Fun with my New Mac and File Conversion

Posted on April 6, 2007
Filed Under Miscellany |

apple keyUpdate: Yep - it was the Word 2007 problem. On the Mac, I saved the
file as a normal Word XP doc and as a normal Open Office doc (and
emailed the text to myself as well) - all worked perfectly!

I’m another one of those pesky new mac owners… and I’ve been experimenting with something on and off today. I have a file that I typed this morning in NeoOffice. I need to get it onto my PC at work. Simple, eh? Not so fast!

This morning, I saved the file as a Word 2007 document (this was my mistake, I think), not thinking that “dang, I don’t HAVE Word 2007 yet” - but oh well. I figured I could open it anyway.

WRONG.

Office 2003 on a PC didn’t like the file - it asked me to download some add-on thing from Microsoft so I could open Word 2007 files. But the add-on (FileFormatConverters) didn’t like my PC, and wouldn’t install. OK, I thought - no problem. I’ll just open up my copy of Open Office at work, and I’ll be done.

WRONG.

After installing an Open Office update, my file still didn’t open. So… I remembered Zamzar. I thought “Zamzar will convert this file - Zamzar converts EVERYTHING!”

WRONG.

It apparently doesn’t like the Mac flavor of a Word 2007 docx file that was created with NeoOffice (my guess here).

Shoot.

So - I’m just going to turn on my Mac (it’s at the office with me), copy/paste the text I need into an email to myself, and - BINGO. That WILL work. (and to those thinking “Dave, why didn’t you do that in the first place?” I knew I could do it the EASY way… I wanted to see if it would work THIS way, ok?).

I’m still loving the Mac, and I don’t think it’s a Mac-PC issue. I think it’s probably more of a Word 2007 converter issue. Beats me!

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Comments

2 Responses to “Fun with my New Mac and File Conversion”

  1. Best Posts from around the Web » Fun with my New Mac and File Conversion on April 6th, 2007 2:48 pm

    [...] Original post by davidleeking [...]

  2. Meredith on April 6th, 2007 3:02 pm

    WOW! Thanks for mentioning this, since I’m sure I would have had the same thing happen to me soon. I’m trying to decide whether to stick with NeoOffice or just pony up the $$ and buy Mac Word. I really don’t like NeoOffice that much, but I’d love to never spend another dime (of my own money at least) on a Microsoft product.

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