us know if
you have any questions!

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

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi Phyllis,

You already have heard from others.

Here's Microsoft's detailed description of the 1900 vs 1904 date systems in
Excel:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/180162

Here are some features you'll find only on the Mac version of Office:

On the picture toolbar is a collection of selection tools
On the picture toolbar there's an Effects button (a whole lot of stuff is
there)
In Word there is a mini version of OneNote (View > Notebook Layout)
Mail Merge in Word is 100 times easier on the Mac than on a PC
There is an elaborate feature that lets you create shared projects (Project
Gallery)
PowerPoint has presenter view (lets speaker see and write notes, upcoming
slides, timing while audience sees the slides
PowerPoint can save any presentation as a QuickTime movie, which can then be
used in Apple's iMovie and iDVD programs
Soft shadows can be on lots of stuff
Transparency controls actually work right
PowerPoint has the ability to save pictures at user selected DPI
Excel's List manager is complete and works right
Formatting Palettes that make formatting a snap

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

I recently bought a MacBook Pro for business use in a PC environment and I
will be sharing EXCEL and WORD files remotely with a person who has a PC.
Before buying I was unaware of compatibility problems between Microsoft
Office for MACs and PCs. I have transferred many years of files to this
computer from my PC, which is on its last legs. Yesterday I encountered a
problem with dates, which depending upon how they originally were entered,
may or may not have been corrected by changing a setting. I called Microsoft
tech support about this problem and also to ask about what other
incompatibilities I might encounter, and he suggested this newsgroup. I
would be interested in hearing from others who use Macs in a business
environment with PCs. What compatibility problems can I expect if I run
Microsoft Office for Mac? Should I partition my hard drive and install XP
and Office? What has been others' experience with Bootcamp or Parallels? Do
I need to replace this computer with a PC? I need to have confidence about
the accuracy of the information in files that I open, use, save, and send,
and I need to be able to work in EXCEL and WORD on a stable,reliable
computer. Thanks for any help.

--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

MVPs are not Microsoft Employees
MVP info

 

[Phyllis Warner]

The Office for Mac tech support person I spoke with suggested that I save
files in the 1900 format before sending them to a PC user. Is that correct?
From reading the article in HELP, EXCEL is supposed to be able to tell if a
file was created on a Mac or PC and adjust accordingly, so I am reluctant to
do that. The better approach might be to test whether the machine I am
sending the file to reads it correctly. Is the compatibility problem mainly
with files that were created in early versions of EXCEL?

Thanks to all for the help.

Phyllis

 

[JE McGimpsey]

The Office for Mac tech support person I spoke with suggested that I save
files in the 1900 format before sending them to a PC user. Is that correct?
From reading the article in HELP, EXCEL is supposed to be able to tell if a
file was created on a Mac or PC and adjust accordingly, so I am reluctant to
do that. The better approach might be to test whether the machine I am
sending the file to reads it correctly. Is the compatibility problem mainly
with files that were created in early versions of EXCEL?

The biggest thing to remember is that, to XL, dates are just numbers
that are formatted differently. And the two date systems just use
numbers that differ by 1462.

The date system setting is workbook specific, so both MacXL and WinXL
will adjust automatically. The only "problem" occurs when trying to copy
dates between workbooks that have different settings - if you or the Win
user aren't doing that, it's a matter of utter indifference.

OTOH, that mean's it's also a matter of indifference whether you change
your setting or not.

Both MacXL and WinXL have kept their default date systems for
compatibility reasons, in this case intra-platform compatibility rather
than cross-platform.

If they were to ever be a consolidation, it really should be to the Mac
standard. The 1900 date system include a bogus date: 2/29/1900 (to
maintain compatibility with VisiCalc and Lotus-123). But I wouldn't hold
my breath.

 

[dkalai]

Hello,

I have found this exchange about Entourage and Outlook very helpful.
I'm a bit confused about a few things and would love any input that
could be offered.

I work for myself--so no IT person to give me permission to do things.

