Windows Word can't open Mac documents

[James Morse]

Windows 2000/Word 9.0 can't open Mac OS 10.3.3 Word 10.0.0 documents.

Before the switch to OSX, we used Mac Word 5.1 and saved as Widows
version, and had no problem opening them in the Windows environment.
But now there isn't even the option of saving as a Windows format.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

James

 

[Phillip M. Jones, CE.T.]

Windows 2000/Word 9.0 can't open Mac OS 10.3.3 Word 10.0.0 documents.

Before the switch to OSX, we used Mac Word 5.1 and saved as Widows
version, and had no problem opening them in the Windows environment.
But now there isn't even the option of saving as a Windows format.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

James

From my understanding word documents word 2000 on either platform use identically
the same file format.

Try sending the files with the .doc extention on the end and either the Mac or the
PC should read them.

Word2004 has compatibility checker. you set in preferences what file type you want
it to check compatibility by. then when you save a document choose to check
compatibility. it will come up with a box describing in compatibilities and clicking
on it tells somethings to do to fix it.

--
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Phillip M. Jones, CET |MEMBER:VPEA (LIFE) ETA-I, NESDA,ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112-1809 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://home.kimbanet.com/~pjones/birthday/index.htm>
<http://vpea.exis.net>

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi James,

The modern Word document file format is the same, regardless of platform or
version (going back to Word 97). You do not need to save in any special way
and you don't need converters of any sort. Just be sure the .doc file
extension is appended to the file name and you should have no trouble
opening the document on MacWord or WinWord.

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/WordMac/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[John McGhie]

Hi James:
They can here. That's not your problem.

Your problem is either missing file extensions, as noted by other posters,
or more probably, encoding.

PCs cannot decode Stuffit or BinHex. You need to encode in MIME with not
compression, or if you have the full version of Stuffit, make a .Zip file.

And tell the PC users that recent security upgrades prevented *anything*
opening by double-clicking in the email program. If they save the file to
disk first, it will open right up if they use File>Open from Word.

Cheers

Windows 2000/Word 9.0 can't open Mac OS 10.3.3 Word 10.0.0 documents.

Before the switch to OSX, we used Mac Word 5.1 and saved as Widows
version, and had no problem opening them in the Windows environment.
But now there isn't even the option of saving as a Windows format.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

James

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Elliott Roper]

Hi James:
They can here. That's not your problem.

Your problem is either missing file extensions, as noted by other posters,
or more probably, encoding.

PCs cannot decode Stuffit or BinHex. You need to encode in MIME with not
compression, or if you have the full version of Stuffit, make a .Zip file.

To which I may I add? :-

If you are too stingy to spring for Stuffit deluxe, Mac OS X will zip
files natively.

In terminal type zip -j doofus
then drag the word doc's icon from its finder window right onto the
terminal's command line, which will grow into something like:-
[ellpb:~] elliott% zip -j doofus /Users/elliott/Documents/Admin/Beta\
for\ Fred\ variations.doc
Now hit return
A new file, called doofus.zip will appear in your home folder, or
whatever directory terminal was sitting in when you did the zip.

the "-j" junks the path to the doc you were stuffing. That is helpful
to the PC recipient, who will then not have a whole tree of folders
created mimicing your mac's all the way down to the document. (From the
example above, without the -j, it would have created nested folders
called Users, Documents, Admin and then a file called Beta for Fred
variations.doc)

zip -h at the terminal prompt gives you a rundown of its other tricks.

You may unzip files similarly,
i.e. "unzip doofus" in the terminal
or simply double-click on the doofus.zip in the finder window.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

To which I may I add? :-

If you are too stingy to spring for Stuffit deluxe, Mac OS X will zip
files natively.

In terminal type zip -j doofus
then drag the word doc's icon from its finder window right onto the
terminal's command line, which will grow into something like:-
[ellpb:~] elliott% zip -j doofus /Users/elliott/Documents/Admin/Beta\
for\ Fred\ variations.doc
Now hit return
A new file, called doofus.zip will appear in your home folder, or
whatever directory terminal was sitting in when you did the zip.

