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October 17, 2008
You Can Mix Apples and Oranges
Dear Larry,
I am about to start a project with a colleague of mine who
lives in California. He owns a Mac, I own a PC, and we plan to share files via
e-mail. What potential pitfalls might we expect?
R. V.
Dear R. V.,
The first order of business has to do with the types of files
you anticipate sharing. Ideally, you’d want to be running the same programs and
versions to create these files. If you’re not, watch out! Imagine if your
colleague only spoke French, and you only spoke English.
Even if you’re not using the exact same software, there are
ways around this problem. If you and your partner are using completely different
programs to create a document of a certain type, often the less popular of the
two programs will be able to work with files created in the other. After all,
it’s the little fish that want to make friends with the big fish, not the other
way around.
Here’s an example: Let’s say you’ll be sharing word processing
documents, spreadsheets, and slide presentations. You’ll be using Microsoft
Office on your PC (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), and “Cal” in California will be
using Apple iWork on his Mac (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote). Fortunately, the
less popular of these two suites, iWork, has no problem opening Office
documents. The reverse, however, isn’t true. Therefore, either you should be
creating the original documents (which Cal will be able to open and save
directly) or Cal should be exporting his new documents to Word, Excel, or
PaperPort (using the iWork File, Export command) before e-mailing them to you.
Let’s say you’re both using the same programs, but different
versions. Sometimes file formats change from one version to the next. In this
case, you’ll probably want to work with a format common to both versions. For
instance, Word 2003 can’t directly understand Word 2007/2008 documents, but the
newer program can certainly handle the older format. In this case, the Word
2007/2008 user may want to “save as” his documents using the Word 2003 format.
Alternatively, the two of you can use an independent format
compatible with both programs. Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, iWork Pages, and
other word processing programs can all accommodate rich text format (RTF) files
with aplomb.
Some programs don’t work this way. Say, for some reason you
have to pass Quicken or QuickBooks files back and forth. In that case, Cal and
you better be working with the same program version.
Other programs may not exist on both platforms. If you’re
working with Access database files, Cal will need to run Windows on his Mac
because Microsoft has not rewritten Access for the Apple.
The bottom line is preparation and testing. Try sharing some
test files and identify the formatting issues in advance of your project start
date.
Then you’ll be mixing it up with the best of them! This is
Larry Schneider, logging off.
