Smith College TechNotes blog

Students using Windows XP or Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 with professors who use Mac OS X will need to do a little leg-work to make their presentations readable on their professor’s Mac.

While Microsoft puts the finishing touches on Office for Mac 2008, there is no simple solution for PowerPoint file compatibility between Office 2007 and Mac OS X.

The best way to send your Mac-using professor a PowerPoint presentation (and the only way to guarantee that it will look the way you intended on their screen) is to export the slides to a PDF.

1. Open the PowerPoint presentation on a Windows XP lab computer. (If the presentation does not open automatically or gives you an error about using the proper text converter, right-click on the file, mouse over “Open With…”, and select Microsoft Open XML Converter.)
2. In PowerPoint, click on the Adobe PDF menu and choose Convert to Adobe PDF.
3. If prompted, save the PowerPoint presentation.
4. Choose a filename and location for your PDF.
5. Wait! Converting a large or complicated PowerPoint presenation to PDF can take a few minutes.
6. When the conversion is done, Adobe Acrobat Professional will open your PDF automatically.

Note that Word files sent between Windows computer and Macs do not have the same conversion problems. For more information: Converting Microsoft Office 2007 Documents [TARA].

Questions? Leave them in the comments.