Word Document Problems from Office:mac 2004 Standard Edition

[Guest]

We only have one Office: MAC 2004 user in our Organization. He is reporting
two problems that I have not been able to find answers to in the Knowledge
Base.
1. Another organization cannot open Word files that he sends to them. The
problem seems to do with the fact that recipient has Word 2000 Premium. When
they attempt to open the file, Word says "configuring Office 2000 Premium".
I suggested having them save the attachment, open Word (without opening the
document) and THEN open the document. They tried this, but no go either.
2. A different recipient is getting a message "choose the encoding to use
for loading this file" when trying to open a document sent by the Office:MAC
2004 user.
Any suggestions? I'm going to open an incident with Microsoft but waiting
for PID since user is not in today.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Run the information below by your user. If that doesn't work, try reposting
on the Mac-specific newsgroup:
Google/Entourage gateway to newsgroups for MacWord, MacExcel, and other MS
programs for the Mac:
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/community/community.aspx?pid=newsgroups>

Re sending attachments on the Mac:

There's no difference in the Word file format (since Word 97), although if
the file does not have the .doc extension, you may need to add it manually
or use File | Open from within Word.

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. Or if it brings up a prompt about ³encoding²
and opens with a bunch of squares.

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 user, asking them to change their
encoding. The help on any Mac email program will tell them how.

 

[Guest]

In addition to Daiya's excellent detail, if the sender is using Apple's Mail
email client, he should need only check the box in the Attach File dialog for
'Windows Friendly Attachments'.

Regards |:>)

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the advice. He is using Outlook for the mac. We'll be checking
to see what encoding options are available for it.
Jody

 

[Guest]

Thanks so much Daiya - we'll follow up and let you know what happens.