What To Do On a Mac When Someone Sends You a Microsoft Word File
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- čas přidán 27. 07. 2024
- macmost.com/e-3156 What do you do if someone sends you a Microsoft Word document, but you don't use Word on your Mac? You've got several options for viewing these documents, copying text from them, and even editing and saving in Word format without needing to buy anything.
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00:00 Intro
01:24 Use Quick Look To View and Copy Text
02:18 Use TextEdit To View and Copy Text
02:46 Use Pages To View, Edit, and Export Back
04:02 Get Microsoft Word For Free For Viewing Only
05:37 Third-Party Office Apps For Viewing and Editing
06:05 Open and Edit In Google Docs
07:47 Ask the Sender To Stop Sending Word Documents
#macmost #mactutorial - Věda a technologie
I worked on Windows and used Word for over 25 years at my job. Now I've been using a Mac exclusively for 5 years and I've been subscribing to Office even though I really use it less and less as time goes by. Seems like a waste of money but I still can't seem to pull the plug on Office even though I know I could get around it as you showed. Trying to break those old habits.
One of the best surprises for me when I moved to MacOS back in 2017 was, apart from system stability, the joy of using Pages and Keynote (I never needed Numbers a lot but I know it is robust). Far superior to MS's offers and at no additional cost, including free updates. It baffles me how beholden most people are to Windows, especially now that it is basically an ad platform that spies on you while you try to get work done.
Mwah, Pages is fine but Numbers and Keynote are way behind Excel and PowerPoint. For simple stuff you wouldn’t notice but the moment you want something more detailed or specific you’re victim of the Apple-way-or-no-way.
So which features would you say the average Word, Excel or PowerPoint user come up with a hard stop when trying to use Pages, Numbers or Keynote?
@@NeilLavitt average user maybe not that much but even for them the drawing capabilities in keynote are very limited just as the formatting and functions in Numbers.
@@abbofun9022 the drawing capabilities are much better than you think, though, I wouldn’t ever use the Microsoft ones either as they are also very poor. As for functions, name some that the average user would need that is not there?
@@abbofun9022Way behind. I wouldn’t know. Everything seems fine to me using numbers and Keynote. The only problem I ever have is running into friction with people that want to use Excel and Power Point.
Microsoft Office is free on the web, you can open and edit any type of document, you just need a Microsoft account
And who wants one of those?
@@greebo7857 The one who have a Microsoft Office file on Mac 😁
Hi Gary, I always find your explanations easy to understand and follow. I use your channel whenever I have an issue and so far you have always been able to help me sort out my difficulty Thank you.
Well explained and easy to follow Many options shown
I much prefer working in Pages than Word.
I find it a cleaner and simpler layout without actually losing any functionality.
I always send out my docs as PDFs and ask for any comments or changes to be sent back by email.
I worked with Word for many years in a very large company, and within the last 8 years or so I would get documents with "hundreds" of styles in them, many of which either weren't used or used for one sentence. And I never managed to get Word to give me a heading on a new page without a blank line above it. I find Pages much easier to use.
Once again you have shown me something I didn’t know. 👍🏼😎🤓👍🏽
Gary,
I’ve found over the years that your point at 7:47 about asking people not to send Word files to be really helpful. For example, I have a friend who used to send everyone Word files since she assumed all computers had Word on them. As I know you know, this is a very common assumption. 😀 Anyway, she thanked me for letting her know that not everyone has Word. In fact, everyone I know really appreciate learning this.
I agree with your personal favorite - to ask the sender not to send Word files. It helps to tell them versions of Word are not compatible among themselves so it's not unusual to open a Word file in Word only to have it mis-display because it was prepared using a different version of Word.
I too tend to push back. Depending on who it is I have been known to request they send it in Pages and give them a link to the iCloud page where they can sign up for an account and use the apps. But usually I request a PDF.
@@mendodsoregonbackroads6632 PDF usually has as a smaller file size and can be viewed on almost any device. The only reason to ever send a raw Word document is if you need the other person to modify it.
Always use PDF !
Excellent video! So many variables, too many to remember them all every time. Time is precious, so I generally pick the one that wastes the least. You gave a great demonstration of the benefits for each. I always remember “export, import” as generally speaking, the best compatibility seems to be there.
Thanks bunches
tnx
Thanks Gary. I love the last option best! 😊
My wife frequently receives Word documents from three different government agencies...bonkers. How can they assume that every client has Word and how can they risk sending personal information in such an easy to edit file format?
Exactly, I Said it too but nobody want to understand that.
You can also do a screenshot save it to photos and copy and paste the text from there.
A very useful and informative video tutorial today! Thank you, Gary! 👏🏻❤️
I have been opening Word documents in Pages for years now and except for some minor changes in fonts etc it works quite well. The biggest difficulty has been when the document needs something filled in on a line or a signature. Depending on how the sender has formatted it it might not be a simple task. I usually send it back as a Word file or sometimes forget and leave it as Pages. I have no idea how it looks when they translate it back to Word but so far no complaints.
