word formating windows vs mac

[flagtrax]

I have a friend whom I occasionally colaborate with who is using a mac with word. Forgive my ignorance I'm a pc user. In the documents we pass back and forth I/we find that the text alignment seems to be opposite. If I left align a paragraph to her its right aligned and vice versa. Is this typical? How would you approach colaboration in this cercumstance?Thanks

 

[Rob Schneider]

I have a friend whom I occasionally colaborate with who is using a mac with word. Forgive my ignorance I'm a pc user. In the documents we pass back and forth I/we find that the text alignment seems to be opposite. If I left align a paragraph to her its right aligned and vice versa. Is this typical? How would you approach colaboration in this cercumstance?Thanks

By chance are you using a different definition for the style of those
paragraphs? While the same bit of text may be attached to the same
stylename, the style is defined differently?

 

[flagtrax]

We're not using any styles. Anything typed to a blank document, and aligned seems to produce the oposite alignment on the other machine. If she aligns right when I open it in word for windows it aligns left. When I then align it right and send it back to her she says the alignment is totally a mess (what that means I'm not sure other than there are changes to the overall alignment in addition to left or right).

 

[CyberTaz]

It's rather difficult to pin this down without knowing the exact update
level of Office on both the Mac & the PC as well as the file format the
files are saved in. It might also be helpful to know how the files are being
exchanged and any clarification of exactly what "totally a mess" means
wouldn't hurt

 

[Snit]

(e-mail address removed) stated in post (e-mail address removed)9absDaxw

We're not using any styles. Anything typed to a blank document, and aligned
seems to produce the oposite alignment on the other machine. If she aligns
right when I open it in word for windows it aligns left. When I then align it
right and send it back to her she says the alignment is totally a mess (what
that means I'm not sure other than there are changes to the overall alignment
in addition to left or right).

I have both Office 2007 and Office 2008. If you can email me one of these
files - cleaned of any personal data - I will take a look. Just seems odd.

 

[John McGhie]

The first place I would look is to ensure that one of you is not using a
Right-to-Left language.

That would be "You", since Mac Word can't do Right-to-Left justification yet


As Rob suggested, the next place to look is in the definition of your
styles. You can't "not" use styles in Word, ALL formatting is generated by
styles in modern versions of Word.

Unless you change it, all paragraphs are formatted with the Normal style.

Just be careful you are not talking at cross-purposes with her... There are
two properties involved: the "Alignment" and the "Justification".

If she is not used to looking at justified text, and you send her text that
is left aligned and fully-justified, it will look very strange to her.

I would suggest that you work "Left justified, ragged right". In other
words, format your style to be "Left" and not "Justified".

Hope this helps

We're not using any styles. Anything typed to a blank document, and aligned
seems to produce the oposite alignment on the other machine. If she aligns
right when I open it in word for windows it aligns left. When I then align it
right and send it back to her she says the alignment is totally a mess (what
that means I'm not sure other than there are changes to the overall alignment
in addition to left or right).

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[flagtrax]

Thank you all but it seems we are overcomplicating this. Here again are a few fundemental facts.
1. We are both using good ol'e USA english.
2. I am using office 2007, I'm not sure what version she is using, and I'm totally ignorant to the Mac world.
3. She wrote her document with right alignment the sent it to me via email attachment.
4. I open it and the alignment is to the left, paragraph indents were out of place and some other wierd things.
5. When I say we(she) is using no style what I'm saying is that the default plain blank document is being used from the beginning. Text is being aligned; justification has not been used.
6. I have 5 machines and all have different versions of office. Its the same no matter what version I use, of course saving down to the previous version.
7. When she takes her file to the university she is attending, the same thing happens when the file is opened in the word 2007 for windows on the unversity computers.

There is nothing complex about these documents. Just plain text with no bells and whistles; just character, paragraph and page formatting.

 

[Snit]

(e-mail address removed) stated in post (e-mail address removed)9absDaxw

Thank you all but it seems we are overcomplicating this. Here again are a few
fundemental facts.
1. We are both using good ol'e USA english.
2. I am using office 2007, I'm not sure what version she is using, and I'm
totally ignorant to the Mac world.
3. She wrote her document with right alignment the sent it to me via email
attachment.
4. I open it and the alignment is to the left, paragraph indents were out of
place and some other wierd things.
5. When I say we(she) is using no style what I'm saying is that the default
plain blank document is being used from the beginning. Text is being aligned;
justification has not been used.
6. I have 5 machines and all have different versions of office. Its the same
no matter what version I use, of course saving down to the previous version.
7. When she takes her file to the university she is attending, the same thing
happens when the file is opened in the word 2007 for windows on the unversity
computers.

There is nothing complex about these documents. Just plain text with no bells
and whistles; just character, paragraph and page formatting.

Are you able to "sanatize" a document and email it to me? I would be happy
to look at it.

 

[John McGhie]

Yeah, send one of us the document.

Yes, Word 2007 can get itself set into Right-to-Left justification, and if
you do not know where to look, it can be difficult to find.

How do you KNOW that you are using "USA English?" Seriously!! I know
that's what you are speaking, but what does the code in the document say?


More than once I have been embarrassed to discover that what I thought was
"good ol' Aussie", was in fact being spell-checked in the vernacular of a
place where they don't speak English

Cheers

(e-mail address removed) stated in post (e-mail address removed)9absDaxw


Are you able to "sanatize" a document and email it to me? I would be happy
to look at it.

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]