I've had problems with e-posted 'Word' and 'Excel' files being converted to a strange default file-type signified by an 'x' after the normal suffix. These are locked, un-useable images.
I need occasionally to collate reports etc to help me at a club's committee meetings. These arrive as e-post attachments from different people so in a mixture of styles, software editions and files, but I want to put them in one neat style in one document I can print and archive properly. Today I tried to save two, both .pdf files so images unreliable to print, and difficult or impossible to edit, place in or render compatible with, proper documents.
However, whatever handles pdf files offers saving them in several other forms including ".doc", even offering British rather than US English, though that would not have mattered there. Only, the "Convert" button merely opens a sales page expecting me to pay £££/month to subscribe to an outfit called Adobe for what should be a basic MS-"Windows" option, allowing me as user simply to use my files as I wish!
Adobe keeps sending so-called "up-date" pop-ups, appearing before I open any programmes. They fail half-way through loading, because an instruction appears telling me to turn off the browser I'd have thought being used to receive the application; but the PC indicates no browser is open anyway!
We are all warned about illegal hackers and scammers. What about the legal ones then, eh, Mr. Gates?
Hmm... I sort of agree and disagree with JakobA at the same time. .docx is MS Word. The extension changed several years ago.
I can't tell based on what you've said exactly what you're dealing with, but it sounds like you're drying to deal with files for different programs. You can find free online tools to do the conversion for you, but the quality of the conversion varies. A couple weeks ago, one of my clients asked me to post a PDF to their blog. While I could attach the PDF, it wouldn't have been crawlable by Google and readers would have had to download it. I was too cheap to spring for the paid version of Adobe or the knockoff I run sometimes, so I just looked for a PDF to Word converter online. I tried several. The best one I got did ok, but it messed up the format and didn't convert a lot of the images, so I had to go through and grab screenshots and crop the remaining images, then try to move it into some kind of presentable format for the blog. The moral of the story is that it would have been easier if I'd just paid the money to have it converted with the PDF program I had.
PDF is actually the more ideal choice for sharing reports because it's mostly universal. It's hard to explain if you don't have a tech background, but word processors use HTML code in the background that create the layout of the words. For example, my dad wrote a book in an old version of MS Word and he wanted me to help convert it for online sales. However, at the end of each chapter, he just hit the enter key until he landed on a new page. The background code showed up as a whole bunch of these ¶. When I opened up his doc on my version of MS Word, which was newer, it read and displayed those differently- the spacing was different, so none of the chapter heads were on new pages. I literally had to go through his whole book and remove all the paragraph breaks and replace them with page breaks. That way, all word processing programs knew the chapter heads belonged at the top of a new page. I've seen people have similar issues here- they used the spacebar or tab instead of using the alignment button to center things. When it renders, the content isn't really centered because the backend HTML is read differently and makes the spaces differently.
PDF means Portable Document Format and doesn't use the same background coding. So, when you go with PDF, you can mostly be sure that what you send is exactly what that person's going to see, no matter what version of a PDF reader they're using. It's great for sharing docs that don't need editing. If you need to edit them, though, it does become a pain. I'd suggest asking people to standardize their files. If you want them all to be in MS Word, then ask for a Word file. You'll still get goofy versions of docs because you won't all have the same version of Word, but it'll be easier for you to edit. The other thing you can try is using Google Drive to share docs... have the person copy/paste their report into a Google Doc. The worry there is that Google Docs do not render like word does, so if there are bullet points and stuff, they will be all kinds of crazy. The person sharing will have to format it for Google. But, at least you'll have a standard document type, open collaboration without sending files back and forth, and you'll all be on the same version of the program. Actually, Word is moving to the cloud as well, but I like keeping hard copies, myself.
Most of these programs are becoming cloud-based subscription programs. Even Windows has done this. Paying won't be an option soon- we'll all be doing it. I guess it'll save on upfront costs of systems, but hopefully it means better standardization when collaborating.
This post was edited by Mr. Bromide at January 2, 2017 3:13 PM MST
JakobA the unAmerican. 