Re: [WinMac] cross-platform and MS Word

Leonard Rosenthol(leonardr[at]lazerware.com)
Sat, 18 Sep 1999 22:13:33 -0500

At 2:44 PM -0500 9/18/99, KR wrote:
>Many of my students have Windows computers at home or in their
>dorms... I've always told my young people that it really makes
>little difference in word processing if they have a pc or a Mac as
>far as document compatibility is concerned because MSWord will open
>documents created on either the Windows or the Mac platform -- and
>I've told the young people that if they have a pc rather than a Mac
>they can use the pc formatted disk in the Mac... and save to the pc
>formatted disk from either Microsoft Word 5.1 or Microsoft Word98.
>...and until this week, I experienced nothing that made me doubt
>what I've been preaching.

        You are correct, that everything you are doing is fine and
there is no reason to think otherwise....ASSUMING...

        that the students are also using a version of MSWord on Windows.

>However, this week four of my students -- one in one section and
>three in another section of the course, each student working at a
>different computer have experienced the same problem -- after saving
>their word document to a pc disk - the document refused to open --
>when we attempt to open the document in Microsoft Word 5.1, we
>either get an error message that says "not enough memory"... or
>Word 5.1 just grinds way until we have to force quit. If we try to
>open the document in Word98, the error message "this is not a word
>document" appears...

        What programs are the students using to create/edit the
documents? Is it possible they are using something other than Word?
Or perhaps they are using Word 2000, which may use a different
format? Or perhaps they put embedded PC-centric information (like
say an OLE-embedded graphic) into the document or...

        In other words, I think you need to get more info from your
students about these documents and how they were created.

Leonard

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