word version formatting

[Guest]

Hi,

If i have several documents that are being sent out to different recipient
and I would like to keep the formatting consistent (font, alignment, margins,
etc) regardless of what version of word they have would it be possible. The
recipients would need to be able to customize once they receive the document
but initially it must all have the same format if sent as a word 2003
document and opened and saved with word 95-2000. Can someone help?

 

[Jezebel]

It depends on how rigorous you want to be. Word does it's best to achieve
this consistency anyway, but there are several issues that can't be
resolved --

1. There are some formatting features supporting in later versions of Word,
that earlier version can't display. So if you want to accommodate Word 95,
you need to disable features introduced subsequently: Tools > Options > Save
'Disable features introduced after ...'

2. Fonts: if the recipients don't have the fonts used in the document, you
have a problem. You can try embedding them; but this doesn't always work.
Simpler is to stick to the mainstream fonts that have been with Windows
since W95: Arial, Times, etc.

3. The appearance of the document on any given machine is determined, in
part, by that machine's active printer: this has an effect on margins,
possibly fonts, and some other features. Rarely makes a difference any more,
but if you have users with Word 95, they may have correspondingly old
hardware.


In truth, you might be better off simply ignoring the problem. For most
users there's nothing you need to do anyway.

 

[Guest]

Thank you very much for the information.

It depends on how rigorous you want to be. Word does it's best to achieve
this consistency anyway, but there are several issues that can't be
resolved --

1. There are some formatting features supporting in later versions of Word,
that earlier version can't display. So if you want to accommodate Word 95,
you need to disable features introduced subsequently: Tools > Options > Save
'Disable features introduced after ...'

2. Fonts: if the recipients don't have the fonts used in the document, you
have a problem. You can try embedding them; but this doesn't always work.
Simpler is to stick to the mainstream fonts that have been with Windows
since W95: Arial, Times, etc.

3. The appearance of the document on any given machine is determined, in
part, by that machine's active printer: this has an effect on margins,
possibly fonts, and some other features. Rarely makes a difference any more,
but if you have users with Word 95, they may have correspondingly old
hardware.


In truth, you might be better off simply ignoring the problem. For most
users there's nothing you need to do anyway.