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http://www.macnn.com/articles/03/02/10/reader.report:/

Reader report: Office X/XP incompatibilities

updated 06:05 pm EST, Mon February 10, 2003

 
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MacNN reader "Dave" describes what he feels is a "serious compatibility problem" between Office X for Mac OS X and the Office 97 to XP for Windows.

"Unfortunately, Office docs created or modified in the Mac OS X environment
aren't completely compatible with PC variations of Office from Office 97 to
XP.

We found this out about a week ago when my team was working on a business presentation. We have a big Excel financial spreadsheet. In that sheet we have a chart of some of the values in the sheet. If you are using Mac Office X and you copy and paste the chart into a PowerPoint presentation as a ?picture? and then copy the powerpoint drawing into a word doc it looks fine and prints fine on the Mac. Send the Word doc to a PC and you get a big red X where the object was. We had to scramble at the last minute before a presentation to redo the drawings and charts on the PC? so we could make our presentation!


Even worse if you try to paste the PowerPoint objects into the Word doc in normal Microsoft Office object format, the paste is incorrectly scaled and fonts misrepresented. Microsoft has a number of ?patches? out for Office X,
none of which address any of this.


I believe that the cut-paste issue has to do with Apple's subtle move to PDFs and TIFFs as interchange documents on the clipboard, but am not sure.


by MacNN Staff

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  1. MacNN.com Reader

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Jul 2001

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    02/10, 06:31pm | report spam | Reply |

    Agree... partially.

    I'm the only Mac user in a LARGE Windows-based organization, and exchange Office files daily. Most generic files transfer back and forth with no problem, but I have noticed that heavily formatted docs including cross-program pasted images do create a problem.

    The file format might be the same, but its interpretation on Office X is different than on the PC. I am now forced to view all "important" Word files and PowerPoint presentations in Office XP under VPC6 before I send them out.

    Mark

  1. MacNN.com Reader

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    02/10, 06:40pm | report spam | Reply |

    Problem predates OSX

    I have moved documents between PC versions of Office and Office 2001 for Mac.

    The big red X is a familiar item--very typical with graphical items like pasted tables, equations, other objects. Typically I get the red X when I open a PC-created Office document on my Mac.

    The reverse subtle incompatibilities involve fonts that look funny in Powerpoint Tables. The typical sequence is:

    a)I create an Excel-type table within Microsoft Powerpoint 2001 for Mac
    b)The Powerpoint for Mac document looks perfect
    c)I send the presentation to a Windows PC as an attachment, or I copy it onto a floppy and open from the floppy
    d)When the same presentation is opened within Powerpoint on a PC (and this can be an older, non-XP version of Powerpoing), the presentation looks entirely fine except for the tables. The lettering of the font within the tables is irregular with poorly-constructed letters.
    e)If, with the PC, I open the table, then I can correct bad lettering by selecting the text within the Powerpoint table, and reassigning the font "Arial" or whatever. Then it looks fine.

    The red X is the most annoying aspect, however, and typically occurs with using my Mac to open an Office document created on a PC. This problem predates using OS X (it occurs both on my OSX machine and in OS8.6) and it predates Windows XP, and it does not require Office X.

  1. MacNN.com Reader

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    02/10, 06:52pm | report spam | Reply |

    Of course

    Who looks like the idiots when this happens? That's right...the Mac users. It is not our fault the dodo heads cannot write or copy a decent piece of software.

  1. MacNN.com Reader

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    02/10, 07:02pm | report spam | Reply |

    a work around

    I have this problem also and I solve it like this:

    usually this happens only with Excel graphics pasted into Powerpoint. Usually - only if there are multiple sheets and graphics on the Excel sheet. If I paste a single graphic from a sheet (and there are no other graphics on the worksheet) - the problem seems to disappear.
    Actually the problem is known to M$ - since I've read this hint on a M$ page - and confirmed that the workaround did function.

  1. MacNN.com Reader

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    02/10, 07:23pm | report spam | Reply |

    Objects in Office docs

    I've seen a lot of problems in MS-Office where it can be difficult to verify/determine
    whether imported objects (graphics) are being embedded into the file or whether they're
    embedded by reference (i.e. they might remain in the document as externally referenced
    files). What I want to have as an easy feature is -- be able to check that (i.e.
    whether the object is internal to the doc or external) for any object, as part of its
    property attributes (in the GUI when you select any embedded object). Beyond that,
    I wish that it was easy to convert/change this for each referenced graphic, after the fact.

    I mention this because I've had difficulties in passing MS-Office documents between systems,
    even without crossing between platform types (Windoze, Mac, etc.) I didn't provide specific
    details but I wonder whether this question is relevant to any of you.

    The other thing that bothered me was that in many or all MS-Office versions, when the app
    can't open an included/embedded file (when you tell it to open the main document), Office did
    not put up an alert dialog to tell me (a) that it couldn't access a required file; and (b)
    exactly from where/how it was trying to get the file. (Of course, when I used to use
    FrameMaker for everything, the information was very clear ...) Thanks; Larry.

  1. MacNN.com Reader

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    02/10, 07:24pm | report spam | Reply |

    Believe it

    This is just another one of MS's attempts to embarrass Mac users. You know the routine: create software which is highly visible, and that Mac users would love to have on their machines so they can say "I can do it on my Mac" to doubting PCers. When Mac users really want to show their stuff... they'll look like dodo heads. "See? If you only had a Mac" the PCers say. It's the Trojan Horse of the Microsoft/Apple battle.

  1. MacNN.com Reader

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

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    02/10, 07:27pm | report spam | Reply |

    and

    Perhaps it always imports/embeds by copying/converting;
    but at least when you import HTML into an Office document,
    it leaves external file references as-is. Anyway, I
    haven't found it to operate quite clearly enough.

  1. MacNN.com Reader

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    02/10, 07:30pm | report spam | Reply |

    Fix

    To solve the red X problem I've been able to double click the red X and then the actual picture appears. I've had this problem going from mac to windows.

    There are many other more advanced features that don't work between the two platforms or different versions of the windows 97-XP.

  1. MacNN.com Reader

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    02/10, 07:36pm | report spam | Reply |

    Office XP isn't even

    compatible with Office 2000, let alone Office v.X for Mac.

    Try sending a password-protected read only file written in Office XP to any other version of Office. It won't open. Oftentimes, it won't even act smart enough to recognize it's a password-encrypted file and prompt for a password.

    Quite simply, recent versions of Microsoft's Office suite are junk and simply can't be relied upon for document sharing.

  1. MacNN.com Reader

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    Joined: Jul 2001

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    02/10, 07:44pm | report spam | Reply |

    Mac vs. XP vs. 2000

    QuickTime is at fault, some of the time.

    When you move graphics through the clipboard on a Mac (like copying a chart/image/clip-art between MS apps or into an MS Office document, it compresses the image using a QuickTime compressor.

    For the most part, many PC's don't have the decompressor loaded, so it shows up as a red-x.

    In some cases a screen version will appear, and it won't print!

    I use AppleWorks to paste "the graphic" into a painting document, and then save it as a JPEG file.

    I PDF all of my output, solves the problem.

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