Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related tech help, pretty please

I'm trying to beta a story for SQD, but we're having compatibility issues and neither of us is very tech savvy. She created the story in MSWord (2005 version) using Windows XP. She saved it as an RTF file and e-mailed it to me. I opened it in MSWord (2008) on my Mac, added comments, saved it as .rtf and sent it back to her. When she opens it, she sees her original story, but not my comments. She says her program won't read .doc files. Any ideas? Is there another MSWord feature besides comments that you've used for beta reading?

TIA,

Happy

I'm not sure why SQD's program won't read .doc files, but I do have a suggestion for you. It's a bit kludgy, but it will do the job. Put all of your comments and suggestions in the text, but highlight them or put them in a different font colour to make them stand out from the original text.

Joy,
Lynn

I used to just put comments in red. Just make sure you don't accidentally save the file as text rather than WORD or you'll lose all your hard work. (Been there, done that...) :rolleyes:

LabRat

To add on to Lynn's idea. We used to do something similar to this and then Find/Replace all red text with nothing. It works but I would recommend backing up before doing it.

Oh, that's not how they do it anymore?


(Disclaimer: I know of the comments function, but someone had to say this. )

Thanks, everyone. I'll give that a shot.

Happy

Actually, when I BR, I usually turn the tracking function on and then just type my suggestions in-line. How you turn on tracking that will vary depending on which version of Word you are using. In Word 2007 and 2010, you click on the Track Changes button on the review tab.

Joy,
Lynn

Yes, I get the impression that using coloured fonts is very old-fashioned these days - there are so many other techie means embedded into WORD that are probably much better.

Can't say I've used any of them - always been too lazy and/or technophobic to check them out. But if I was still beta reading I'd probably have tried at least one of them by now.

LabRat

Hi Happy Girl:
Windows XP is .doc file. The problem of incompatibility is that you have a Mac. You need to modify the .rtf file itself and send it back to her.

I recently had this same problem and it worked by the recipient modifying the .rtf file itself. Don't change to your word doc.

Another choice is to save your comments in your word file to PDF and she can read it. (Save the entire file.) Once it is in PDF, it cannot be modified, but she will see your changes.

I still use colored text for my changes and comments.

Another feature for comments in .docx (which is the newest version of MSWord) is footnotes and they can only be read in print format, not draft.

If you want to practice with me, send me something to jumpstick@earthlink.net and I'll try to help. Hopefully you've saved your comments.
regards
Artemis

Word has some weird problems with RTF files - for some reason they are generally saved as huge and somewhat buggy files. Also, a lot of the annotation that Word can put into files won't work in RTF files.

Your best bet may be to try something like Open Office, which doesn't have the RTF problem and can open Word .doc files.

True, Marcus. They do become big files, but it usually doesn't affect simple word changes. Rather than deal with a whole bunch of new software like Open Office for both of them, simply modifying the .rtf file and exchanging it will work.
The key is *not* changing it to Word on a Mac. That's why the changes don't show up. I just had the exact experience this past year.

Artemis

Artemis,

I'm a real dodo with techie stuff. What does it mean to modify the file? How do I do that if I'm not supposed to do it in Word?

I haven't heard back from SQD as to whether the colored font idea is working. I did notice that the RTF file is very large.

I did save my comments. In fact, I've only beta'd one page to far because I wanted to make sure she could read the comments and that she liked my very nitpicky beta style. I'm really glad I didn't put too much time into it yet.

Thanks, everyone, for the ideas.

Happy

Don't you love it when the answers are easy? You've opened the file in .rtf. Simply type your corrections/suggestions into that file and send it back to SQD. She couldn't read your changed word file because it came from a Mac. Protocols and all that stuff. Send me something you've converted from your Word and into an .rtf and I'll show you. RTF stands for rich text file and is meant to communicated between Mac and PC. I'm not sure colored fonts will translate but I've never tried. My work has been PC to PC. And .rtf goes PC to PC too.
regards
Artemis
P.S. What does it mean to modify the file? = add or delete words is modifying a file. You are not modifying the file *type*, just adding words. File type is .doc, .docx, .rtf, .html, etc.

I think I tried that. Here's what I did: I opened her .rtf file using my MSWord program on my Mac. I added a comment (just as a test because we knew we were having trouble), saved the file under a new name but with the same .rtf at the end, and sent it back to her. She could read her original text, but couldn't find my comment. Do I have to send it back without changing the name at all? Won't that cause trouble when her computer sees two different files with the same name?

I'll send you the same test file and see whether you can read the comment.

Thanks again,

Michelle

That should have worked as long as you sent it back .rtf. Yes, you should change the name. Usually something simple like V2 would work.
We'll know more when I get your file.

Aremis

If you could diagnose and fix the problem could you please post how you did it? I had the same problem with SQD and a beta but I was too lazy to post the problem like HappyGirl did. Thanks, Happy, for addressing this properly.

Will do. Happy e-mailed me last night. We just have to see if she can read it. Watch this space.

