Switch to mac means all Office files are Read Only

[Patricia Henwood]

Can someone please tell me what I can do to resolve the following problem?

Last Friday I bought a new 12" Powerbook (O/S 10.3.3) as well as Microsoft
Office 2004. I have previously been using a Sony VAIO (PC Notebook) with
Microsoft Windows 2000 O/S using Microsoft Office 2000. I read the
instructions on the Mac Switch site and copied all my office files and
folders to a Switch CD (RW) then inserted the CD into my new Mac. I dragged
all the files to the Documents folder in the Mac.

Result is all files open but, regardless of whether it is a Word document,
an Excel spreadsheet or a PowerPoint presentation all files open as Read
Only!!! When I check File - Properties - General the attributes box 'Read
Only' is checked but it is also dimmed, giving me no option to change it.

So far, the only way I have been able to convert the files is to go through
the 'Save As...' routine and save the new file. This is truly tedious and I
have hundreds of files that will need to be converted.

Please tell me there is a simpler way - something like - select all, change
properties from Read Only to Archive (or the Mac equivalent) - sorry for the
very long winded nature of this post.

Any help gratefully received

Tricia

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

Can someone please tell me what I can do to resolve the following problem?

Last Friday I bought a new 12" Powerbook (O/S 10.3.3) as well as Microsoft
Office 2004. I have previously been using a Sony VAIO (PC Notebook) with
Microsoft Windows 2000 O/S using Microsoft Office 2000. I read the
instructions on the Mac Switch site and copied all my office files and
folders to a Switch CD (RW) then inserted the CD into my new Mac. I dragged
all the files to the Documents folder in the Mac.

Result is all files open but, regardless of whether it is a Word document,
an Excel spreadsheet or a PowerPoint presentation all files open as Read
Only!!! When I check File - Properties - General the attributes box 'Read
Only' is checked but it is also dimmed, giving me no option to change it.

So far, the only way I have been able to convert the files is to go through
the 'Save As...' routine and save the new file. This is truly tedious and I
have hundreds of files that will need to be converted.

Please tell me there is a simpler way - something like - select all, change
properties from Read Only to Archive (or the Mac equivalent) - sorry for the
very long winded nature of this post.

Any help gratefully received

Tricia

Are you sure that all the documents are really in your Mac's document
folder? It sounds to me like they are really on the CD thus read only.
Perhaps when you dragged them an alias was placed into he documents folder
rather than the actual document.

 

[Patricia Henwood]

Yes, Bob, I'm sure they're in the Mac's Documents folder. I spent 45
minutes on the phone to the AppleCare line today only to be told that they
were sure that 'the next time you call back we can resolve this issue'. Not
very encouraging. It seems that there is some problem with the setup on the
Mac but I wasn't told what that was. I'm sending this from my husband's PC
so I can't refer to the Mac at the moment. However, it seems that where I
(i.e. my username) should have Read and Write access to the files on the Mac
something in the O/S is causing me to have 'Read Only' access. This seems
to be in the 10.3.3 O/S. Please excuse me if I have my terminology wrong.
I've spent the last few hours trying to export the information in my
Microsoft Outlook .pst folders (i.e. particularly my Contacts information)
to Outlook Express so that (hopefully) it can then be exported to the Mac
because Mac will not import information from Outlook. Unfortunately, before
I switched I was told by the Mac sales people that transferring all these
files would be a 'piece of cake' - some cake!!!

I've been through the usual routine today of being told that the 'read-only'
attribute is because the documents are MS Office documents. I know that's
incorrect because the 'read-only' attribute is a result of their having been
written to a CD prior to being transferred to the Mac. What completely
baffles me is why I don't have 'read and write' privileges on my Mac (if
privileges is the correct word to use here).

Cheers, and thanks for responding to my post
Tricia

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I've spent the last few hours trying to export the information in my
Microsoft Outlook .pst folders (i.e. particularly my Contacts information)
to Outlook Express so that (hopefully) it can then be exported to the Mac
because Mac will not import information from Outlook. Unfortunately, before
I switched I was told by the Mac sales people that transferring all these
files would be a 'piece of cake' - some cake!!!

The best way to do this is using Paul Berkowitz's Export-Import
applescript suite, which you can download from MacScripter:


http://files.macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/Entourage/exportimportentoura
gex_131.sit

It's $20 shareware and it takes care of everything you want to transfer.

 

[Walt Basil]

Please excuse me if I have my terminology wrong.
I've spent the last few hours trying to export the information in my
Microsoft Outlook .pst folders (i.e. particularly my Contacts information)
to Outlook Express so that (hopefully) it can then be exported to the Mac
because Mac will not import information from Outlook. Unfortunately, before
I switched I was told by the Mac sales people that transferring all these
files would be a 'piece of cake' - some cake!!!

To export your Outlook (PC) to Entoruage, check out Paul's script
Export-Import Entourage X 1.3.1. Do a search for it on:
<http://scriptbuilders.net/>

This should make it a much easier "piece of cake." ;-)

--
Walt Basil
www.basilweb.net

My Office site:
<http://www.basilweb.net/macoffice/office.html>

You can email me at (firstname)AT(lastname)web.net

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

Hi Tricia,

Try doing a Get Info (cmd-I) on the Documents folder, and find the Owner or
Permissions dropdown in the Info dialog and set that to "read and write".
Sorry for the vagueness, not on an OS X machine right now. You might need
to do this by file, instead of the entire Documents folder, but it's better
than the Save As routine. You can definitely change the permissions via Get
Info for more than one file at once, though you might have to do subfolders.

I run into this problem at work, but it is completely inconsistent and I
haven't figured out what causes it. Not all CDs copy "read-only".

DM

 

[Bernard Rey]

However, it seems that where I (i.e. my username) should

have Read and Write access to the files on the Mac
something in the O/S is causing me to have 'Read Only'
access. This seems to be in the 10.3.3 O/S. Please
excuse me if I have my terminology wrong.

.../... I know that's incorrect because the 'read-only'
attribute is a result of their having been written to a
CD prior to being transferred to the Mac. What completely
baffles me is why I don't have 'read and write'
privileges on my Mac (if privileges is the correct word
to use here).

Yes, privileges is the correct word. If setting them to
"Read and write" is the answer, rather than changing each
file individually as indicated by Dayo in another post,
you can use "BatChmod", a freeware allowing you to change
privileges to lots of files at once :
http://macchampion.com/arbysoft/

Should be somewhat faster ;-)