Viewing a Mac Microsoft Word 10.1 doc in Windows?

[Dave R.]

Hi - a colleague has sent me a document which brings up an "encoding" prompt
when I open it. The top part of the document has a bunch of squares and
other strange characters. I can read at the bottom of the characters that
Microsoft Word 10.1 was used, and I know a Mac was used.

Is there a way to view it on a Windows XP machine? A converter maybe?

 

[garfield-n-odie]

I'm assuming you do not have any version of Microsoft Word
installed on your computer. Recent versions of MacWord files are
the same format as WinWord files, so you should be able to
download and install the Word 2003 Viewer from
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=889347, and use the viewer to
open the MacWord file. The viewer allows you to open, view, and
print Word files, but you will not be allowed to edit Word files.

 

[Dave R.]

Hi Garfield. I do have a recent version, Office 2003 actually. Maybe I am
missing some software component?

I will try the viewer anyhow, thanks.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

I'm assuming that you used File | Open while that dialog was set to Recover
Text from Any File, because I think that's what it sounds like.

There is no file format difference between Mac and win, as GnO said. No
converter or special software is necessary. If you can't double-click and
open the Mac-created doc, try manually adding a .doc to the end if it
doesn't have one.

 

[Dave R.]

Actually it does this whether I double click on it from explorer, or open
Word and then go to file>open.

Here is a picture of the file conversion box that pops up, if that can offer
any clue..

http://immunizecaadults.org/images/fileconversion.jpg

Thanks.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

If it doesn't have the .doc, try adding it. Otherwise, I haven't a clue. I
send Word documents from a Mac to Win users all the time with no problems.
You might ask your colleague to resend it.

The symptoms aren't quite right, but the problem could also be in how your
colleague sent the doc. The most common problem arises when the doc was sent
by email and the attachment encoding was not set properly. If you see
something about "application/x-macbinary" when trying to open the doc,
sounds like they encoded it for Mac computers.

A Mac email program, Entourage, has this to say in Help:

About attachment encodings
When you choose an encoding format, it is helpful to understand how
Macintosh files differ from files created on other computers. Macintosh
files include additional resource information that files created on other
types of computers do not. If you are sending a data file, such as a
Microsoft Word document or Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, such resource
information may not be necessary. However, if you are sending something more
complex, such as a program, to another Macintosh computer, you must choose
an encoding format that preserves all the data.
The AppleDouble encoding format preserves the additional resource
information, and can be read by both Macintosh and other types of computers.
AppleDouble is a good choice for your default encoding format; it works most
of the time with most computers. However, if AppleDouble fails, you can
choose a different encoding format depending on the type of computer you are
sending the attachment to:
€ To send an attachment to a Macintosh computer, use BinHex, which
preserves the Macintosh resource information and data.
€ To send an attachment to a Windows-based computer, use MIME/Base 64,
which preserves the data only.
€ To send an attachment to a UNIX computer, use UUEncode, which preserves
the data only.

Try sending this explanation to your correspondent, asking them to change
their encoding. The help on any Mac email program will tell them how.

 

[Dave R.]

Thanks very much Daiya. I sent him this and he resent it and it works.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Thanks for confirming. Now I have some new symptoms to list.