# Is there an easy way to make .doc files readable to people w/o Word, esp. Mac users? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 5, 2009, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-an-easy-way-to-make-doc-files-readable-to-people-w-o-word-esp-mac-users/502003 "2009-07-05T19:28:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2009, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-an-easy-way-to-make-doc-files-readable-to-people-w-o-word-esp-mac-users/502003/1 "2009-07-05T19:28:34Z")
I have some doc files on my website. Right now I’m using someone’s Mac to check on the site, and notice that this computer can not open those files. I looked at one of the files in Google Docs to see if that would at least show the text, and it does show the text, but with almost no formatting. Most importantly, the footnotes (the main point of their existence on my site involves the footnotes) are now endnotes instead of footnotes. (When the file is viewed in Google Docs I mean.) So my question is, is there an easy way to convert these .doc files into some format easily readable by people who don’t have Microsoft Word, where the conversion leaves in place footnote formatting, and where the conversion also leaves color coding intact? ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2009, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-an-easy-way-to-make-doc-files-readable-to-people-w-o-word-esp-mac-users/502003/2 "2009-07-05T19:33:21Z")
Try saving it in Rich Text Format (as a .RTF file) Most modern OSs that I have used have an RTF viewer of some kind. ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2009, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-an-easy-way-to-make-doc-files-readable-to-people-w-o-word-esp-mac-users/502003/3 "2009-07-05T19:34:37Z")
Why don’t you convert them to something like Open Office or Google Docs and resave them? That would still mean the Mac user would need to take some steps to read the documents (possibly requiring software installation). Is it possible to convert the document to HTML (Word has some save-as functionality, I’m pretty sure it works well for basically formatted documents). You’re already taking up online storage space for the documents, this would just be in a different form. ---
**Author:** ![rbroome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/838e76/32.png) [@rbroome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rbroome)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2009, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-an-easy-way-to-make-doc-files-readable-to-people-w-o-word-esp-mac-users/502003/4 "2009-07-05T19:40:49Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > I have some doc files on my website. Right now I’m using someone’s Mac to check on the site, and notice that this computer can not open those files. > > I looked at one of the files in Google Docs to see if that would at least show the text, and it does show the text, but with almost no formatting. Most importantly, the footnotes (the main point of their existence on my site involves the footnotes) are now endnotes instead of footnotes. (When the file is viewed in Google Docs I mean.) > > So my question is, is there an easy way to convert these .doc files into some format easily readable by people who don’t have Microsoft Word, where the conversion leaves in place footnote formatting, and where the conversion also leaves color coding intact? Perhaps this is too easy an answer, but why not print them to PDF? That way everything format related is correct. You would have a hard time editing the PDF (not impossible but harder), but if your goal is to just read them, a PDF would work. Since you specify making your documents available to people who don’t have Word, that pretty much restricts you to PDF or RTF. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2009, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-an-easy-way-to-make-doc-files-readable-to-people-w-o-word-esp-mac-users/502003/5 "2009-07-05T19:48:03Z")
> [@Khadaji](#): > > Try saving it in Rich Text Format (as a .RTF file) Most modern OSs that I have used have an RTF viewer of some kind. Yes, this may be what you want. RTF will preserve color coding and footnotes (I just checked), though I’m not sure whether every program would interpret them correctly. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2009, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-an-easy-way-to-make-doc-files-readable-to-people-w-o-word-esp-mac-users/502003/6 "2009-07-05T19:55:07Z")
If the question rephrased is, “I don’t have Microsoft Office/Word and want an easy way to read Word documents – and perhaps edit them,” then Open Office is the solution. It’s a free (though somewhat large) download which will read and write .doc files – though its “native” form at is .odt and one must remember to save in .doc (or .rtf, .txt., etc.) if sending to someone without Open Office. [Main page](http://www.openoffice.org/) for Open [Office.org](http://Office.org)’s website ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2009, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-an-easy-way-to-make-doc-files-readable-to-people-w-o-word-esp-mac-users/502003/7 "2009-07-05T19:55:22Z")
Y’know, lots of Windows users don’t have Word either… Sticking with an open standard like PDF is always a good idea. ---