I have a Macbook (with Parallels), a PC, and a new Blackberry. I use
a web client for email but need to seamlessly synch calendar,
contacts, and task, across all 3 devices. I am going back and forth
about using Outlook on the MB via Paralells. I'd really rather use
Entourage--one less step. Frankly, I have been frustrated with my
Parallels experience; it makes the MB run reeeaaaallly slowly and has
caused my MB to totally freeze on several occasions (I have 1 G of
RAM), even resulting in a need for a total wipe of MB hard drive
(ouch).

Can I synch Outlook, Blackberry, and Entourage? If so, what's the
surest way to do this? Do I need to look into a hosted Exchange
server? I'd prefer to avoid that path if possible. I have spent A
LOT of time in dealing with integrating Mac and PC, and just want to
get on with my life.

Thanks very much,

Deena
..

 

[Diane Ross]

Parallels experience; it makes the MB run reeeaaaallly slowly and has
caused my MB to totally freeze on several occasions (I have 1 G of
RAM), even resulting in a need for a total wipe of MB hard drive
(ouch).

You need more RAM.
--
Diane Ross, Microsoft Mac MVP
Entourage Help Page
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
One of the top five MS Entourage resources listed on the Entourage Blog.
<http://blogs.msdn.com/entourage/>

 

[William Smith]

Can I synch Outlook, Blackberry, and Entourage? If so, what's the
surest way to do this? Do I need to look into a hosted Exchange
server? I'd prefer to avoid that path if possible. I have spent A
LOT of time in dealing with integrating Mac and PC, and just want to
get on with my life.

If you have a need to synchronize just your mail then you could find a
service provider that offers IMAP mail services. Plenty do. This will
allow your Outlook and Entourage to stay in sync and you can then
synchronize your Blackberry with either application (but I don't advise
both).

If you need to synchronize mail, calendar and contacts then go with a
hosted Exchange solution. Microsoft has a Partner Directory that lists
several providers
<http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/solutions/catalog.aspx> and
you can also search for more options. Some may also provide wireless
Blackberry support or you could choose to synchronize it with either
Outlook or Entourage.

Hope this helps! bill

 

[dkalai]

Thank you both for your input.

This will > allow your Outlook and Entourage to stay in sync and you
can then

synchronize your Blackberry with either application (but I don't advise
both).

So then it seems the consensus is to use either Entourage or Outlook,
but not try to use both?
In which case, I should go through Parallels (once I've acquired more
RAM) and use only Outlook? I spend more time on the Mac than on the
PC so I'd like to ensure I'm going with the more logical option. The
only reason I use Parallels currently is for Outlook and Quickbooks.

I appreciate your advice.

Deena

 

[William Smith]

So then it seems the consensus is to use either Entourage or Outlook,
but not try to use both?

You can use both Entourage and Outlook. I just don't advise
synchronizing your Blackberry to both of them if they're already
synchronizing with an IMAP or Exchange Server. Synchronize with just one
of them. The information in all places will be the same.

Handheld devices come in many flavors with many applications to
synchronize them to many email applications. But synchronization is not
always perfect. If you limit your handheld to one source for
synchronization then you limit the potential for data loss should
something unusual happen.

Hope this helps! bill

 

[John McGhie [MVP Word, Word Mac]]

Hi Deena:

I am afraid you have had some very bad advise if someone told you to wipe
your Mac Book drive Well, you will get plenty of sound advice in here


The shop should have told you that you need 2 GB of RAM to run Parallels --
preferrably 3GB. That's because parallels runs a guest operating system
alongside your Mac OS X operating system. Now, if you think about a house
guest, they don't eat any less food, sleep in a smaller bed, or fit in a
smaller bathroom just because they're guests Operating systems are just
the same. Windows XP needs 512 MB of RAM to run properly, Windows Vista
needs 1 GB. Parallels adds another 100 MB on top of that (that can be
confusing: Parallels requires a minimum of 512 MB of RAM free before it will
agree to start, but it will settle 100 MB higher than whatever the Guest OS
is using.)

Mac OS 10.4 needs at least 1GB of RAM to run properly. If you add these
together: 1GB for OS X, 512 MB for Windows XP, and 100 MB for Parallels, you
need 1,600 MB of memory, before you run any other applications. They will
need more!