Or, if you don't like terminal, you can, in Panther, ctrl-click the file
and choose Archive.

Note that this does create some Mac junk in the archive.

 

[Phillip M. Jones, CE.T.]

Hi James:
They can here. That's not your problem.

Your problem is either missing file extensions, as noted by other posters,
or more probably, encoding.

PCs cannot decode Stuffit or BinHex. You need to encode in MIME with not
compression, or if you have the full version of Stuffit, make a .Zip file.

And tell the PC users that recent security upgrades prevented *anything*
opening by double-clicking in the email program. If they save the file to
disk first, it will open right up if they use File>Open from Word.

Cheers

On OSX.3 Panther there is another option if you don't have Stuffit

choose the file and right click on the file. Hold the mouse button down until the
context menu comes up.

now chose: Create archive of file.

select this and release.

Boom! a file is created with the zip extesnion and has the file icon of a zipper.

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |MEMBER:VPEA (LIFE) ETA-I, NESDA,ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112-1809 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://home.kimbanet.com/~pjones/birthday/index.htm>
<http://vpea.exis.net>

 

[John McGhie]

How 'bout you write that one up for the MVP website? Time we got some work
out of you!!

Cheers

Hi James:
They can here. That's not your problem.

Your problem is either missing file extensions, as noted by other posters,
or more probably, encoding.

PCs cannot decode Stuffit or BinHex. You need to encode in MIME with not
compression, or if you have the full version of Stuffit, make a .Zip file.

To which I may I add? :-

If you are too stingy to spring for Stuffit deluxe, Mac OS X will zip
files natively.

In terminal type zip -j doofus
then drag the word doc's icon from its finder window right onto the
terminal's command line, which will grow into something like:-
[ellpb:~] elliott% zip -j doofus /Users/elliott/Documents/Admin/Beta\
for\ Fred\ variations.doc
Now hit return
A new file, called doofus.zip will appear in your home folder, or
whatever directory terminal was sitting in when you did the zip.

the "-j" junks the path to the doc you were stuffing. That is helpful
to the PC recipient, who will then not have a whole tree of folders
created mimicing your mac's all the way down to the document. (From the
example above, without the -j, it would have created nested folders
called Users, Documents, Admin and then a file called Beta for Fred
variations.doc)

zip -h at the terminal prompt gives you a rundown of its other tricks.

You may unzip files similarly,
i.e. "unzip doofus" in the terminal
or simply double-click on the doofus.zip in the finder window.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[James Morse]

I have tried the .doc extension, no luck.

Do you mean I can't sent the native file to the Windows side, I must zip it?

Thanks,

James

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

I have tried the .doc extension, no luck.

Do you mean I can't sent the native file to the Windows side, I must zip it?

Well, if you had said you were emailing the files I would have posted this
way back...You can send the file without zipping it, but you have to set
your email program to encode attachments in a way that Windows can read
them.

There's no difference in the Word file format (since Word 97).

The Mac email program, Entourage, has this to say in Help:

About attachment encodings
When you choose an encoding format, it is helpful to understand how
Macintosh files differ from files created on other computers. Macintosh
files include additional resource information that files created on other
types of computers do not. If you are sending a data file, such as a
Microsoft Word document or Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, such resource
information may not be necessary. However, if you are sending something more
complex, such as a program, to another Macintosh computer, you must choose
an encoding format that preserves all the data.
The AppleDouble encoding format preserves the additional resource
information, and can be read by both Macintosh and other types of computers.
AppleDouble is a good choice for your default encoding format; it works most
of the time with most computers. However, if AppleDouble fails, you can
choose a different encoding format depending on the type of computer you are
sending the attachment to:
€ To send an attachment to a Macintosh computer, use BinHex, which
preserves the Macintosh resource information and data.
€ To send an attachment to a Windows-based computer, use MIME/Base 64,
which preserves the data only.
€ To send an attachment to a UNIX computer, use UUEncode, which preserves
the data only.

