Forum Moderators: travelin cat
She tells me she's saving the files in Word as ASCII text with no carriage returns, as I've asked... But when I receive them from her, I'm getting the file in two parts. The first is a binary file that looks like it's the header of an MS-Word document, about 444 bytes, and the second is the clean ASCII text file I want.
The problem is that the second file is getting renamed... no big thing for one message... lots of wasted time when you're contemplating 50 to 100.
Can anyone suggest how to get just a straightforward txt file, with no Word header, from Word for the Mac?
What I am saying is you should not have to get the file as a text file. You should just be able to get the file as a WORD file and PCWord should ignore the resource fork information, etc. This means that all files would have the same name.
>>she sees a vertical rectangle at the beginning of each line following a carriage break
Does she have show all formatting marks? under menu option (tools- options)on?
Also if they are using the Summary and Statistics information, under menu option (file-properties) that may be keeping you from just swapping WORD files as WORD files. Just a guess.
...carriage returns... but why at the beginning of the lines rather than at the ends, and how can she eliminate these?
Close. Actually, it is showing you the line-feed that DOS text has. So, the carriage return (the end-of-line character for Mac text) tells SimpleText to go to the next line, and there is this goofy character it does not know what to do with, so it displays it as a square.
They should use BBEdit to open your files, or, if they are cheap, BBEdit lite. BBEdit takes care of that formatting automatically.
http*://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/index.shtml
Actually, it is showing you the line-feed that DOS text has....
bodine - Thanks. :)
What I am saying is you should not have to get the file as a text file. You should just be able to get the file as a WORD file and PCWord should ignore the resource fork information, etc. This means that all files would have the same name.
jim_w - If you will re-read the thread I think you'll see that I have covered this point numerous times, even responding directly to you... Thus, my confusion.
I don't want to work in Word. I want text files to work in an ASCII text editor, as I have described. Please re-read my first message, #1, #11, and #27. My message #11 went into my preferences and the reasons for them in depth. I don't mean to sound ungrateful for your input, but what wasn't clear?
You can then save them as a text file on your end and it should have the same file name with the .txt extension.
If I'd wanted to take the time to do this, it probably would have been faster simply to rename the text files I was getting. Hitting right-click and then Rename, or just renaming while moving the file, is a heck of a lot faster than opening up Word and doing a Save As > File Type.
Prop_2345.123_2nd_Rev
maybe not.