If you don't have that much RAM, the system attempts to substitute hard disk
space for RAM. As you have discovered, that makes the system
treacle-in-winter slow

What the shop might not be quite so ready to tell you is that your Macbook
was supplied with all its memory slots full, so you will have to take some
out to put some in. If you want to take your Macbook from 1GB of memory to
2 GB of memory, you will have to discard BOTH the existing 512 MB sticks of
memory and snap in TWO 1 GB sticks. Fortunately, this is easy to do (you
will even find pictures showing you how on the Apple website) and you will
find a ready market on eBay for your discarded sticks of RAM .

Now, I use both Entourage and Outlook, depending on whether I am on a PC or
a Mac. You could, of course, use a Hosted Exchange Server. If you did,
your Outlook, Entourage and Blackberry would just connect to it. I used to
work for these people, who offer that service:
http://my.bigpond.com/emailandmessaging/premiummail/solomanagerplus/default.do
However, a moment's thought will show you that their charges are absurd!
And that's because an Exchange Server is such a beast to manage: Microsoft
has a lot of work to do there... There are several providers who offer
Hosted Exchange Servers all over the world. The benefit of that is that you
get to share anything that Outlook and Entourage can do with all of your
devices. At a substantial cost!

However, I believe the best alternative, as others have suggested, is to use
IMAP for your email server. This means that you do not have to synchronise
your mail ANYWHERE. All of your mail remains on the mail server: Entourage
and Outlook only have to display it to you. Entourage is one of the finest
IMAP clients on the planet: Outlook 2007 is not quite as good, but it's
improving

I just log in to which ever computer I am using at the time and I can see my
mail account. Not synchronised copies of it: I see the real Inbox. I am in
Sydney, my inbox is somewhere in the Rocky Mountains of the USA. Who cares:
I can instantly see what's in it The provider I use is www.fastmail.fm
There are a variety of services out there that offer the same thing: and
women are generally a bit more skilled at shopping than men (so they keep
telling me...) so hit the web and go shopping

The first place to look would be the provider that supplies your email now.
They often offer IMAP service for a small extra fee. If they do, you will
only have to change a parameter in your setup: your email addresses will all
remain the same. ISPs hate offering IMAP, because it makes them responsible
for storing the email. But you did not get into business for yourself by
being a door mat: make them an offer they can't refuse and they will soon
see things your way...

The key parameters when buying a mail service are "reliability, reliability,
reliability". I work for myself also: I can't afford an email provider that
suffers fainting fits: the one I use has not inflicted an unscheduled outage
on me in the past five years.

Amongst the reliable providers, you then go shopping for "Storage" and
"Bandwidth". Bandwidth is rarely a large concern: email doesn't use much (I
never use anywhere near 1,000 MB a month ...). But storage can be. My
current provider offers 2GB as standard, and I had a clean-up last week so I
am actually using only 70 MB (which is very light for me: my Archive mail
store, where I put the old and boring junk is 400 MB).

Once you move your email to an IMAP provider, you will find that your
Blackberry will happily connect to IMAP server and show you your email just
like Entourage and Outlook. You can also configure the Blackberry server to
poll your IMAP server and alert you if anything comes in.

OK, that's email: What about your Calendar and your Contacts? These are
things you ARE likely to want to synchronise, so you can use them at times
when your connection is not available. My IMAP provider offers a Contacts
list: nowhere near as good as Outlook or Entourage, but handy to have.

You can publish your Outlook or Entourage calendars to a web server, from
which you can view them on anything. See
http://office.microsoft.com/client/...&rt=2&ns=OUTLOOK&lcid=3081&pid=CH100776881033

You can find other solutions here:
http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/share.htm#other

Notice the one thing I have not mentioned is "Synchronisation"? That's
because it is inherently complex and unreliable. PC <-> Mac <->
Blackberry?? That's not just "brave", that's thrill-seeking I have
never known anyone who synchronises a hand-held device who has not blown
away ALL their contacts and appointments SEVERAL times. I simply won't do
it. My business data is too valuable. Your mileage may vary

Hope this helps

--

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, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[heyjudej]

I'm moving from a PC, Office 2003 to Mac Office 2004. Can I import my old
pst files?

