Word files between v.X and 2004

[RockyRoad]

I'm thinking of buying Office 2004 for my laptop and home, but most of
my colleagues run V.x (as I do atm) and wont be upgrading anytime soon.

Will Word documents need translation between these versions or will they
just go open up in each the same way Word 98 docs do in Word v.X?

Thanks.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Rocky,

The versions are fully compatible. The only "buts" are ....

­ If you create a document in Word 2004, using a new feature that doesn't
exist in the earlier version, you could run into a problem. For instance,
since Word 2004 has full Unicode support and Word X doesn't, you would want
to avoid using characters that don't exist in the Word X font set.

­ It's possible that you could see some small formatting anomalies, like
spacing that's off, due to differences in font versions and/or the way Word
2004 renders text.

Nothing to worry about here.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice ­ or use another browser.)
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[RockyRoad]

Hi Rocky,

The versions are fully compatible. The only "buts" are ....

­ If you create a document in Word 2004, using a new feature that doesn't
exist in the earlier version, you could run into a problem. For instance,
since Word 2004 has full Unicode support and Word X doesn't, you would want
to avoid using characters that don't exist in the Word X font set.

­ It's possible that you could see some small formatting anomalies, like
spacing that's off, due to differences in font versions and/or the way Word
2004 renders text.

Nothing to worry about here.

That all sounds quite reasonable. Thanks.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

­ It's possible that you could see some small formatting anomalies, like

spacing that's off, due to differences in font versions and/or the way Word
2004 renders text.

Not to contradict exactly, as I skipped Word X and do not know, but some
people working in offices have posted sounding quite upset about the change
in page breaks from Word X to Word 2004. Those people didn't feel like the
formatting anomalies were "small."

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Daiya:

Yeah, you are quite correct: argument rages on that one (particularly in
here...).

My take on it is this: I believe that Beth is correct, the changes are
"infinitesimal" It's less than one per cent. And it's not due to Word
per se, but to the fact that Word uses the new Apple mechanism for drawing
things on the screen.

Apple Type Services for Unicode, as the name implies, is required to draw
Unicode fonts. Word X uses the old QuickDraw technology, which won't handle
Unicode. The two render text very slightly differently. I don't think,
Daiya, that you "did" skip the problem. You went from Word 2001 on
QuickDraw to Word 2004 on ATSUI, right? The problem would have been there.
But chances are you format stuff properly, so it wasn't a major issue for
you.

In my experience, on a two or three page document, you would be pushing to
notice the difference. On a correctly formatted 1,000-page document, you
*won't* notice the difference.

But in the real world, "most" documents are not correctly formatted for
publication directly from Word. If they rely on things such as spaces,
hard-returns, and hard page breaks to get their pagination correct, the
whole document requires repaginating when it moves from one version to the
other.

So it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. If someone uses professional
formatting practices, their documents will lay up properly on any version of
Word on any platform. If they try to "save a bit of time" by bodging
things, they get to do that all over again each time the document moves from
one platform to another, from one printer to another, or even in extreme
cases, from one user-ID to another

Just my thoughts...

Not to contradict exactly, as I skipped Word X and do not know, but some
people working in offices have posted sounding quite upset about the change
in page breaks from Word X to Word 2004. Those people didn't feel like the
formatting anomalies were "small."

--

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

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

I don't paginate all that properly, but my guess is it only becomes a
problem in particular situations, where you have various manuals saying "see
page X of this other manual" and all that needs to be fixed.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Daiya:

Nope: Cross references, tables of contents, and indexes etc all update
automatically. It's the text wrapping at the bottoms of pages that breaks.

If the document has been built with "zero tolerance" formatting, they will
get little niggles throughout it, such as table lines wrapping that didn't
used to, hyphenation in the wrong place, text skipped to the next page, etc.

Many users do frightful things to control pagination: adding "blank lines"
to the bottom of pages to force paragraphs to the next page, or hard returns
to force paragraphs to break at a particular place. If they change
"anything" in their environment, all hell breaks loose: bits of pictures go
flying around the document, chapters start on the wrong page, great gaps
appear in the text. It's a real mess.

If they format the document from the outset using style properties so that
the text is designed to be automatically paginated, the document will format
perfectly in any version of Word.

Cheers

I don't paginate all that properly, but my guess is it only becomes a
problem in particular situations, where you have various manuals saying "see
page X of this other manual" and all that needs to be fixed.

--

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

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Clive Huggan]

And for more information on formatting for minimum maintenance as John
describes, see appendix A to "Bend Word to Your Will", available as a free
download from the Word MVPs' website
(http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/Bend/BendWord.htm).

Cheers,
Clive Huggan
============