JD™ Posted September 27, 2010 Report Share Posted September 27, 2010 Hi Guys, The geeks of the forum should be able to help me here, I hope! I'm creating my invoices on Word for Mac from my, er, Mac. It's the latest version. I'm sending these off to clients, and so far I thought it was all fine. As it turns out, my clients can open them up but not print them out. The ones that I've asked have said that they are running Word 2007. When this came to light, I re-saved the documents from *.docx to *.doc and ran the compatibility checks which said it was all fine. Sent over to a Windows PC and it wont print.. I even went and re-saved at *.rtf to see whether it was anything to do with formatting with no luck. Anyone got any ideas on how I could sort this? Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muel Posted September 27, 2010 Report Share Posted September 27, 2010 Move over the the PC, copy and paste everything into a fresh document? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JD™ Posted September 27, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 27, 2010 Move over the the PC, copy and paste everything into a fresh document? That didn't work either, which leads me to believe it's some sort of formatting I've put in the document? The problem I have is why the hell something that works on the Mac not working in the same program on the PC?! Every time I have to have an interaction with a PC it just aggravates me! Lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muel Posted September 27, 2010 Report Share Posted September 27, 2010 Hmmm. Funny one that. Try creating a new document with just plain text in it and transferring and printing that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkeyseemonkeydo Posted September 27, 2010 Report Share Posted September 27, 2010 Every time I have to have an interaction with a PC it just aggravates me! Lol. You wouldn't have this problem if you just binned the Mac and used the PC to begin with... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JD™ Posted September 27, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 27, 2010 You wouldn't have this problem if you just binned the Mac and used the PC to begin with... I did use a PC to begin with, then I realised I liked computers that spent more time working than rebooting, reformatting, sourcing drivers etc Annoyingly, I still have to deal with people who aren't as logical... Muel, that worked so I guess it's just a case of re-designing my invoice in plain text, then adding the formatting bit by bit till it works... Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkeyseemonkeydo Posted September 27, 2010 Report Share Posted September 27, 2010 I realised I liked computers that spent more time working than rebooting, reformatting, sourcing drivers etc And look where that's got you, eh?!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JD™ Posted September 27, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 27, 2010 And look where that's got you, eh?!! I can print my own documents perfectly well thanks, it's only PCs that are having trouble with it. Funnily enough it's a Microsoft product that's causing the problems - not an Apple one.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geek Posted September 27, 2010 Report Share Posted September 27, 2010 You wouldn't have this problem if you just binned the Mac and used the PC to begin with... It's quite clearly a problem with Word and not a problem with the Mac OS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkeyseemonkeydo Posted September 28, 2010 Report Share Posted September 28, 2010 It's quite clearly a problem with Word and not a problem with the Mac OS. Not really, it's a problem with using Word for Mac and then transferring to a different version of Word for PC. If the original file were made in Word for PC all of JD's clients (who probably mainly use PC's like most of the world) would be able to print their invoices. To be fair, if I worked for MS I'd probably deliberately write little bugs like that into Mac versions of the software just to be bloody awkward... just like Apple seem to be so very good at! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danny@phatworks Posted September 28, 2010 Report Share Posted September 28, 2010 I used to just run a virtual machine on my macs which then had Windows XP or 7 on - best of both worlds. I don't like the dual boot as it means you have to restart the machine if you want to switch OS. VMware Fusion is a great example of a virtual machine, it just runs like an application thus, you can use 'spaces' to switch between the 2 OS's. Not an immediate fix I know, but Microsoft Office for mac is awful with loads of bugs. I have recently switched back to PC's at work after using Macs for over 3 years... Actually prefer PC now, Windows 7 is fairly decent... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JD™ Posted September 28, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 28, 2010 I used to just run a virtual machine on my macs which then had Windows XP or 7 on - best of both worlds. I don't like the dual boot as it means you have to restart the machine if you want to switch OS. VMware Fusion is a great example of a virtual machine, it just runs like an application thus, you can use 'spaces' to switch between the 2 OS's. Not an immediate fix I know, but Microsoft Office for mac is awful with loads of bugs. I have recently switched back to PC's at work after using Macs for over 3 years... Actually prefer PC now, Windows 7 is fairly decent... That's actually not a bad idea - I've got a volume license for XP and Office for windows floating about at home somewhere so I'll get on that. Why I didn't think of that I'll never know, thanks for the help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geek Posted September 28, 2010 Report Share Posted September 28, 2010 (edited) Not really, it's a problem with using Word for Mac and then transferring to a different version of Word for PC. If the original file were made in Word for PC all of JD's clients (who probably mainly use PC's like most of the world) would be able to print their invoices. To be fair, if I worked for MS I'd probably deliberately write little bugs like that into Mac versions of the software just to be bloody awkward... just like Apple seem to be so very good at! So, it's a problem with Word and not Mac OS. Thanks for backing up my initial thoughts. Back to the topic anyway! Have you tried using open office to open and re save the file as a .doc? Edited September 28, 2010 by Geek Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JD™ Posted September 28, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 28, 2010 Have you tried using open office to open and re save the file as a .doc? I didn't wanna f**k about with that sort of stuff constantly, because I'll be using the invoice file very frequently. The best option would have been for Word:Mac to work as it should... the second best option is like mentioned above, run a Virtual Machine with XP on connected to my dropbox so I can still use the files both sides but create them on the Windows side. Using spaces it'll be like having 2 computers running - nice! