28/01/03 Harry D. Corsover : >If you need exactly what the person sees in Word, then >nothing but Word will do.
Microsoft Word Viewer does. Free, only "available" for Windows (almost hidden) but perfectly usable within Virtual PC (all mac M$ crap is so slow that the PC viewers in VPC aren't much worse). Last versions refer to Office 97/2000 (same file formats as at least Office 2001 mac). Remove "/france" from the URLs for the US versions. WordViewer for Windows (no mac version) http://office.microsoft.com/france/downloads/2000/wd97vwr32.aspx ExcelViewer for Windows (no mac version) http://office.microsoft.com/france/Downloads/9798/xlviewer.aspx PowerPoint Viewer for MAC (no win version, those guys are strange) http://office.microsoft.com/france/Downloads/2000/ppview97.aspx >Yes, I mean layout, line breaks, page breaks, graphics and other things >inserted in the document, etc. Those could very well break from one Word user to another, even on the same platform, depending on local fonts, printer drivers and the quality of the original layout. Word can include fonts in docs, to make sure your files are even more laughingly huge, but let's not waste more resources because of them (OE already tripled the email bandwith waste just to impose HTML email to please spammers). Graphics may also cause problems depending on their location and data format (PICT and WMF are "composite" formats that preserve text, vectors et all using each platform's proprietary display routines, movies may miss Quicktime on PCs etc.) I even lost images once because they were BOTH "included" and "linked to external file" (meaning that the docs were huge because the images had been copied inside, but Word wouldn't display them because it wanted the originals too). I tried that because I could: it seemed so stupid you could do that, I wanted to know the result. Wasn't disappointed: even more stupid. It was the time of Word 6, the one that told me "document too big to be saved, suppress some text and retry". Which of course wouldn't have worked anyway: it's the images that were big. >If you need to modify a file and send it to >someone with Word who needs to see _exactly_ what you see on your screen, >then nothing but Word will do. Of course the free viewers don't allow editing. Depending on how much the docs must remain editable and similar to the one you recieved, there are other ways�: - to edit Word docs and send Word docs, but not necessarily the same ones you recieved, the icWord and icExcel sharewares for 9 & X mentionned earlier open, copy and convert most Word, Excel, RTF and Appleworks files (icWord is the easiest I know to view RTF under Mac OS 9, not counting NotePad Deluxe, which does much more but doesn't fit here) Especially if you set the incredible DefaultApp to reassign Word and Word/RTF docs to icWord on the fly, or any other combination you would like (WITHOUT changing the files' creator codes, not even a reboot to install, not even having to keep DefaultApp open for its magic to work, amazing, OS 9 only) http://merzwaren.com/da/index.html - whatever changes you make to the docs, the better way of making sure recipients will see exactly what you mean is PDF. If you want to secure your page layout and not allow easy editing, you can create PDF using (in decreasing cost order) -- OS 9 or X, Acrobat distiller through Adobe PDF printer -- OS 9, PrintToPDF (shareware, much simpler, lighter, faster) -- OS X, save print preview (free) Under OS 9 and between mac users I prefer the old Print2PICT for the same purpose (creates any size PICT files maintaining text and vectors, editable in MacDrawPro and others, but not cross-platform like PDF). ---- VRic ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
