[t_hah]

I know many Mac users in Europe. They use CE fonts a lot, which causes problems with Word. When they save their documents in the PC version of Word and transfer that to a Mac the special characters do not show up correctly. Is there a way to clean all that up? Is there an application that can maybe translate all the characters so that the PC document would show up correctly, or is that just too much to ask from a $400 "cross platform" package?

[Skypat]

Originally posted by t_hah:
I know many Mac users in Europe. They use CE fonts a lot, which causes problems with Word. When they save their documents in the PC version of Word and transfer that to a Mac the special characters do not show up correctly. Is there a way to clean all that up? Is there an application that can maybe translate all the characters so that the PC document would show up correctly, or is that just too much to ask from a $400 "cross platform" package?

Hi I don't understand your problem. I use a mac, word, I'am in Europe, I sometimes use the doc I create in word X on word XP and don't notice any compatibility problem. Can you be more specific ? What is CE font ?

[ghporter]

I don't understand either. Word has very broad character sets in all of the mainstream fonts, like Times New Roman and Arial, so if you use non-US-English characters, they're mapped properly, whether you are viewing the document on a PC or a Mac.

There may be some compatibility issues between the versions of Word in question, though. Microsoft changed Word file versions when they came out with Office 2003 for PC. Unfortunately there isn't any quick reference I can find to list what may or may not be compatible between PC and Mac file versions. If you're having problems, it wouldn't hurt for your PC using friends to save their documents in "Word for Mac" format, though.

[Tsilou B.]

Originally posted by t_hah:
I know many Mac users in Europe. They use CE fonts a lot, which causes problems with Word. When they save their documents in the PC version of Word and transfer that to a Mac the special characters do not show up correctly. Is there a way to clean all that up? Is there an application that can maybe translate all the characters so that the PC document would show up correctly, or is that just too much to ask from a $400 "cross platform" package?

You're right, there ARE compatibilty problems. Word for Mac does not support Unicode, that's why you need those stupid CE fonts. Word 2004 for Mac will finally support Unicode, just like the Windows version. With Word 2004 the compatibilty issues people have with special characters will be gone. If you don't want to wait, "simply" switch to NeoOffice/J, which reads and writes Word files and IS compatible with Unicode and Unicode-enabled Word files from the PC.

[ghporter]

I didn't think about Unicode-I didn't understand the reference to "CE" fonts. Non-unicode characters should work correctly, no matter what font you use.