Lynn said:
I've loaded my old Word 98 onto my new iBook, which has OSX. It will open
Word in OS 9 environment but I can't print and colleagues can't open my
documents when I email them. Can I upgrade my Word 98 with one of the
downloads on the site? To make it work with Mac OSX, does anyone know what I
need to upgrade to?
I am trying to avoid the option of going to the store and buying brand new
Word software for hundreds of bucks! Thanks!
There are loads of people successfully using Word98 in Classic. You
should be able to as well with some housekeeping.
First, make sure you've fully updated Office98:
Mactopia downloads:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/download/default.asp
Then make sure you've updated OS X (System Preferences/Software
Update) and printer drivers (your manufacturer)
Repair your permissions:
OS 10.2.x: Run the Disk Utility (in the ./Applications/Utilities
folder). From the First Aid tab, click "Repair Disk Permissions".
OS 10.1.5: Run Repair Privileges (same folder, or download from
Apple:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106900
The above should enable you to print. If not, post back to the
microsoft.public.mac.office.word newsgroup.
I've occasionally had trouble sending files to clients and
colleagues - it has had nothing to do with Word - the file formats
for Mac Word 98/01/v.X and WinWord 97/00/02/03 are identical.
Sometimes the Windows users, especially on older systems, just
didn't know how to make file associations - so while it's not
strictly necessary, make sure that you use the .doc extension on
your filenames. That cures about 75% of my problem transfers.
When you email, your file encoding in your email client should be
either AppleDouble (for both Macs and Windows) or MIME/Base64
(Windows).
Sometimes, despite the above, email servers (mostly running on
Windows systems, for some reason) just munge the files. In that
case, using Aladdin's DropZip or ZipIt (see versiontracker.com) to
compress the file to .zip format works for 98% of my "trouble"
correspondents. If they're particularly enlightened and can install
an application on their machine, they can also download Stuffit
Expander for Windows (
http://stuffit.com) and you can stuff the
file using DropStuff.
For the remaining 2% of my trouble clients, I've posted the files
(again unchanged) to my ftp server and sent them the URL - they can
download them just fine and use them as is - something in their mail
system just munges attachments.
If you're happy with Word98, there's no real reason to switch to
Office v.X, other than the fact that it runs natively in OS X (it
also has some great features, but if you don't know, you won't miss
them!).
