Opening a Word file on a Mac

[ummmm........]

What's the best way to do that? And by best I mean one that doesn't cost anything and preserves as much formatting as possible.

Also, I don't actually have a Mac, though I could take the Word file to the Mac if that would be easier I guess . . .

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Well, if you have Office for Macs (it has things like Word, Excel, PowerPoint - though it does have some cost requirement), then you can just transfer it to a Mac from a Windows and just open it up. If it doesn't have Office (just something like AppleWorks), I'm not quite sure. I don't think AppleWorks opens .doc files. You could try downloading OpenOffice and seeing if that'll open the .doc file - it might. I haven't tried it though.

 

[ummmm........]

Erk. The thing is I really don't know anything about the Mac or what software is on it. I just have a Word file that a friend wants to open on his Mac . . .

 

[vbraun]

You could download OpenOffice. It opens word files.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Erk. The thing is I really don't know anything about the Mac or what software is on it. I just have a Word file that a friend wants to open on his Mac . . .

Does your friend have Word on his Mac? If so...it's a pretty simple solution. Just email the file to him and let him open it.

If not, do as vbraun says and download OpenOffice, and have him open the word file in OpenOffice instead of Word.

 

[Dell19]

You could download OpenOffice. It opens word files.

It can't handle diagrams though.

 

[AlanH]

1. There's a 30 day trial of Panergy's icWord which claims to open Word documents read only.

2. If your friend has OS X 10.4 (Tiger) then the version of TextEdit that comes with that for free will open a Word document, but may not do a great job with diagrams.

3. AppleWorks 6 opens Word docs, similar reservations to TextEdit above.

4. NeoOffice is easier to install and use than OpenOffice for Macs, because you don't have to bother with XWindows. It's pretty compatible with Word docs, but again, it depends on the precise content.

5. MW Office for Mac is excellent - better than the current Windows version in some ways. It's fully compatiblwe with Word and Excel for Windows, and you can get it pretty cheap if you are a student or teacher.

PS If you want to send me the doc I can check it out. I have most of the above on my Mac, and can try Panergy's product as well if required.

 

[ummmm........]

His Mac is about seven years old, so I don't know if he has some of this "lastest and greatest" software for it. But y'all have given enough suggestions that I'm sure one of them is bound to work out. Thanks.

 

[AlanH]

If it's that old it may not run most of the above suggestions. It may well be running an OS that pre-dates OS X - the Unix-based OS. So that's the first thing to check.

The older systems won't know what to do with my suggestions 1, 2, 3 and 4. I don't know if you can still buy M$ Office for Mac OS 9, but even if you can get it, it may not recognise a modern Word document.

You could try saving the document as a PDF if yo have that technology on your Windows system. He could then read it in Acrobat.

... or you could print it, scan it and send him the scan image.

 

[ummmm........]

Yeah, the pdf was my first idea, but I thought there might be an easier way. I actually thought there was a way to save a Word file as something other than a .doc, then open it with some other program. Anyway, I'll see if any of these ideas work when I talk to him next . . .

 

[AlanH]

If it only has formatted text then you can try saving as RTF. Then if he has something that'll read RTF he may be able to see it. If it has images or tables or other complex objects then he has to have a word-compatible word processor.

... another thought - how about HTML? Word produces awful HTML, but it might just work.

 

[Dell19]

Gmail and my uni email account allow attachments to be viewed online and it does keep some of the formatting although then again you could just paste it all into an email.

I thought the whole point of RTF was that everything could handle it which is why the file size tends to be large?

 

[AlanH]

I thought the whole point of RTF was that everything could handle it which is why the file size tends to be large?

Not usually as big as the equivalent Word document.

I said "if he has something that can handle it" only because it's so long since I last ran OS 9 that I really can't remember what its built-in text editor could deal with. It's probably OK, but I wasn't going out on that limb.