Tech challenged? Read on
Tech Tips for Writers is an (almost) weekly post on overcoming Tech Dread. I’ll cover issues that friends, both real-time and virtual, have shared. Feel free to post a comment about a question you have. I’ll cover it in a future Tip.
Q: I updated to Office 2010 (or 2007) and many friends are still on 2003. What can I do so they can read my stuff?
A: When you save the doc, go to File-save as, and select file type 97-2003
Now, anyone with MS Office 2003 can read your document.
PS–You can also save-as a PDF. Then, no one can edit it, too. That’s especially nice for articles you’ve written, books, that sort of intellectual property.
Jacqui Murray is the editor of a K-6 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, creator of two technology training books for middle school and six ebooks on technology in education. She is the author of Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is webmaster for six blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, Cisco guest blog, Technology in Education featured blogger, IMS tech expert, and a bi-weekly contributor to Write Anything. Currently, she’s editing a thriller that should be out to publishers next summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.
Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is webmaster for six blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com and TeachHUB, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, Cisco guest blog,Technology in Education featured blogger, IMS tech expert, and a bi-monthly contributor to Today’s Author. In her free time, she is the editor of a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum, and creator of technology training books for how to integrate technology in education. Currently, she’s editing a thriller that should be out to publishers next summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.
I save Word documents to Word 97 because no one can read my DOCX files.
By: ispiderbook on October 23, 2012
at 12:19 am
It’s starting to change, but that’s something any of us who share documents for a living have to be aware of: Everyone doesn’t use Word 2010. I so would like the world to change to Google Docs.
By: Jacqui Murray on October 23, 2012
at 6:47 pm
I’m a tech geek, love fiddling around finding out better ways to work and I never knew you could save as a PDF! That is a fantastic point! You won’t have to muck about with security settings etc.
Thank you for pointing that out!
By: Cold Lipstick on October 23, 2012
at 6:44 am
Saving to pdfs is pretty recent. It used to be you needed Adobe or a free pdf converter. Now it happens right inside Word. Life is good.
By: Jacqui Murray on October 23, 2012
at 6:51 pm