DM

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I have tried the .doc extension, no luck.

Do you mean I can't sent the native file to the Windows side, I must zip it?

If you're using MIME/Base 64 encoding when you email, you *should* be
able to send native files. I do with most of my clients all the time.

OTOH, several of my clients, mostly using Microsoft mail servers, have
native files munged every time. Zipping works in those cases.

I've only had one or two clients for whom that didn't work - I ended up
posting the native file to my ftp site, and my client could download the
file directly.

 

[Elliott Roper]

How 'bout you write that one up for the MVP website? Time we got some work
out of you!!

Cheers

<snip>
Oh, all right. S'pose I have to pay to argue! I'll send it via Beth.

It will need a bit of input from people with experience of shoving
attachments at PCs from various Mac mail clients. Here I use mail.app
and never have any problems. Well, hardly ever.

That's not an argument! It's mere contradiction!
No it isn't!

 

[James Morse]

Thank you all for your help. Sorry I originally left out the detail
that I was e-mailing.

James

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Oh, all right. S'pose I have to pay to argue! I'll send it via Beth.

Sounds good to me .

Beth

 

[John McGhie]

Hi James:

No, I didn't "mean" that, but it can be the ultimate effect of what I said


What can happen is that a badly-configured Windows system will not correctly
hand-off a Word document from within the mail program. Windows users are
accustomed to double-clicking a file within their email client to open it.
Recent security updates to Outlook, Outlook Express and Windows have made
this very risky practice increasingly less likely to work.

You could try to educate the people who get into trouble this way to always
save the attachment you send them to their hard disk, and then open it using
File>Open from within Word.

Or you could Zip the file before you send it. If you do that, WinZip will
open up and prompt them to save it.

It's quicker and easier to send a Zip file that try to educate this level of
user

Cheers

I have tried the .doc extension, no luck.

Do you mean I can't sent the native file to the Windows side, I must zip it?

Thanks,

James

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Tim Murray]

PCs cannot decode Stuffit or BinHex.

Umm, actually, they can. StuffIt does both, and WinZip does BinHex.

 

[Phillip M. Jones, CE.T.]

Umm, actually, they can. StuffIt does both, and WinZip does BinHex.

if you get either the stuffit standard or deluxe on a disk they actually give you a
version of expander I belive that you can send to your PC Bud's.

But you can use Stuffit to create zip archive. And if you have panther you can
select the file in finder, right click and wait for a contex menu to come up.
Look for create archive of file. Voila! your file has a zip archive of the file
created. Don't know whether this version compresses the file any or not. Stuffit's
version can.

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |MEMBER:VPEA (LIFE) ETA-I, NESDA,ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112-1809 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://home.kimbanet.com/~pjones/birthday/index.htm>
<http://vpea.exis.net>

 

[John McGhie]

Tim:

I didn't want to spend the time to type out the fully-qualified explanation


I know perfectly well that you "can" get a PC to do this, but in practical
terms it's half a screenful of explanation, and you then find that the
corporate user can't do any of it because their desktop is locked down so
they cannot install either Stuffit or WinZip

Send 'em a Zip file and let someone else deal with the problem WinXP
and OS X can both handle Zip files natively: no need for any intervention by
the target user.

Cheers

Umm, actually, they can. StuffIt does both, and WinZip does BinHex.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Tim Murray]

I know perfectly well that you "can" get a PC to do this, but in practical
terms it's half a screenful of explanation, and you then find that the
corporate user can't do any of it because their desktop is locked down so
they cannot install either Stuffit or WinZip

I knew that you did, but I was concerned about the interpretation of "PCs
cannot decode Stuffit or BinHex". An unknowing user may understandably think
PCs can't do it, period.