am i going to have issues alternating between wordpad and word?

eskimo26

I've got wordpad my college uses one of the versions of word, i saved a document in college and opened it at home and it says 'wordpad does not support all of the features of this document's format. Some content might be missing or displayed improperly.'

Now i've done a quick run through and nothing seems to be different but am i going to have issues with future documents? Am i likely to lose work if i keep alternating between the two?

Should i download open office and use that?

Thanks.

Generali

eskimo26 wrote: »

I've got wordpad my college uses one of the versions of word, i saved a document in college and opened it at home and it says 'wordpad does not support all of the features of this document's format. Some content might be missing or displayed improperly.'

Now i've done a quick run through and nothing seems to be different but am i going to have issues with future documents? Am i likely to lose work if i keep alternating between the two?

Should i download open office and use that?

Thanks.

You should only have problems if you use some of the funkier formatting features in word.

aerostar

Why not download and try Libre Office, good compatability with MS Word and it is Free

http://www.libreoffice.org/discover/libreoffice/

esuhl

As above, a lot of formatting features in Word aren't available in Wordpad.

If you go to "Save as..." and change the document file type in Word to RTF (Rich Text Format), then (I *think*) Word will prevent you from using Word-only features or saving anything that isn't compatible with Wordpad.

Wordpad is provided as part of Windows, so why not just use that at college instead of Word?

Otherwise, LibreOffice Writer is mostly compatible with Word. Or, if you only need to read the document at home (rather than edit it), you could use the free Word Viewer and Compatibility Updates (which make the viewer compatible with the latest versions of Word):

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=4
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3

Big_Graeme

esuhl wrote: »

Wordpad is provided as part of Windows, so why not just use that at college instead of Word?

Some places restrict what students have access to and/or remove these features. Where I work does this and Wordpad is one of those programs we remove from the Windows install.

esuhl

Big_Graeme wrote: »

Some places restrict what students have access to and/or remove these features. Where I work does this and Wordpad is one of those programs we remove from the Windows install.

Huh. How come you remove it? Does it present some kind of security risk?

Big_Graeme

esuhl wrote: »

Huh. How come you remove it? Does it present some kind of security risk?

Nope, we re-image our PC's when a user logs off, means anything on the drive gets nuked, means sensitive stuff is way harder to find and each user gets a fresh system, students can and do mess around with stuff.

We have the image a small as possible, makes this process quicker.

Geep

Big_Graeme wrote: »

Nope, we re-image our PC's when a user logs off, means anything on the drive gets nuked, means sensitive stuff is way harder to find and each user gets a fresh system, students can and do mess around with stuff.

That is standard practice in many libraries also, where they operate PCs for public use.

tyllwyd

I agree with the other comments, you are only going to have problems if you try to use more advanced features of Word. If you stick to text, and italics/bold and simple tabs, you should be fine.


You could also try saving your documents as 'rtf' files rather than Word documents when using Word.

StuC75

Install open office at home where you would then be able to open and save files in a compatible format - less to be at risk and confusion with formatting and document layout.. you wouldn't want it to impact a key assignment.

Always good to keep backups \ versions so that a corrupted usb stick doesn't lose you any work..