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2009, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-an-easy-way-to-make-doc-files-readable-to-people-w-o-word-esp-mac-users/502003/8 "2009-07-05T20:03:49Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > I have some doc files on my website. Right now I’m using someone’s Mac to check on the site, and notice that this computer can not open those files. The _lingua franca_ of the Web for formatted documents is currently PDF, hands down. Readers exist for basically every platform. It’s not just Mac users who can’t open Word documents: neither can Linux users, many mobile phone users (a big problem outside the US, where the standard web browser is often a cell phone), folks with an older version of Windows and/or Word, and PC users who don’t use Office at all (although WordPad can read some of them). Another solution is to use Word to export those documents to HTML. If you don’t like what it does with the footnotes, you can tweak the resulting HTML ---
**Author:** ![zbuzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zbuzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zbuzz)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2009, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-an-easy-way-to-make-doc-files-readable-to-people-w-o-word-esp-mac-users/502003/9 "2009-07-05T20:09:53Z")
From 10.3 and on, TextEdit, the lightweight text reader that comes with OS X should be able to read most Word documents and keep the formatting. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2009, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-an-easy-way-to-make-doc-files-readable-to-people-w-o-word-esp-mac-users/502003/10 "2009-07-05T20:24:20Z")
> [@](#): > > Try saving it in Rich Text Format (as a .RTF file) Most modern OSs that I have used have an RTF viewer of some kind. One would think so, but a student tried turning something in to me in RTF last semester, and it didn’t work. It looks like Microsoft has invented their own format incomprehensible to everyone else that they’re calling RTF, even though it isn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2009, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-an-easy-way-to-make-doc-files-readable-to-people-w-o-word-esp-mac-users/502003/11 "2009-07-05T20:33:01Z")
Those who wish to pursue reading, editing, and creating word .docs on a Mac would be well-advised to look at [NeoOffice](http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php). Unlike OpenOffice, it’s native to the MacOS, and thus avoids the horrible kludginess of running OpenOffice on X11. ---
**Author:** ![Bag\_of\_Mostly\_Water](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bag_of_mostly_water/32/1029_2.png) [@Bag\_of\_Mostly\_Water](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bag_of_Mostly_Water)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2009, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-an-easy-way-to-make-doc-files-readable-to-people-w-o-word-esp-mac-users/502003/12 "2009-07-05T22:06:20Z")
If you don’t mind spending about $20, [icword](http://www.panergy-software.com/products/lp/we/gn_op.html) will open Microsoft Word files as well as other formats. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2009, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-an-easy-way-to-make-doc-files-readable-to-people-w-o-word-esp-mac-users/502003/13 "2009-07-05T22:43:42Z")
Thanks for the helpful replies, everyone. I’ll look into RTF and PDF. (Not at my home computer right now–does Word have a way to save directly to PDF?) In response to a couple of your comments: Yes, I know that not only Mac users don’t have Word. Read the title to the OP again, please. Also, if you have a spare minute, read the OP more carefully. 😉 (Everytime I assume no one will assume I’m an idiot, it turns out I assumed wrong, which I guess proves my idiocy…) ---
**Author:** ![Troy\_McClure\_SF](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troy_mcclure_sf/32/4150_2.png) [@Troy\_McClure\_SF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Troy_McClure_SF)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2009, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-an-easy-way-to-make-doc-files-readable-to-people-w-o-word-esp-mac-users/502003/14 "2009-07-05T23:39:51Z")
> [@Nametag](#): > > Those who wish to pursue reading, editing, and creating word .docs on a Mac would be well-advised to look at [NeoOffice](http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php). Unlike OpenOffice, it’s native to the MacOS, and thus avoids the horrible kludginess of running OpenOffice on X11. I may be misremembering, as I stick to The Google for the few office-type docs I use, but I think the latest OpenOffice did away with the X11 requirement. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2009, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-an-easy-way-to-make-doc-files-readable-to-people-w-o-word-esp-mac-users/502003/15 "2009-07-05T23:42:31Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Thanks for the helpful replies, everyone. I’ll look into RTF and PDF. (Not at my home computer right now–does Word have a way to save directly to PDF?) Don’t know about older versions of Word, but the most recent one (Office 7?) has a Save As option to “Publish as a PDF”.