 

[Michel Bintener]

See here:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/cross_platform/win_mac.html>

I'm moving from a PC, Office 2003 to Mac Office 2004. Can I import my old
pst files?

--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:Mac (Entourage & Word)

***Always reply to the newsgroup.***

 

[little_creature]

Now, we have 2 subject her, but I have just few more notes to the original
post. Thinks I could remember, some might have been already stated:

*Mac Office doesn't have Access.

*Mac Excel will ignore the colour of sheet hangouts - PC user will see them
in colour Mac Excel does not support rhis feature.

* Some fonts might be substituded, because some exists on Mac and some on
PC, sometimes it might happen that text wrapping will be slightly differnt
on Mac than on PC in Word, as the fonts are bit different

*Some VBA codes might not run on Mac

*If you would like to share dot templates - especially Normal. PC version is
Normal.dot, whereas on Mac you will have just Normal, so you need to delete
the extension prior to transfering to Mac, otherwise it will ignore it, and
vice verse to add dot when copy on PC, otherwise the not very wise PC will
not know the file and will ask you in which program you wish to open it.

But most of the users in this group ignore Normal at all and rather use
their own templates as normal is prone for corruption

* You might think about graphic format to use when you want to use pictures
in your document. tiff, jpg, png are save to use. Aso I would recommned to
use insert>picture on Mac rather than Apple+C and Apple+V which might result
in empty box saying you need convertor when open on PC, but if you use
insert>picture this will not happen.

*in Mac PPT is missing the Slides tabs, just outline is available

*You will have project galery on the top to Office application on Mac

*you will have notebook view on Mac Word, which enables you to tak voice
notes as well

*you could assign keyboard shortcut to commands in Mac excel without need to
make macro for them such as Paste>special (this was not possible in Excel
2003)

*On Mac you will have the handy formatting palette

*Entourage in comparison to Outlook2003 (haven't got experince with 2007)
dos not support return recipts and cannot display tree in newsgroups such as
Thundrbird. You might also see bit different behaviour and/or have some
restriction while using Entourage for IMAP mails account (such as it will
not allow you to go further than to 1st subfolder) but this is email
clinet/mail server combination issues...

*encouter is much more intuitive than Outlook

it might seems you as a whole lots of troubles, but in fact these are minor,
I prefer working on Mac rather than on PC. I share PC-Mac very often without
significant probles. The most problem is human beings(as someone has
allready staed collegue who sometimes open the hidden files such as
_filename.doc and tease me that's the PC-Mac wrong compability, but I have
explain not to open the hidden files but the proper one filename.doc

It's more about different workflow and it depends on you what you prefer.

 

[Clive Huggan]

Wow, LC -- that's an excellent summary!

But most of the users in this group ignore Normal at all and rather use
their own templates as normal is prone for corruption

Just for the record, I haven't experienced corruption in my Normal template
for about 2-1/2 years, and not for another 2 years before that. So I'm quite
happy to use it. Of course, I back it up sequentially; I probably have 50
backups available from the past year.

I find I'm only using my own customized templates when I need a
distinctively different appearance from my usual styles.

Almost always nowadays I find myself basing brand-new documents on .doc
examples that have the structure I want, whereas I used to start with a
customized template quite often. I don't have a particularly strong reason
to avoid using customized templates -- I used to use them often. It's just
that it's quicker to base a new document on a similar document that is in
the folder I'm working in, and that document will be more up-to-date than a
customized template. (Of course, I don't endlessly copy successive
generations of a document; I always go back to a sample that is no more
than, say, 4th generation from a blank new document produced from the Normal
template.)

I should probably add a caveat -- my documents are specifically structured
to minimize corruption, as described in "Bend Word to Your Will" -- a free
download from the Word MVPs' website
(http://word.mvps.org/Mac/Bend/BendWordToYourWill.html).

