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From: glamdrng@pnet51.orb.mn.org (Rocky Lhotka)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Word for Windows ---> Word for Mac
Message-ID: <3778@orbit.cts.com>
Date: 10 Jan 91 04:25:02 GMT
Sender: root@orbit.cts.com
Organization: People-Net [pnet51], Minneapolis, MN.
Lines: 43

rsargent@alias.UUCP (Richard Sargent) writes:
>In article <1991Jan6.025625.18789@dmntor.UUCP> djm@dmntor.UUCP (Dave McKellar @ Digital Media Networks) writes:
>>I saved a Word for Windows file "normal" style and then tried
>>to open it with Word for the Mac.  Word for Mac opened it BUT
>>didn't GET that it was a document - ie there were tons of
>>funny characters where formatting should have been.
>>
>>So what's the trick?  It must be possible to transfer documents
>>between the two programs ... how ?
>>
>
>I believe that somewhere, buried in the MS Word for Windows
>documentation, there is a statement to the effect that you
>can only exchange files between a Mac and Windows if you put
>it in RTF format first (RTF = Rich Text Format). See "Save As...".
>
>Good luck.


We recently completed converting around 3000 documents from the Mac to W4W
with some success.  We found that the best approach was to use RTF format in
between the two machines (save RTF on the Mac and convert from it on the PC). 
There is a Mac conversion option under W4W, but it made more errors than
RTF...

Yes, I said *more* errors.  We had LOTS of problems with the conversion - in
particular fonts don't always come across, nor do page margins and especially
special characters (SYMBOL font or ALT-xxx characters).

We created a lengthy and complex macro to do many of the repairs on our
documents but it still took us several man-weeks to manually go through and
repair each docuemnt...

I should point out that our documents used headers and also had lots of symbol
font characters as well as having many different ruler settings for various
paragraphs...

Formulas and tables also get lost on the way by the way...
Glamdring, Sword of Mithradir

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