You may already know that the Windows world has a new version of Microsoft Word. You may not know that it sports a new file format: docx. Word documents default to this new file type which can't be opened by older versions of Office. We have the older version system wide, PC and Mac.
I ran into the problem with a student needing to print a file at one of my schools last week. She had created the document and saved it on her jump drive at home in the most recent version of Office. (If she had known, she could have saved into the old format at home.) When she tried to open it on one of the district's PC's, she couldn't. She had already given up and was headed back to class when I caught up to her and offered to help.
I downloaded and installed the converter, which is in beta, from Microsoft to do the conversion onto my Mac. Having never used it, I had no idea how to use it, so I blithely double clicked the file. To my surprise, and the student's delight, Pages '08 opened and her document appeared just as she had formatted it. (Who needs a converter?) File>Print = Happy Student!
Who would have guessed a Mac would have saved the day?
As a postscript, the new Office for Mac, which should handle this new file format, will reportedly be out in January at Macworld. It's kind of funny that Apple supported Microsoft's new format before Microsoft did...
docXConverter 2.0 allows you (Mac or P.C. user) to easily open and use files saved in the new Word 2007 format DOCX and in the new Excel 2007 format XLSX, even if the programs installed on your computer are not capable of opening docx or xlsx files.
docXConverter reads the docx or xlsx file you want to access, converts it to RTF (Rich Text Format) or CSV (Comma separated values) that are easily read by standard computer programs and instructs one of your programs to open the converted file. All this is done seamlessly and does not get in your way. The initial set-up of docXConverter is done automatically; you can be up and running in seconds. You can also adjust the settings according to your specific configurations or needs. See: http://www.panergy-software.com/products/docxconverter/features.html
Posted by: Mickey | October 08, 2007 at 03:18 AM
Mikey- Thanks for you comment! I allowed it, even though it does a great job of telling me why I need this software. Our district actually has license for every PC to have the new version of Office. At some point, I expect we'll migrate to it, so this would then be a non-issue. Our current Mac users should get relief on this in January with the new Office for Mac.
Posted by: Herman Wood | October 25, 2007 at 08:51 AM
i am somewhat confused on what you are saying
i see that there is a program that can do the job but i want iwork to do it
however it did not work
maybe the steps i am following are incorrect but the document is a docx one and it gives me an error when opening it on pages
Posted by: julian | February 11, 2008 at 10:32 PM