I write a column online. On my old laptop I had Microsoft Word. I would write and send to the webmaster, no problem. My OS was Windows ME.
On my new laptop, I have Windows XP and Microsoft Works, not Word. The webmaster has a Mac and cannot format my documents. Is there any way to format a Works document to be Mac compatible? I’ve tried doing a copy/paste from Works to email but it still is not formatting correctly.
What options does Works have from the Save As Type dropdown? If it has an option to save in RTF format, that should retain Bold, Italic and Underlining settings.
Also, when you say “Mac compatible”, what Mac Application will be used to open it? TextEdit on the Mac will open RTF files.
It does have the RTF option so I sent the column that way and hopefully I hear back from the webmaster soon. Thank you Dooku
A more powerful solution (which will retain more of your formatting, such as footnotes, simple tables, etc) is to pick yourself up a copy of Conversions Plus, which is the PC version of MacLink Plus. Which I suppose doesn’t tell you much if you aren’t an old Mac user, but DataViz makes these converters and they are pretty damn impressive. You’d be able to open documents written in Word, WordPerfect, Lotus WordPro / AmiPro, AppleWorks / ClarisWorks, WordStar, Nisus Writer, Claris MacWrite Pro, and convert them to Microsoft Works. And vice versa. Also does spreadsheets (including Excel, Quattro Pro, Lotus 123) and graphics files (TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PICT, PCX, WPF, WMF, EPS).
Standard disclaimer: I don’t work for these folks and don’t own stock in their company or anything
No offense, but if your webmaster has a Mac & can’t handle a Works document, he probably shouldn’t be your web master or have a Mac.
Macs can work with Microsoft Windows word processor files just fine.
What levdrakon said. I’d be embarrassed to call myself a webmaster and be unable to handle pretty much any graphic format that was thrown at me from Mac, Windows, OS/2, Linux, Solaris, BSD, Amiga, AIX, Acorn, or what have you.
AHunter, what you and Lev don’t seem to understand is that Works, MS-Works, uses a piss-poor fileformat that is compatible with NOTHING. This isn’t a graphics file format, this is a text format that is non-standard… utterly non-standard.
As a workaround, you can save files from Works as .rtf files, which is readable in real software.
The proper solution here is to purchase a copy of Microsoft Word 2002. If you’re serious about writing, you need a serious word processor, not a playskool piece of junk like MS-Works.
I have had a great deal of problems copying PC word graphic objects (the ones that you can draw yourself in Word, or title graphs with etc). They do not convert at all well to a mac word 98 or 95. My solution. In a PC take the graphic object, paste into a high resolution graphics program at at 400 DPI, save as a TIFF, and read on a mac. You cannot edit it as a graphic object, but at least you have a workable picture.