Help with using Word on my Mac Book

[Kaya Singer]

I am a Microsoft Word user. I have Word 2004. Until now it has been no problem. I know that Microsoft has intentionally not made the program Mac friendly, however I have been using it for so many years that all of my documents are on Word plus the fact that most other people have it so it has always been easy to send attachments.

Present problem since I got my new MacBook. I swtiched from a G4. In Attachments- formatting is jumbled at least 50% of the time. I send stuff ot my clients so this is a big problem. Never used to be a problem. I have the box checked that says windows friendly.

And the auto save function is not working the way it used to. It used to be that it saved every so many minutes automatially. Now I have to remember to hit save or I might lose what I have just written. Case in point. I am sitting happily outside in the sunshine writing on my book. The power was getting low so I went inside but before i could plug it in- it went off. I didn't click save first I had to restart it and the autosave document was unable to be opened. Who knows why. I lost the last page I wrote- gone poof. In the past it would have auto saved to the original document. Now it is supposed to save a back-up copy- however like this time it doesn't always work.

I have re-installed the program. Not sure what else to do. Any ideas or other programs that do what Word does and can be opened as an attchament by windows users. THanks for any ideas. I am open. Kaya

 

[Natobasso]

Some issues and possible fixes here:
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=2007011110445954

Microsoft has stated (see wikipedia.org) that Office won't be ported to Universal till 2008.

 

[Kaya Singer]

Please explain to me what Universal is or what that means.

If you were me what would you do in my situation.

 

[Natobasso]

Intel Macs, like yours, work natively in 'Universal' mode which is a step up from pre Intel Macs. Since Word 2004 isn't a 'Universal' app until 2008 (did you read my link with others with similar Word problems and solutions?) that means you are running Word 2004 in Rosetta, which is a translator for non-Universal applications.

Read the article I posted, there were some solutions there. But you could also try repairing your permissions on your computer (utilitites/disk utility/repair permissions) and also start up Word while holding the option key (click Word in your doc with the option key down) and you should get some 'rebuild' options.

 

[Kaya Singer]

THanks

I had missed seeing the link to the article. I read it and I don't understand it all. Mostly it seems ot be about Entourage but I suppose its all the same causes. THanks for your suggestions. I will give it a try. Kaya

 

[MisterMe]

Please explain to me what Universal is or what that means.

...

Universal Binaries have two sets of executable files. One set is PPC code, which runs natively (at full speed) on older PPC-based Macs. The other set is Intel code, which runs natively (at full speed) on newer Intel-based Macs. Word 2004 is PPC code and not Universal Binary. This means that it runs on your Intel-based Mac's PPC emulator called Rosetta. Rosetta is transparent to the user, albeit somewhat slower than native code.