Re: Follow-up to - Document Format changes in Word 2004
From: Clive Huggan (REMOVETHISoffice_at_ANDTHISstrategists.com.au)
Date: 11/15/04
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Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 17:12:52 +1100
Tim,
Never feel reluctant to give a dissertation -- it helps to increase the
likelihood of a highly focused answer!
The situation you describe is very like my own, including the PCs + Macs
situation. And although most of my documents are subsequently laid out in
Quark XPress, many are printed from Word or viewed straight from Word in PDF
format.
I skipped Word X, because I wasn't satisfied with its implementation, so I
don't have practical experience of the phenomenon you mention -- nor can I
test documents in the two versions. However, I think I know the cause: to
allow Office 2004 to support Unicode fonts, which had been at the top of the
wish list from users, Microsoft had to switch from using QuickDraw to draw
the screen to Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging (ATSUI). This is a
noticeably different (and better) display.
As to the rest, having got to the limit of my knowledge on X/2004 display
I'll recommend you wait till John McGhie comes by (he's particularly busy
right now so it might be a day or two) or one of the other MVPs.
The short-term solution would seem to me to be to stick to Word X, but
someone else may well have something (e.g. a particular setting adjustment)
that I haven't heard of.
Ultimately, of course, you can't stick to Word X forever. In the longer
term, getting rid of hard page/column breaks and any other formatting that
is influenced by pagination would be advantageous (in my own work I create
PDFs to show the other party what the doc would look like, leaving Word to
paginate as it feels like in the electronic version, in which headings --
applied by styles -- and tables, lead-ins to bulleted lists etc
automatically flow to the next page because of their formatting rather than
by hard page breaks and the like). Even the most demanding documents, such
as those with photos in, require very little adjustment when formatted for
minimum maintenance. Some ideas along thee lines are in "Bend Word to Your
Will" -- Appendix A: The main "minimum maintenance" features of my
documents.
All this aside, referring to the previous Mac <-> PC problem, I'm a little
surprised that the PC and Mac versions were 4 lines different per page, even
if the document were in two columns. I suspect the fonts are different,
albeit with similar/identical names. I would consider using a macro to unify
them (there's one in "Bend Word to Your Will" -- do a Find command for
"NormalToArial" and you'll see what I mean.
Cheers,
Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is at least 5 hours different from the US and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
============================================================
On 15/11/04 9:07 AM, in article
fd4ea56f.0411141407.65172351@posting.google.com, "TimH" <timh@datatek.net>
wrote:
> Clive,
>
> Thanks for the response. I realize that what you indicated is the case
> in MS Word as it is in a few other apps as well. I also realize I was
> a little general in my question. I was hoping the general nature of my
> question would get a response from someone like yourself that may have
> some insight into the problem without me posting a huge dissertation
> on what the problems are that are being experienced. Now, if you will
> indulge me, I will elaborate. Again, thanks for your response. I think
> you may have the answer to my problem.
>
> My client has 8 different people who will either create or edit/modify
> MS Word documents. These people will use any one of three Wintel
> laptop computers with various OS versions and various Word versions or
> 8 different Mac laptops that are all configured identically. Over the
> many years this client has used every version of MS Word from the
> first available on both the Mac and the PC. The print drivers setup on
> the Macs are all the same. The fonts on the Mac are all the same. We
> first discovered this problem about four years ago when a document
> created on a Win 2000 laptop with Office 2000 would look different in
> that environment from when it was sent to a Mac and opened in OS 9 and
> Word 98. The problem was even more confusing as the lines of text
> would break at different points so the first line seen in column two
> on page one would change to a line four or five lines before or after,
> depending on if the document was going Mac to PC or PC to Mac. The
> client lived with the problem through this period but now that Word
> 2004 is here there is a twist to the problem.
>
> Now working on just one Apple laptop running Panther 10.3.4 with print
> drivers installed for a Xerox 8400DP, HP OfficeJet 7110, HP4V and an
> Epson 1520 he can open a word document created with Office v.X and the
> document paginates correctly. The next thing we did was to install
> Office 2004 on this same computer. We left Office v.X in place. We
> open the same document in Word 2004 and the pagination changes. The
> line of text at the top of column two on page one is not the same as
> it was in word v.X. If we don't save the document, quit word 2004 and
> open the document in Word v.X again, the document is fine. The client
> is now looking at eliminating Office 2004 and going back to Office v.X
> because he is afraid that the thousands of documents created in his
> speaking and consulting business will all reformat if he has to
> re-open or re-print any of them for any reason.
>
> Office 2004 has several options that can be set to maintain format
> compatibility from previous version of Office and Office 2004.
> Unfortunately, we have not been able to determine the combination of
> settings to accomplish this. Using the preset selection suggested by
> Word 2004 does not work.
>
> So to summarize, the problem with format changes between the Mac and
> PC computers have been long standing and have been lived with through
> having a set of procedures that all the individuals follow to minimize
> the problem. If we can get a concrete solution to the cross platform
> format issue that would be the best situation. The new and much more
> critical problem is the format change to documents opened on the same
> computer with the only change being opening the document in Office
> 2004 instead of Office v.X.
>
> As you can see from this more detailed description, the solution you
> had indicated in your earlier post although correct, sould not apply
> to the current problem as the version of Office is the only
> difference.
>
> If you have any other suggestions I would be very happy to hear them.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tim
>
>
> Clive Huggan <REMOVETHISoffice@ANDTHISstrategists.com.au> wrote in message
> news:<BDBD01FE.B071%REMOVETHISoffice@ANDTHISstrategists.com.au>...
>> Hello Tim,
>>
>> The underlying reason for what you see is that Word is not a page-based
>> application -- in fact Word has no concept of pages as such. Any given text
>> stays on a given page only if the printer driver does not change and the
>> fonts installed in the computers on which the text is viewed are the same.
>> And "same" means not just having the same name -- they have to be made by
>> the same manufacturer.
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>>
>>
>>
>> On 14/11/04 11:12 AM, in article
>> fd4ea56f.0411131612.1c67cf14@posting.google.com, "TimH" <timh@datatek.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I have a client with thousands of MS Word Documents created in various
>>> versions of Word, both Mac and PC over the last several years. When a
>>> document gets opened in Word 2004 the line spacing and other
>>> characteristics are differrent. As a result the document does not look
>>> right. This is most noticable in documents that are multiple columns.
>>> Anyone see this and have a solution?
>>>
>>> Thanks for any help.
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