Track Changes in MS Office on Mac and PC
March 16, 2012 4:15 PM   Subscribe

Will I run into any formatting or track changes problems if working on the same documents in MS Office 2007/2010 for PC at work and in MS Office 2011 for Mac at home?

Until now I've worked mainly on PCs, both at work and at home. I'm about to purchase a MacBook Air with Office 2011 for Mac, and I want to be able to work on projects for work on it while at home or away on trips. The kind of work I do regularly involves Word, Excel and PowerPoint, however, the main type of work I do involves extensive use of Track Changes and comments in Word. I often send a document back and forth between colleagues and it can accumulate many layers of track changes and comments. Can anyone reassure me that I won't run into any weird track changes, comment, or formatting issues when working alternately on the Mac and my PCs? Thanks!
posted by RedMapleWhiteOak to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)
 
You shouldn't have any problems. I have the same setup: Word 2011 for Mac, my colleagues use older versions of Word on their PCs. I send them docs, they send me comments which I can see and incorporate or not, etc.

In fact, my colleagues are using an older version of Word than yours and everything works fine. The thing though is I am not using the new .docx format. Documents between me and them are for me documents in "Compatibility mode". This is basically the old .doc format which says explicitly for me that is "compatible with Word 97-2003".

But, if change tracking works for me and my colleagues with an even older version on their side, I dont see why you'd have any issues.
posted by vacapinta at 4:28 PM on March 16, 2012


In my experience, what you are describing works perfectly fine.
posted by J. Wilson at 4:39 PM on March 16, 2012


The last versions of Office for Mac and Windows have gotten much better at acting like they were made by the same company. You should have no problem with what you've described.
posted by birdherder at 5:28 PM on March 16, 2012


« Older Third-Hand Movie Finding   |   Suggest some Bay Area (peninsula) neighborhoods... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.