email compatible word files

[nflloyd]

I recently bought a Macbook and updated to Word 2008. All of my earlier Word files are in version Microsoft Word X for Mac V.X. When I email these files to PC users, some have problems opening them, even when I check "send windows friendly attachments".

The new files I create with Word 2008 send OK.

Is there a way to batch convert the older files so that I don't have to convert them individually? It's a drag to send a resume or proposal to someone over and over again.

Any thoughts?

Norm

[mrcqm]

The better way of doing this so you don't have issues like this is to "print" to pdf and send that. Anyone can open a pdf.

With something like a sales proposal or a résumé it is beneficial to have an unalterable electronic document – another reason to use pdf's.

You may be able to script something using either Word 2008 or TextEdit that will batch convert from one Word format to another but I seriously encourage you to instead look into how to batch convert to pdf.

Incidentally my advice would be the same for two people with the same OS sending documents to each other.

[Solitare]

Agreed - .pdf files are the way to go if you wish to send a document to someone and have them see it exactly the way you set it up - after all, not everyone has the same fonts, and MS Word might display your documents 'incorrectly'.

The 0K is puzzling though - it sounds almost like you're sending them an alias of the file, rather than the file itself (PC users do this too BTW - very annoying to get a file that's a link to someplace on their hard drive...)

[mmkerc]

Interesting thread as it is the reverse of all the issues i have heard about. With word (office) 2008 Microsoft changed the file format to "docx" which is incompatiablity with the older versions of word (on the Mac).

I am unaware of a batch file changing program like what you request. The suggestion of sending the files as PDF will work, and there maybe a program to batch change/create files to PDF.

[mrcqm]

Regarding a program to batch convert Word to .pdf, should just have to use Automator to print documents to pdf. Probably. Haven't tried it yet but it should work.