Well, we haven't heard from SQD, which would be the proof of the pudding, but here's what we know so far.

1. I'm on a PC and Happy is on a Mac and we communicated just fine.

2. I used to use Windows XP and I know that it has no capability for footnotes or comments. It also is a .doc file. This being my background, I type my corrections directly into the text in a different color, say red. If I have a long comment, I simply use parenthesis (like this).

3. .rtf works fine between Mac and PC.

4. I was surprised to find that my .docx immediately opened the file in compatibility mode with comments readable in the print mode even though it was .rtf. So I learned something there.

5. Colored text worked. I typed some stuff above the story and Happy could read it. I tried different colors, too.

So that's where we are right now.
r/
Artemis
Wikipedia says this about .doc files:
And this about .rtf:
In other words, it was created by Microsoft so that a Mac could mimic Windows text writing.

Well, Artemis was able to read my comments with the comments feature, but SQD wasn't. SQD also says that she can't read .doc files with her Word program, which sounds strange to me. So, since she isn't here to defend herself, I'm blaming her software.

We're doing fine with the colored text, although I find it more cumbersome and therefore I'm not as detailed (or verbose, depending on your POV) in my comments. I'm sure I'll get the hang of it.

A second question: I tried creating different styles for my different colored text, but it applied the style to the entire paragraph, not just to the text I highlighted. Is there an easy way to change that? As is it, I'm clicking format-font-color-pick the color every time. There must be a shortcut, but I haven't figured it out.

Thank you for your patience. I'm learning!

Happy

Since SQD's Word is so old, have you tried saving as an old Word file, it might have trouble with the newer ones. One can change which version of .doc one wants to use in the Save As dialog.

But I don't think that version could already do things like change track or comments.

Other possibility, if SQD's system can take it, get them another word processor, LibreOffice or OpenOffice are free of charge and can read .doc and the newly-fangled .docx including many of Word's features like change back and comments.

Hi Happy. No you can't change styles easily within paragraphs. Frankly, if you have colored text, it really doesn't add anything to change the font. Color makes it stand out enough IMHO.
Hi Chaos. I'm not sure why so many want SQD to load new software when .rtf works perfectly well. Forget about word at all, and just use .rtf for the corrections. When SQD posts on the board, it goes into that format automatically.
Maybe SQD actually has Word Perfect, which is not a .doc file but can be switched to .rtf.
r/
Artemis

Because according to Happy Girl it doesn't work perfectly well, it only works.
Why should one assume that SQD has Word Perfect, which has no version named anything 2005, instead of Word, which has a version named Word 2005?
If I would guess SQD not actually having Word, I'd guess at them using WordPad instead of WordPerfect.

Hi Chaos:
Because SQD told HG that she doesn't have .doc. If she had any version of Word it would be .doc. Corel makes Word Perfect and it is .wpf.
You are never going to get a perfect match between a PC and a MAC. That's the problem that .rtf is meant to solve.

Artemis

Thanks, Artemis. I'm not actually changing the font. That's just the menu that my color change is under. We'll muddle through with the colored text. I'm just spoiled with the comments feature.

This reminds me of a conversation I had in 1992. I was borrowing a fax machine from our office's landlord because we didn't have on of our own, and while I was waiting for the document to go through, I said to the (older than me) secretary there, "Whatever did people do before fax machines?"

To which she replied, completely deadpan, "They waited."

So, whatever did we do before comments? We used colored text.

Thanks for the suggestion, Chaos. I'm not sure it's worth getting SQD to change her program/format for one story, but if we keep working together (and if I keep finding the colored text so cumbersome) it might be worth a try.

Thanks again for everyone's help and patience.

Happy

There is no version of Word for the PC named 2005.
It is
95
97
2000
2002 aka XP
2003
2007
2010

Framework4 is correct
Quote
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There is no version of Word for the PC named 2005.
It is
95
97
2000
2002 aka XP
2003
2007
2010
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Personally I generally eschew the use of RTF format. Real Text has it's own set of problems.

I would recommend saving the document on the PC using the 'save as' command and simply save as an Office 97 - 2003 .DOC.

This can be opened by just about any Word processing program currently in common use, MS or open source. MS Word for MAC included. (Open Office mimics MS Office 2003.) The possible exception would be Word Perfect(TM).

Also by doing this you avoid the problem of .DOCX incompatability. Some versions will heve the ability to handle commenting/editing/versioning better than others but MS products back as far as XP have the capability. In some cases it just needs to be 'turned on'.

Whether or not that is the case with Word for MAC I do not know. I'm pretty much a PC person and have had limited exposure to MAC.

Office 95, 97, 2000 were more limited than the later versions.

Artemis suggestion of using colored fonts imbedded within the text is an excellent alternative which eliminates all compatability issues.

Thanks, Ken. I'm more than half-way through the story using the colored fonts, so I'll stick with that for now, but if we work together in the future I'll see if we can find a way to make the comments feature work.

Happy