Cheers,

Clive
======

 

[little_creature]

Ok And few more things thatoccured my mind
*On Mac Word, it is not supported right to left writing

*There has been dissimilarity found in colouring *waved*lines Word tables,
On Mac the colour is ignored, on PC it will be vissible

*There are bit differencence between templates - not in the format but the
way you can get them. There are some on mactopia we primary designed for
Macs, generally you can use templates from MS web intended for PC, but some
might be hard to *unpack* on Mac, however, you can do that on PC and then
use them on Mac (or post link for them here so we can unpack them on PC for
you if you are far away from PC),
Second, to download PC templates from MS web require Office genuine check
which you cannot run from your Mac
Third they might display a bit different on Mac than on Pc but this is
relatted to the issues which has already been sated in threat bellow

*The ususall asumption of Mac user is that they could swithc the user
interface of Office to some other language like they are used in case of
other application. This is not possible atthis time. You can type and have
spellcheck for other language available but the botom line of the window and
all commands names will be in the primary language of Offic einstallation
you have bought.

*There is a difference with language spellchecker available for Mac and PC,
that might not bother you or may it depends which language do you write
usually in. WhatI mean there is no Czech spellchecker available on Mac from
MS, it is on PC, but I can get 3rd party one for Mac.

*If you have corrupted document on PC you can use Open and repair function,
this is not availbale on Mac. Do not worry you can help yoursefl with manual
workaround.

Again, there is no difference between document format - they are compatible,
this is more about user interface and commands differences. If it seems to
you that I might prefer PC, and tahat there is much missing on the Mac side.
NO I love Mac Office, because their are more handy. I just wanted to provide
sum of thing I found the difference in.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Little Creature/Everyone:

*There are bit differencence between templates - not in the format but the
way you can get them. There are some on mactopia we primary designed for
Macs, generally you can use templates from MS web intended for PC, but some
might be hard to *unpack* on Mac, however, you can do that on PC and then
use them on Mac (or post link for them here so we can unpack them on PC for
you if you are far away from PC),
Second, to download PC templates from MS web require Office genuine check
which you cannot run from your Mac
Third they might display a bit different on Mac than on Pc but this is
relatted to the issues which has already been sated in threat bellow

OK, as of today, (this may change...)

1) If you go into the Microsoft Office Templates section with Safari on Mac
OS 10.4.10, you WILL be required to login with your Microsoft Passport, but
you will NOT be challenged for Windows Genuine Advantage. Since they fixed
the Passport login, that will work fine in Safari, although it may be slow.

2) When you attempt a download, you will get to an error page stating that
your operating system does not meet requirements.

READ IT! ALL of it!! It will tell you how to get your file anyway
That page was created at our request to help Mac Users work around the
requirements of the PC Office website. If you are on PC Office, Internet
Explorer fires off a routine that automatically installs the template into
Office for you. On the Mac, we have to do it manually...

3) When you get your CAB file, double-click it. If you are on a PPC Mac,
Stuffit will open the CAB and hand you the content in a folder. Your .dot
file will be in there.

If you are on an Intel Mac, Stuffit has a bug: it will return error 17540
"Can't understand the format" and the extracted template file will not be
useable.

4) If this happens, download File Juicer, install it, and run it. It will
open a window onto which you drag the .CAB file.

5) File Juicer will then show you the folder structure inside the CAB. In
one of the folders you will find a name like "template number.dot.doc"

6) Change the extension to .dot, or Word is going to get a little confused.

7) Manually drag the .dot file to one of your Templates folders.

8) Send an angry email to Stuffit telling them they stuffed it...

9) Send 10 Euros to the nice man at File Juicer

Your template is now available for use in Mac Office.

NOTE: If the file you downloaded was marked for "Office 2007" you must ALSO
install the Word File Format Converter from
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx?pid=download&location=/mac/downl
oad/Office2004/ConverterBeta.xml

Make SURE you get the one with the updated expiration date. Note that it
will handle ONLY Word .docx and .doct files, nothing else.

Cheers

--
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, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Clive Huggan]

Well thanks for that, John. ;-)

I never go there because I've never been impressed by the Microsoft
templates.

But I feel *much* better now that I know the Nine Steps! ))

Cheers,
Clive
======