Walter S. Mossberg answers his readers questions on a regular basis. One of Mossberg’s answers caught our eye and might be useful for any potential switchers from Windows to Mac:
Q: I am thinking of switching from my Windows notebook to an Apple PowerBook. My question is whether my years of Word, PowerPoint and PDF files really will work seamlessly on the Mac. Apple says they will, but I wonder if you have any experience in this matter.
A: In my experience, your Word and PowerPoint files (as well as Excel files) will work fine on a Mac, if you buy the Macintosh version of Microsoft Office. The Mac version uses the exact same file formats as the Windows version, and it can read files created in the Windows version without requiring any conversion or translation. Files you create in the Mac version can be read by the Windows version just as well.
Some complex Word and PowerPoint files don’t carry over perfectly. Depending on how the file was created, graphics may not be aligned correctly and some fonts may not be the same. But, in my experience, these issues are rare for typical documents created most of the time by most users.
As for Adobe’s PDF files, they are truly cross-platform. There are Mac versions of Adobe’s free Reader program and its full Acrobat program, for creating and handling PDF files, and they are essentially identical to the Windows versions. But you don’t even need Adobe software to handle PDF files on a Mac. Out of the box, every Mac can read — and even create — PDF files, using built-in software provided by Apple.
I switch between Windows PCs and Macs all day, every day, and find these file-compatibility problems to be nonexistent. Sometimes, I start a column on a Windows PC using Word for Windows, then email the partial draft to myself, and open it on a Mac and finish it in Word for the Mac. It’s just no problem. I get Word, PowerPoint, PDF and Excel files as email attachments all the time, and they open equally well on PCs and Macs.
By the way, in addition to Microsoft Office files, and Adobe PDF files, many other common file types carry over perfectly from the Windows platform to the Mac, and vice versa. These include JPG picture files, MP3 music files, and HTML files created for the Web. None need conversion or translation.
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Switching from Windows to Mac? Save money by asking to ‘crossgrade’ your software – April 12, 2005
Magic word: “both”, as in files work on “both” Win/Mac seamlessly – no sweat. My experience too.
First post. He he.
Mossberg does it again!
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Good thing Apple has supply caught up for all of their products.
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My only question is about Word documents with macros. Earlier versions of Word for Mac weren’t entirely compatible with documents from Windows Word versions prior to I think Office 2000. Basically, the macro’s didn’t work.
I realise that’s a while ago, but many places are still using older versions, or may have older documents kicking around.
I didn’t do any full analysis on the problem, but I think it was due to a different macro language being used – the older Word versions not being VB based perhaps??
Anyone know if this is still an issue?
I had to explain this phenomenon to a computer user yesterday. This same person thought that digital cameras work differently on Macs and PCs, basically assuming that you’d have to get a camera that is made to work on a Mac.
We just moved to a new office a couple of weeks ago and added workstations. My boss also has gotten into the having two monitors things. I couldn’t handle being stuck with another windows box, so got a G5 with two 19″ monitors–pretty cool.
One major file annoyance, however, is that the G5 craps ._ files all over the shared directories on the windows machines. Is there a way to turn this the hell off? Unfortunately secretaries have no idea what these ._ files are, have to use files I create, and are trying to open the ._ files. Wouldn’t be quite so annoying if OS X made files like ._X1123a1 or some meaningless crap, but instead they (and I know it makes sense that they do) have the same name as the main file with ._ at the beginning. So when the windows uses go looking for a file, they see the file with the name they are looking for, trying opening it, and of course it doesn’t work because it is the meta file.
Is there a way around this problem other than going up to every secretary in the office (and every new one we hire) and telling them, “Oh, ummm…I use a Mac and it craps files all over the network you should try to pretend don’t exist.”
I fortunately don’t have quite as big a problem as OpJ, because I don’t have to use the office network much, but when I do need to copy over some files I always try to get rid of the “._” files by using Terminal. You navigate to the network directory in question (you can just type “cd ” and then drop the icon for the disk or folder into Terminal after it on that line of text, then press return) and then run the command “rm ._*” which will kill every file beginning with “._” Not very elegant, but it works. I do wish there were a way to turn this off, though.
Better to convert all finished Office documents to PDF, if you can; then there’s no problems with compatibility between programs.