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anzo Posted September 28, 2010 Report Share Posted September 28, 2010 Don't send invoices in Word! Always use PDF format for documents such as this as they cannot be edited (of course you can get PDF converts...another story). PDF is universal and so should print on any printer, in any OS environment. I've never known a company email invoices in Word documents - personally, If I got a .doc for an invoice I'd see it as a little unprofessional... Just my 2 pence, if you want it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JD™ Posted September 28, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 28, 2010 Don't send invoices in Word! Always use PDF format for documents such as this as they cannot be edited (of course you can get PDF converts...another story). PDF is universal and so should print on any printer, in any OS environment. I've never known a company email invoices in Word documents - personally, If I got a .doc for an invoice I'd see it as a little unprofessional... Just my 2 pence, if you want it It's little things like this that show that I've only done the sales side of things before! That makes a hell of a lot of sense, and I'll do it that way from now on. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geek Posted September 28, 2010 Report Share Posted September 28, 2010 I didn't wanna f**k about with that sort of stuff constantly, because I'll be using the invoice file very frequently. The best option would have been for Word:Mac to work as it should... the second best option is like mentioned above, run a Virtual Machine with XP on connected to my dropbox so I can still use the files both sides but create them on the Windows side. Using spaces it'll be like having 2 computers running - nice! You can't install open office, yet you're cool with running a virtual machine. Okay then! Don't send invoices in Word! Always use PDF format for documents such as this as they cannot be edited (of course you can get PDF converts...another story). PDF is universal and so should print on any printer, in any OS environment. I've never known a company email invoices in Word documents - personally, If I got a .doc for an invoice I'd see it as a little unprofessional... Just my 2 pence, if you want it I get invoiced in excel/word doc's all the time at work... also - you can prevent word documents from being edited. What's the problem with it being edited anyway?! The evidence is in the initial email, not in the word document. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anzo Posted September 28, 2010 Report Share Posted September 28, 2010 You can't install open office, yet you're cool with running a virtual machine. Okay then! I get invoiced in excel/word doc's all the time at work... also - you can prevent word documents from being edited. What's the problem with it being edited anyway?! The evidence is in the initial email, not in the word document. What's wrong with virtualization? I'd much rather do that than trying to run a business with OpenOffice... Sure you can stop people editing Word/Excel files, but in reality its going to be a pain in the arse to protect the sheet everytime you want to send it out. Where you could just set up a template, hit print and save it as a PDF in a dedicated file. All organised, tidy and professional Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omgnoseat Posted September 28, 2010 Report Share Posted September 28, 2010 Download openoffice, it's free and has the abillity to save for virtually every word edition Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anzo Posted September 28, 2010 Report Share Posted September 28, 2010 What's the problem with it being edited anyway?! The evidence is in the initial email, not in the word document. From my perspective it's just fraud prevention, any accounting documents send outbound via PDF. Possibly not so much fraud prevention with invoices, but its good practice for other documents you may need to send out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JD™ Posted September 28, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 28, 2010 You can't install open office, yet you're cool with running a virtual machine. Okay then! I get invoiced in excel/word doc's all the time at work... also - you can prevent word documents from being edited. What's the problem with it being edited anyway?! The evidence is in the initial email, not in the word document. I can install OpenOffice, obviously. The point is I've bought relatively expensive software for the Mac which should theoretically work cross platform perfectly - what with it being the same product by the same company. So why on earth would I want to then go for OpenOffice? I also like the idea of running a virtual machine for the girlfriend/any guests as this is my personal computer as well as my work computer - it'd be nice to have the windows option on there for people who aren't used to OSX. The problem is solved anyway, the PDF suggestion is the right one and I was being a dumbass for not realising it in the first place. All of the companies I've worked at before send their invoices in PDF format, I just hadn't put 2 and 2 together for my own business yet as that side of things is still fairly new to me. These companies I speak of are big ones too - IPC media are owned by Time Warner/AOL. If they do PDFs, there's going to be a reason for it. Perhaps you should suggest it to the people who invoice you in Excel and Word? Anyways, topic resolved, and can be closed before more OS/Software Suite/Invoicing methods bickering takes place Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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