What is the secret to being able to edit documents on different word processors without screwing up the formatting?

September 22, 2007 8:37 PM

Word Processor formatting screwy filter: I use a few different word processors from time to time and I try to use .rtf since I understand that is a universal format yet when I load a document in a different word processor the formatting always seems to get screwed up.

I don't use any fancy formatting: just text, manual indents if needed, bold, underline, maybe italics... I use OpenOffice, Google Docs, MS WordPad, MS Word mainly. The main thing that I gripe about is that the spacing between my point form notes always seems to get screwed up and I have to go through hundreds of pages potentially readjusting everything.

posted by GleepGlop to computers & internet (4 comments total)

A lot of formatting gets lost when you convert to .rtf, that's one of the reasons I never use it really. It's not designed to do much besides store bold/italicized text I don't think.

Given your list of applications, have you tried just using a .doc format? Open Office and Google Docs convert Word files fine, with all the formatting intact - at least in my experience. The one issue you will have is MS WordPad, I guess. Any way to take it out of the rotation?
posted by gemmy at 9:28 PM on September 22, 2007

Different word processors, in general, will interpret the same document in subtly different ways.

If you get in the habit of using named styles for various kinds of text, fixing that kind of breakage becomes much less painful.

RTF does support named styles.
posted by flabdablet at 10:45 PM on September 22, 2007

Oh, and if you're preparing documents for somebody else to read, and there's no requirement for them to edit those documents collaboratively, don't give them word processor documents; give them a PDF instead. That way, you know they're going to see what you intended them to see.
posted by flabdablet at 10:47 PM on September 22, 2007

Instead of switching between apps, you could try using the same application everywhere you go.

Portable OpenOffice.org
posted by oddman at 6:15 AM on September 23, 2007