Apple M$ Word/PowerPoint/Excel conversion problems with Window versions are in the same league as the Multiple Windows OS versions — 98′, 2000, ME, and XP.
Try moving between these OS’s with the mentioned documents and see how well they work. Let’s focus on the that problem first before we bag on the Apple/Window problems…
Magic word is “Police” as in M$ can’t even police their own software goons to create a seemless environment between their own OS versions.
OpJ: wouldn’t it be better to raise your technical issues in Apple’s support forums or somewhere like macosxhints.com, rather than on a news site? You sound like the guys who call Click and Clack before they take their car to a mechanic…
No, perfy, I raise it here because I already searched osxhints and google–asshole–and found nothing other than suggestions that the files be manually deleted. (Although one thread was a guy with an OpenBSD server so at least he could have cron do a scheduled deleted.)
It seemed apropos to raise the issue when Mossberg (and dittohead contributors here) are carrying out about how there’s no OS X/Windows files problems.
So you, perfy, seem like someone who’d rather bitch instead of admitting that you don’t know anything useful.
everything is compatible until you bring up wmv 10… and that is microsoft’s fault
google search:
http://www.tcsn.net/mont/index2.html
Program called kopymac on this page…..
try not to flame people, you sound like fools
and here is the info on the site you said you searched already
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050227210451902
I’m with binky on this, except on the Mac side. Office X won’t open Excel files I’ve created in Office 98! MS isn’t even compatible with itself.
OpJ – have you taken a look at a program called “Chronosync”? It might help… though clearly that’s not what it’s strength is. And it doesn’t require OpenBSD. Just a thought…
(And it just occurred to me what the “Op” and the “J” stands for…you just shortened your handle, you sly curmudgeon, you…)
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I enjoy reading Mossberg’s column because he clearly, simply and concisely explains to a mainstream (yes, Windows-using and Mac-enlightened) computer user how much better the Mac OS is. I try to do that whenever I try to convert this type of user. I wish more computer shoppers would read this column. Hell, I wish Apple would clearly, simply and concisely advertise the Mac OS and accompanying Apple hardware. I’m sick and tired of all those pro-Windows print and TV ads from M$, Intel, Dell, etc.
Opj – I believe that ._ thing is a resource fork thingy that a MS network doesn’t recognize. I know we totally took care of that by getting DAVE and installing it. At the Thursby.com site they explain it quite clearly. Yes it is annoying and I’m sure there are other ways around it but it makes our freak’n stupid PC network guys happy. Install DAVE and it will go away and communicate perfectly with you MS network.
ah, but what about virus files? Do they open on Macs too?
I had a guy wonder if the keyboards were different on mac vs. windows pc.
I asked how.
He said the only keys that worked on his windows pc were:
s-u-c-k-z r-e-a-l b-d.
neilt-thanks…if I was copying a few files to windows disks, instead of saving files directly to windows directories, that program might actually be useful. Since I’m not, it isn’t. (Same with the chronosync program–thought thanks for the link, ceas–looks very useful for other purposes)And I already said I’d found suggestions on manually deleting the files, such as the script you linked to. Nice try…
igads–so if I buy another program, that is only $10 less than buying Tiger itself, which I’ve already bought and installed, and which doesn’t work with Tiger, my problems are solved?
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What OS X needs is a setting in one of the system preference panels that turns off the saving of a separate meta file on non-HFS volumes.
OpJ — you’re such a smartass, I can’t imagine why no one at your office has helped you out.
i also think copying a file to a fat/ntfs/.. partition should make sure those annoying ._* files aren’t copied along…
An option in the cooked in archiving handler to not add those in a __MACOSX folder would be cool too
OpJ
Get the secretary’s etc. to turn off seeing hidden files. They don’t need to see them.
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Cocktail also has a little button that cleans up these sort of things.
To Macdaily: I’ve tried to contact you via email and your site keeps rejecting the message stating that my email is invalid. So, what am I doing wrong, or do you not accept email outside the U.S.?
Actaully, thats not 100% true. Quark files are strange. If you create a file in quark on windows and x-fer it over to a Mac, it works..If you create a QXP file on a Mac, then put it on windows, it doesnt work..Weird..Some JPegs do the same thing, AI files, and even Office files, oh yeah and dont forget EXE’s..Mwhahahaah!