Stump the PC Club is a free tech-advice column written by members of the North Orange County Computer Club, which has been in existence since 1976. Visit the club’s site at noccc.org.
QUESTION: I recently volunteered to do some work for a homeowners association that requires typing and distributing documents. I have been using Word Perfect for years and I’m afraid some recipients won’t be able to open attachments that I might send them. Any suggestions? Kaye, Aliso Viejo.
PC CLUB: You’d be much better off sending Microsoft Word files as attachments since it’s a more universal format. The versions of Word Perfect I’ve used recently do not have an option to save files in a Word format. Some recipients may be computer savvy enough to open Word Perfect files in Word but I wouldn’t count on it. There are several options as follows:
· Purchase Microsoft Word – approximately $100
· Use an online free conversion service at http://www.freepdfconvert.com/. This service will convert one file at a time to a PDF which can be opened by anyone.
· Try one of the free programs recommended at http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-pdf-writer.htm for converting to PDFs.
· Spend a lot of money and purchase Adobe Acrobat to convert your Word Perfect files to PDFs.
· Download and install the free OpenOffice program suite from http://www.openoffice.org/. This suite of programs includes a program called Writer which can open or create Word documents. In fact, one of the options allows you to set the default file type as Word.
My recommendation would be the last item above since OpenOffice also includes programs compatible with Excel and PowerPoint. It also includes a drawing and database program.
By the way, even people with Word can send attachments that are not compatible with the version that the recipients have. For example, if someone has Word 2007 or 2010 and saves documents in the new docx format, recipients with older versions of Word will not be able to open them. Since I use a recent version of Word, I open the Options and set the default for saving files to the older Word 97-2003 format. The files will be slightly larger but people with older versions will now be able to open them. The latest version of OpenOffice can open the new docx format but it cannot create this format which is not a problem
Ed Schwartz is a member of the North Orange County Computer Club. To send in a question, go to edwardns.com and click the Contact Me menu. Archives of previous columns are also on the website.