Doc/docx

[bluewalrus]

Has anyone else found inconsistencies in the way DOCXs are displayed compared with DOCs?

I'm on a mac so I'm not sure if it's just that I don't have the right program or if it is a known problem with DOCXs.

I have Pages 08' 3.0.3, Open Office 3 3.2.0, Microsoft Word v.x Service Release 1, and TextEdit 1.5.

I've very rarley had a DOCX open the same in either of these program, and never had the same in all of them.

Thanks.

[Nile]

Anyways- the following post is going to be me talking about something I have no clue about.
I thought DOCXs were locked docs? I'm probably wrong. :) Also - I didn't know OpenOffice was available for Mac, I thought that for mac it was NeoOffice.

[Snookerman]

I thought DOCXs were locked docs? I'm probably wrong. :).doc was the ending Word files got before Office 2007 while .docx is the ending they get in Office 2007.

[Nile]

Hehe, oh. :o

[djr33]

.docx is effectively a way to update the format while retaining backward compatibility with the old system. I hate them because you can't open them in much-- I tend to use google docs to convert them to something sensible, and if you have anything special in them such as images or unusual character sets the only real approach is to save them as a pdf and start over.
I get them all the time for school related things (mostly professors who don't know better than to stay away from the format).

I'd like Microsoft to stop making odd unusable formats, but so would a lot of people and they obviously have no plans to stop.

I'm not at all surprised that docx opens oddly in the various programs and I wouldn't be surprised if subversions (or methods) within docx vary by version of Word (or at least will soon) so that might be part of it.

I've never felt that .docs in the first place opened consistently across programs, though probably less so with .docx, if it will even open at all.



Nile, NeoOffice is a version of OpenOffice designed to run natively on OSX, because open office cannot run natively-- it must run through X11, a developer's package (part of the OS if you choose to install it).
It appears that since I originally started using it, now it can run natively(?) on OSX, so NeoOffice is not that useful.
However, I haven't yet tested it and NeoOffice is great when you need to use unusual character sets-- it's the only program I've found for Mac that will actually work when I need it to with more a more advanced interface than TextEdit.