You’ve heard about the OS version Mountain Lion. Have you upgraded yet?
Do you remember all those names of the previous Mac operating systems? Look at Wikipedia to flash back to Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard. Maybe you have Lion? I postponed that until last month, then made the leap to Mountain Lion, two weeks later.
Maybe you have an automatic sense about these technological things and will know what to do and when and how. Others of us are still fiddling with previous challenges.
LET’S LOOK AT PAGES
After years of using Microsoft Word ‘97 it was Dan and Erica Simpson who demoed Pages at their home SIG. So, that was the time to do it. And now I‘m up to Pages ’09, version 4.2.
I heard that Lion would not accept my old Word documents, but PMUG people Allen Laudenslager and John Carter and Jim Hamm were an encouragement. It was time to see what Pages can do with those old documents saved on my Mac.
I clicked to highlight the name of one old Word ’97 document and did Command I (lower case i) which brings up Finder, Spotlight Comments and Info on that document: Kind, size, where it is, date created, date modified, preview, sharing and permissions, and Open With option to open with Word, Text Edit, Preview, Pages and several other options.
With trepidation I chose Pages and “Use this application to open all documents like this one” and Change All, hoping it could read my mind. It did OK. All the previous several hundred writings I had written since 1997 in Word 97-2004 now open up in Pages. The only disappointment is that page margins are not exactly the same. Some documents need to have margins set wider since that was the way I’d initially laid it out when I wrote it in Word ’97.
When you’re writing in Pages it lets you choose Save As Word Document when you do Option Shift Command S.
LET’S LOOK AT MICROSOFT WORD
Opening Help when you have opened Word: Mac 2011 you can go to File Formats for saving documents, and that introduces you to such abbreviations as .docx — .doc — .rtf — .htm — .docm — .xml — .xml — .mht — .dic — .thmx
Word: Mac 2011 does let you choose AutoRecovery for anytime from 1 to 120 minutes.
You can choose to Password Protect your document in Word and in Pages.
You can highlight text that you’ve written using Word:Mac 2011 and do Command + C to copy, then paste it Command + V into a Pages document. It does copy over into Pages in the same exact font you started with in Word.
MORE ON PAGES ‘09: Here’s their directions under Help: Saving a Copy of a Document.
To save a copy of a document in OS X v.10.6 (Snow Leopard) or earlier:
Choose File > Save As, and then specify a name and location.
When the document is copied in this way, the original document is closed; the document that remains open on your desktop is the new copy you created. To work with the original version, choose File > Open Recent and choose the previous version from the submenu.
To save a copy of a document in Mac OS X v.10.7 (Lion) or later:
- Choose File > Duplicate.
An untitled copy of the document is created. Both copies remain open on your desktop for you to view or edit.
- Close the window of the untitled copy, type the document’s name, and then choose a location from the pop-up menu.
- Click Save.
Pages lets you email a document by choosing Share >Send via Mail. You then choose which version, Pages, Word, or PDF. The new email message opens with the document version attached to it.
HOW TO OPEN REALLY OLD DOCUMENTS:
Here’s the link to 5 pages of comments and suggestions from the Macworld Forum:
One contributor gave this quick tip: “I have even gotten old Mac write pro documents (system 9!) to open with this trick, as well as old AppleWorks files too old to go easily into Pages. Find the old document, then change the file extension at the end to .txt then right click and tell it to open in Pages. You'll hit some scribble at the top and bottom, but it's gold for opening 10 year old files you don't want to retype!”
Try this to open an Old Unix Executable file. Highlight the title of the document in the list, do Command I and under Open with choose Text Edit. It came up, so I now save it. It still is listed in my Archives as Kind: Unix E...le File, but when clicked it opens in Text Edit. I’ve made a new copy of it and saved as pdf with Adobe Reader.
YES, WE ARE HAVING FUN.
What have you discovered about Mac and your Apple products? If you have some interesting info to share on our newsblog why not drop me a line at edpr1@commspeed.net. The RSS feature was discontinued by Google, so you’ll have to be creative at checking out www.pmugnews.blogspot.com so you can benefit from our members sharing their talents and time with you.
So far this year I’ve posted 309 articles, but last year it was 339. Top contributors for 2011: 1st = Jim Hamm, 2nd = John Carter, 3rd = David Passell. Nine other members sent me articles to post last year.
Aren’t you glad you came to PMUG! Prescott Mac User Group keeps going with friendly, helpful people like you who ask questions and share answers!
This is today's handout at the PMUG meeting!
