Windows-Mac Conversion Problems

[Robert]

Hi All
I use a Mac running Office X at home and a PC at work running Office
2000, and send Word files back and forth as e-mail attachments. I have
always been able to open the Word for Windows files sent from work to
home and vice versa seamlessly. This has been donw w/o saving them as
RTF files. However, this weekend I sent some Word for Windows files to
home (I use AOL), but when I downloaded the files onto my Mac, they were
not in Word format (the icon looks more like a generic Text file). When I
tried to use Word to open them, I'm given the Convert File dialog box. The
best option I could find was to open the files using the "Recover Text From
Any File" choice. This opened the file, but all of the formatting, tables, etc.
were lost. I recently upgraded to Panther and thought this might be the
problem, so I then used my iBook which is still running Jaguar to download
the files and got the same result. I then went back to work to re-send the
files. Before I resent them, I double-checked to make sure the documents
were saved as Word documents (each had the .doc file extension). I even
saved a copy of each file as a mac document and sent those to home, but
none of the files are being recognized as Word documents and I cannot
open them. I even tried converting them using MacLink Deluxe, but this,
too, failed. Can anyone offer any suggestions? I have always sent Word
(and Excel) documents back and forth between the PC's at work and my Mac
at home w/o problem, and I do this a lot, Thanks in advance for any
suggestions.

 

[Elliott Roper]

Hi All
I use a Mac running Office X at home and a PC at work running Office
2000, and send Word files back and forth as e-mail attachments. I have
always been able to open the Word for Windows files sent from work to
home and vice versa seamlessly. This has been donw w/o saving them as
RTF files. However, this weekend I sent some Word for Windows files to
home (I use AOL), but when I downloaded the files onto my Mac, they were
not in Word format (the icon looks more like a generic Text file). When I
tried to use Word to open them, I'm given the Convert File dialog box. The
best option I could find was to open the files using the "Recover Text From
Any File" choice. This opened the file, but all of the formatting, tables,
etc.
were lost. I recently upgraded to Panther and thought this might be the
problem, so I then used my iBook which is still running Jaguar to download
the files and got the same result. I then went back to work to re-send the
files. Before I resent them, I double-checked to make sure the documents
were saved as Word documents (each had the .doc file extension). I even
saved a copy of each file as a mac document and sent those to home, but
none of the files are being recognized as Word documents and I cannot
open them. I even tried converting them using MacLink Deluxe, but this,
too, failed. Can anyone offer any suggestions? I have always sent Word
(and Excel) documents back and forth between the PC's at work and my Mac
at home w/o problem, and I do this a lot, Thanks in advance for any
suggestions.

What happens when you send from home to work?

What happens when you zip the docs at work before sending them home.

My guess is something bad has happened with your e-mail or e-mail
server at work and the .docs are no longer being sent with the correct
mime type for the attachments.

At home, get your mail client to show raw source and compare old good
attachments with what you are getting now.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word]]

Hi Robert:

1. Save the file from your email program to your hard disk
2. Open the finder and select the saved File
3. Use Get Info>Open With and choose Word X
4. Click Change All

That should fix it. If it doesn¹t, you are having email problems as has
been suggested. Ensure your file has the correct ³.doc² extension when it
arrives on the Mac, and try zipping the file before you send it from the PC.

But I think that what is happening is that on Windows you are sending the
new creator code that Mac Word has not yet heard about. You need to use Get
Info to change your Mac to always hand those files over to Word to open.

It may be, of course, that your PC at work has magically got itself set to
save in a weird format that Mac Word can¹t handle.
1. Go to work,
2. open a file you had trouble with on your PC, and
3. check Tools>Options>Save to see what format it is set to save in.
4. It SHOULD be ³Microsoft Word Document² (the very latest version
available; which is usually called simply ³Word Document²). If it¹s not,
change it and try again.

There are a variety of old formats PC Word can handle that have been dropped
from the Mac version. If your documents at work are very old, they may have
been created in one of these formats. If they have, Word on the PC will
keep the format until you manually change it. It¹s supposedly a
compatibility feature, but it works more like a bug...

Hope this helps

Hi All I use a Mac running Office X at home and a PC at work running Office
2000, and send Word files back and forth as e-mail attachments. I have always
been able to open the Word for Windows files sent from work to home and vice
versa seamlessly. This has been donw w/o saving them as RTF files. However,
this weekend I sent some Word for Windows files to home (I use AOL), but when
I downloaded the files onto my Mac, they were not in Word format (the icon
looks more like a generic Text file). When I tried to use Word to open them,
I'm given the Convert File dialog box. The best option I could find was to
open the files using the "Recover Text From Any File" choice. This opened the
file, but all of the formatting, tables, etc. were lost. I recently upgraded
to Panther and thought this might be the problem, so I then used my iBook
which is still running Jaguar to download the files and got the same result.
I then went back to work to re-send the files. Before I resent them, I
double-checked to make sure the documents were saved as Word documents (each
had the .doc file extension). I even saved a copy of each file as a mac
document and sent those to home, but none of the files are being recognized as
Word documents and I cannot open them. I even tried converting them using
MacLink Deluxe, but this, too, failed. Can anyone offer any suggestions? I
have always sent Word (and Excel) documents back and forth between the PC's at
work and my Mac at home w/o problem, and I do this a lot, Thanks in
advance for any suggestions.

--

Please respond only to the newsgroup to preserve the thread.

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

 

[BMG]

Robert:

I was just working with someone from my company that has the same
issue. He checked his MS-Word preferences or save settings in Word X
on his MAC and found that some of the wrong boxes were checked. He
did not check these settings nor did he know what the correct settings
should be. He just set all options back to defaults (Must have has a
reset to default button in this dialog window). Now, when he creates
docs in word on his MAC and sends them to users using Office/Word 2000
they can open the documents in native format. He no longer needs to
send them .RTF files so they can open the documents. I am not a MAC
expert only a PC expert so I don't know why settings in Word X
changed. We were able to narrow this down to settings on his MAC and
that is how it was solved.

Hope this helps,
BMG