Tuesday, December 02, 2008

“.docx” Issues

The school district switched over to Windows 2007 this past summer. I like the new layout for the Microsoft programs in the 2007 format and have not found much difficulty with the transition.

I am sure, as with all of the new technology today, I am only using a small fraction of all that is available to the user. That is frustrating if you think about it – so I simply try not to think about that.

The one problem with the Windows 2007 package that I am struggling with always seems to hit me first thing in the morning. Now that this blog is in its third year, I have teachers, administrators, board members, and people in the community who will send me ideas for postings. Some even go as far as to send me draft copy of the text to use (and that is great!).

The problem I have encountered is that I will now have a potential post saved -- waiting to be published -- but it sits in the new Windows 2007 format (with that “.docx” suffix). And, I sit here at home with the older version of Windows on an Apple machine.

I think there is a “patch” . . . but I am not sure one exists for the Apple version. It probably would take less time to find the patch than write this entry . . . but it seems that this is how we sometimes go about our struggles with the new technologies.

So – I still need to overcome this hurdle. Anyone find that patch yet? I know that I tried a Google search once – to no avail. I am sure it is only a matter of time before I get this right . . . but this can be when technology gets frustrating.

Oh well – off to my good, old-fashioned hard copy of the newspaper that is sitting at end of my driveway. I know that I will have no trouble opening that.

5 comments:

Anonymouseketeer said...

I'm on Mac, but running into this compatibility problem with Windows colleagues today. My suggestion to them is to choose "Save as" from the menu instead of simply saving. This way you are presented with a drop-down menu that allows you to choose the normal .doc extension. Hope this helps.

Anonymouseketeer said...

Oh, also... a converter for Mac, should you continue to get .docx (Open XML) documents anyway:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6B9238E1-CF69-48C4-BF2D-C4A8ACEEE520&displaylang=en

Anonymouseketeer said...

And here I am again! LOL

Windows/Word 2007 people can (and should) set their preferences to save as .doc by default, and save everyone (not just Mac folks) a lot of grief:

http://wordprocessing.about.com/od/microsoftword2007/qt/saveprevious.htm

Anonymous said...

There is a download on Microsoft's Office web site that allows older versions of Office to read the new formats for Word and Excel. It will, however, change some of the formatting. I use it with Office 2002 and find it an alternative to the "Save as" answer.

Anonymous said...

This should solve yout problem. https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6B9238E1-CF69-48C4-BF2D-C4A8ACEEE520&displaylang=en