I switched to macOS but still have a Windows machine. A very long-term Word user going back to the earliest Microsoft releases.
I started by using Word on both. But found some strange inconsistencies. Like creating a PDF failing to make a usable Table of Contents in macOS. So having to go back to Windows and export to PDF there. Also, weird issues with emoji. Flag emoji having been excluded from Windows.
In time, I put the effort in and learned enough of Pages to create (and re-create) documents. Smaller documents. Faster processing. PDF export almost instant (rather than taking quite a long time).
I do like that Tables of Contents update immediately - none of this having to manually update it. But still have not found how to include Last Updated Date/Time within Pages documents! I can easily include a date/time but cannot see how to make it automatically update when the document is saved.
This video covers many of the techniques I have used. Very well produced, clear, non-ranty. But did I nod off where you discussed "Use Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more for free on the web"? Potentially useful.
You can also download and install that font that was missing when you opened it in Pages.
Assuming you can get it. Some fonts cost too. Not something you should have to deal with when someone sends you a document though.
I don’t use it (I have a Microsoft Office license), but there is another free office suite option, FreeOffice by SoftMaker. I’m very curious as to how it would render the more complex document that you showed n the video. They also have a paid version that allows some customizations that are not in the free version, has professional dictionaries as opposed to a free dictionary, Macros (Windows only), etc.
I use SoftMaker's Office 2024 after initially trying the FreeOffice 2018 version. I was able to get an upgrade to the paid version for a ridiculously low price and have stuck with SoftMaker ever since.
Thanks for this Gary. How would you extract text from a pdf file that has it's text there as an image, and not as text?
He did a video on that two weeks ago. 😀
Try opening it in Preview and see if you can grab the text. macOS should let you do it using the Live Text feature.
Off topic, but I've shut off automatic updates for Microsoft Office. I left it on until Outlook wiped "all my contacts." Lucky for me I found a button to revert to back, but I was terrified. Any suggestions?
Do you mean Microsoft updates, or Apple App Store updates? I recommend getting Microsoft apps from the Apple App Store, and updating them like any other app. This leaves the troublesome "Microsoft Updater" app out of the equation.
Ever since I switched to Apple and got the hang of Pages and it became my only word processing app. In the same time, I'm still keeping Words in case I'm gonna need it.
But, I still don't see I will ever need to use Words.
When this video was made, was iwork still inadequate when compared to Microsoft Office? Because in my work environment, everyone uses Office, and people rarely use iwork.
iWork hasn’t been a thing in about 10 years. This video was made today.
This is a brand new video. Pages has been a useful and powerful word processor for a long time now. But if everyone in your work environment uses Word, then sounds like you are probably expected to use Word. This is about people at home that get sent Word documents when they shouldn't be expected to have Word.
@@macmost It seems to be back to where it is better to adapt to what environment most people use
Hello, does this apply to excel as well? I’m opening them using numbers, but some formatting and other things are not showing up when received as excel.
Yes, it is similar as you are finding out.
Alright I will try to download Microsoft excel for preview
just tried it out and it works! however, I would like to ask if there are any extra benefits of using this method instead of viewing Excel in numbers apple app? I’m wondering which is better to do honestly.
@@Abdullah-zl9ub Depends on the situation. Without paying for a Microsoft subscription, Excel is read-only. With Numbers you can make changes. But the downside is it converts from Excel to Numbers so it looks different.
Upload it to Google docs and access it in your browser so you can get on with your day.
That is one of my suggestions here, yes.
It baffles me that I can open .docx files with pages but when I send pages documents to microsoft users they say they can't open them. Is that true, or do they just not want to? Same goes with numbers and excel.
That is true. Word cannot open Pages documents, but Pages can open Word documents.
I recommend to get a 365 license and you're all set. Not that much of dollars.
LibreOffice works fine, but Pages misses soooo many functions: no OD support, edit tracking does not work in tables, …
I don't know what "OD" is, but yes change tracking doesn't work in tables. Why is that an issue when someone sends you a Word document and you are trying to figure out how to open it (what this video is about).
@@macmost Open Document format - .odt as the equivalent of .docx, for example. Which is funny because Apple was one of the companies to promote it AFAIK.
@@lutzpietschker5171 Oh, never heard it called just "OD" before. Is there a problem like I describe here where people are sending odt files expecting that people can handle them?
@@macmost With OD (you are right, it is not a commonly used abbreviation) I meant the whole concept of a group of file formats that were meant to create a common platform that works across platforms and apps, and is is sad to see Apple turn its back on that concept; but I guess the Microsoft ---x formats have taken that role for good by now. odt is one of the file formats Pages cannot handle, and that is something that annoys me no end. But surprisingly TextEdit can, and can even write that format (as I just found out). As you mentioned a few times, TextEdit is one of the most astonishing little underrated apps on the Mac.
What to do on a mac when someone sends you a word doc - reply that you do not open inferior documents
What to do if somebody sends you a Microsoft Access file?
Tell them you aren't using Windows and don't have Access and they need to find another way to communicate the data to you.
If someone sends you a .docx file, delete the file and fire them as your friend.