The short answer is "If you format the document correctly, it will display
the same anywhere". Which is the question you asked.
Begin by using Styles for formatting. ONLY styles. Stay out of the
Format>Font and Format>Paragraph dialogs: use only styles.
Now: Forbid yourself from using manual page breaks. No page breaks at all.
If you format the document correctly, Word will put the page breaks in for
you. It will insert page breaks "anyway" if it needs them, so allow Word to
do all the page breaks, and you will find that the page breaks will happen
ion the same place on both the PC and the Mac.
Use tabs and tables to line things up. Spaces have a variable width in
modern fonts: you can never know or even guess what the width is going to
be. Never use more than once space consecutively.
Use paragraph properties to control how and where Word splits the text.
Instead of using page breaks to tell Word where you want the page break, use
paragraph properties to tell it where you DON'T.
First, apply Paragraph>Keep Lines Together to all your paragraphs. Turn
Window/Orphan off. Unless you do these, you have no control over the
position of page breaks.
Now use "Keep With Next" to hold a paragraph on the same page as the
following paragraph. That causes Word to "chuck" the text together, moving
a heading to the next page if its following paragraph won't fit beneath the
heading at the bottom of the first page.
Use the fonts that you know the other users have. Basically, use Calibri,
Cambria, Arial, or Times New Roman. The whole world has those fonts. Use
anything else, and the recipient's computer will use something else if it
doesn't have the font you want.
Don't use "Justified" text. You never really have any control over
justified text, it's hard to read, and it looks ugly. Leave that to
old-fashioned newspapers, and set your documents "Left" justified like all
the modern high-selling magazines you see.
Finally: Don't push the limits. If it won't fit, it won't fit: let it
spill to the next page. Don't do strange things to margins, spacing, fonts,
line-heights or space above or below to make things fit. Because these will
all be wrong on someone else's computer. Use 10 points space below and
"single" line height.
Do all of that, and your document will work anywhere! Whether it is in
..docx, .doc, or RTF. Use .docx if you want to email the thing anywhere,
it's a quarter the size.
Hope this helps
Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel
I went for a job interview the other day and when I looked at the Resume they
had printed out the formatting was off. The spacing between the sentences were
ok but the type that should of been on the second was half way down the second
page. I took my original PC word doc. and opened it up and the Mac and it's
the same way only it backwards most the type that should of been on the second
page most of it was on the first page. I even made the PC word doc a .rtf file
but it's still wrong and I can't send .rtf files for my resume.
How do I make my Mac Word doc work on a PC as far as formating?
--
The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!
John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:
[email protected]
