Pages/Word - do they 'understand' each other?

[Lulie110]

Hi All, although most of my posts are in Style and Beauty, I have been known to lurk here in Geekery, as you seem to be able t explain things really clearly. So am hoping that you can advise me on a silly question:

I use a Mac at home; I have had it 8 months or so and LOVE IT. Previously, and at work, I have always used a PC. So technically, on a Mac, I am pretty rubbish.

I use Pages for word processing at home (of CV!), but no one on a PC can ever even open the files. Is this normal? I had expected some formatting blips, but for people to not be able to open the files at all is a surprise.

Are there any simple-ish workarounds, or am I going to have to stump up for Office for Mac ?

TIA...

... Forgot to say, I DO save them as Word files (within Pages) but still people cannot open them. Is there any good alternative, other than also saving asa pdf, as in the main my files don't need to be edited?

"Is there any good alternative, other than also saving asa pdf, as in the main my files don't need to be edited?"

Saving in RTF format might work out as long as you're not using particularly fancy formatting of anything in the document.

I'm not sure why people can't open the documents in Word.

How exactly are you actually saving the file from within Pages? Are you using the Export option from the File menu?

Hi, thanks for quick reply! Certainly no fancy formatting, just really bog-standard files

Nope, I have not used Export, I just use File/Save As.
Just looking at Export now, Id never even noticed those options. Perhaps I'll try that next time and see how it goes.

Thanks!

it's not normal .... I use pages at home and frequently have to send stuff to word users

I just save as word doc and email over and it's all fine

I've occasionally had a problem when someone's been using an ancient (and I mean really ancient) version of word, but then would have had that problem if my documents had been originated in word anyway iyswim