Microsoft.

[expat]

Was trying not to have any Microsoft on my Mac. One fly in the ointment: Open Office compatibility with Word. OK I understand that the Word doc format is proprietary and closed, so the Open Office developers have done a great job in making it work as well as it does. But I had some compatibility issues in one document dear to my heart: my CV.

Specifically, I have designed each section of my CV as a table, 2 cols wide and several rows deep. For example, each contract will be a 2 x 3 table. Problem: if you open it in Word, all rows except the last of each table are invisible. They are there: select them and you can see them, like people's smartass comments in white on this board. But they are not white, so that's not the problem. Print it and they do not appear.

Save as RTF and they are readable but other parts of the layout don't come out right.

I can't have that with my CV, not in month 5 on the bench. Sending an agent an unreadable or badly-formatted CV in these times would not be wise IMHO.

So I bought MS Office 2008 for Mac. Installed it this morning: first thing it did was download a 297Mb critical update. Welcome back to Microsoft.

Now I find that it does not have a VBA engine so does not support macros. At all. Office 2004 for Mac did, and a future version will, they promise. Meanwhile, what price compatibility with PC Office users, if I can't run macros?

[MPwannadecentincome]

Was trying not to have any Microsoft on my Mac. One fly in the ointment: Open Office compatibility with Word. OK I understand that the Word doc format is proprietary and closed, so the Open Office developers have done a great job in making it work as well as it does. But I had some compatibility issues in one document dear to my heart: my CV.

Specifically, I have designed each section of my CV as a table, 2 cols wide and several rows deep. For example, each contract will be a 2 x 3 table. Problem: if you open it in Word, all rows except the last of each table are invisible. They are there: select them and you can see them, like people's smartass comments in white on this board. But they are not white, so that's not the problem. Print it and they do not appear.

Save as RTF and they are readable but other parts of the layout don't come out right.

I can't have that with my CV, not in month 5 on the bench. Sending an agent an unreadable or badly-formatted CV in these times would not be wise IMHO.

So I bought MS Office 2008 for Mac. Installed it this morning: first thing it did was download a 297Mb critical update. Welcome back to Microsoft.

Now I find that it does not have a VBA engine so does not support macros. At all. Office 2004 for Mac did, and a future version will, they promise. Meanwhile, what price compatibility with PC Office users, if I can't run macros?

And you can't return it by opening the packaging you implicitly agreed to T&Cs

[expat]

And you can't return it by opening the packaging you implicitly agreed to T&Cs

I can't return it because I need it, because Word users can only deal with Word documents. In that sense, if I only bought it for my CV, I got what I paid for, and it's worth it to get a contract.

But you are right about the T&Cs, which one judge described as making it not so much a purchase from Microsoft as a gift of money to them. You pay them, they don't promise you anything.

[d000hg]

Why not create a new version in OpenOffice? Sounds it would be quick to knock up the same layout. OO can export PDF to sedn to agents, or you could test saving an OO file in .doc form as that may be less wobbly on the OO side.

BTW, is your original CV a word .doc or .docx file?

[Not So Wise]

You might want to review your tables and just check you are not using some formating or something that’s MS only.

Reason I say this is have my CV structured in same way you outline (plus a load more fancy stuff) and always send it out in RTF and never had an issue with it except for the rare convo with a stupid agent that goes as follows:

Agent: "Can you send it in MS Word format? have not got a program to open this file"
Me: "Have you tried double clicking it?"
Agent: Of course if have, do you think I am.......oh.....got it now"

[expat]

Why not create a new version in OpenOffice? Sounds it would be quick to knock up the same layout. OO can export PDF to sedn to agents, or you could test saving an OO file in .doc form as that may be less wobbly on the OO side.

BTW, is your original CV a word .doc or .docx file?

No, my problem is that I did create the CV in Open Office, but when I save it in Word doc format, Word does not display it correctly.

Therefore I bought Word to (re-)do my CV on it. At least I thought that then my Mac would be OK for working with docs from colleagues on Windows, but the lack of macros in Word for Mac 2008 means that that is not so.

I don't know what I'm doing in Open Office that Word can't handle, and I am not interested in finding out and fixing that and calling it done, because in short that means that it doesn't work for what I want it for (requirement: get my CV read by agents). I could reformat the tables or even remove them, but (a) Why TF should I, the app should do what it offers me the opportunity of doing, and (b) what else might not be working in the process?


Edit: no blame to Open Office, it's a great achievement. But it doesn't quite do what I need, which is interoperate with MS Word.

[scooterscot]

Why not use Mac office 2004?

I've not updated to 2008 cause 2004 does everything I need it to. Although it can be a little unstable from time to time, graphics distortion for example.

[expat]

Why not use Mac office 2004?

I've not updated to 2008 cause 2004 does everything I need it to. Although it can be a little unstable from time to time, graphics distortion for example.

Because I have just forked out for Mac Office 2008. Now I should fork out for a second, older, version of the same software? Oh, welcome back to Microsoft indeed.

[scooterscot]

Because I have just forked out for Mac Office 2008. Now I should fork out for a second, older, version of the same software? Oh, welcome back to Microsoft indeed.

Indeed, how else are MS going to make money?

After reading the scathing reviews of Office 2008 - I thought not for me then.

Get a refund on your 2008 copy and Just download a copy of 2004 from somewhere...

It's real easy to get back into a habit of spending the whole day fighting with MS software trying to solve something. Finally you get a solution, you've worked hard all day, a sense of satisfaction overwhelms you, and then it's at that precise moment you realise... you've achieved nothing. Welcome back to Microsoft.

[DaveB]

Save the Doc as a PDF?

OO can do it or you can do it via the OS as a printing option.