Good Resource for Converting Word 2008 Mac docs to Word 2007 PC?

[Jethro]

Hi, I've been searching over in the Mac forums, around here, and elsewhere on
the web and can't seem to find any comprehensive resources to help see the
differences between Word 2008 & 2007, and how things will port over
effectively. Any docs and good sites would be greatly appreciated.

We are designing some fairly standard overview documents for a school in
Word 2008 on Mac. Some of the new Publishing View features are very helpful
to setting this up nicely (we would usually prefer an actual page layout
program). But these will eventually need to be updated and edited by our
client using Word 2007 on a PC.

I had read a couple posts suggesting that Word 2008 & 2007 'should' be
pretty compatible.

BUT, I did some preliminary setup of a document in Word 2008, then opened it
in a trial version we have of Word 2007 on our PC and I can't find some of
the basic features:
- Where are the master pages?
- How do I view my guides that I had setup to define column widths and other
layout alignments?
- Why aren't the text frames appearing to link properly (it almost looks
like it split the text into the two frames)?
Etc.

If anyone knows of any good resources that describe the differences, it
might be VERY helpful. I tried searching the help file for 'Master Pages' and
got all sorts of completely unrelated topics...

THANKS!!!

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

Are you _sure_ you're talking about Microsoft Word 2008 for Mac?

Those all sound like features of a DTP program like InDesign,
QuarkExpress, or FrameMaker.

Surely the MacWord folks haven't thrown over the entire Word
architecture and gone to Master Pages (Word doesn't do "pages") and
guides.

 

[Kenny]

Interesting. I had posted this question on the Microsoft forum, but
just happened to be browsing this group and see my question answered.
No replies on the actual forum post. Guess I don't know how this group
works...

And yes, those features are at least 'somewhat' similar to a DTP
program, though certainly not as fully implemented. It appears that
this new 'Publishing Layout' view is only available in Word 2008 for
Mac, and NOT for Word 2007 PC. I was under the assumption that they
were trying to keep these programs a bit more tightly integrated. I
don't know WHY I would assume Microsoft would actually do something
that might make designer's lives easier - that's a bit against
everything they appear to do by default.

So now I may have to forget about my temporary glimmer of hope that we
may actually be able to finagle Word to do some light DTP duties when
we have to. If the client is not going to have those abilities anyway,
what's the point (if they didn't need the ability to edit these, we
would definitely be using a real DTP program).

I would still love to find a good resource outlining the differences
and some possible workarounds for getting Word 2008 to play a little
nicer with Word 2007. Not sure if I need to just pretend the nice
little Publishing Layout view doesn't exist, or if there are more
extensive things I need to watch for.

And then there is the ever puzzling and controversial discussion as to
what types of vector graphics can be imported and play nicely in
Word..