How to Use Mac Files on a Windows Computer

Video Transcript

"I'm Jonathan Ayres with Network for Success, and today we're going to talk about how to use Mac files on a PC. Well, folks, this is another one of those questions that's quite interesting because, do these two computers talk to each other in their native language? No they don't. So, how do we use files on a PC that come from a MacIntosh? Well the best way is to use a common format for those files, and let me give you a few examples of what works on both computers easily without any trouble. So, let's take an example of a document that you type up. You would just go ahead and use MicroSoft Word, and save the file in the Word format, which is a .doc, or .doc format. And then when you pass it over to a PC, it can easily be read using the MicroSoft Word program. Now we can do the same thing with some of our data base files using Excel, and Excel is another program that comes with MicroSoft Office that runs on both PCs and Macs. And another example would be PowerPoint. You would save whatever document it was that you built in PowerPoint with a .ppt format, and then you would send it over to the PC, and it would be easily read and they could open, read, manipulate and use those files. Now, another question that comes up is, "Can I send an email from a MacIntosh to a PC and have it easily be read?" And the answer's yes. And you could also attach documents from your word processor, your spread sheet, or your PowerPoint using MicroSoft products to an email, and send them to a PC and they will be easily read. So in today's world, if you wanted to read native format files from a MacIntosh on a PC, you'd have to buy a program that does that, and an example of that program would be something called Conversions Plus. However, it's not necessary, because with a little careful planning, you can save all of your documents in a format that can be read on both types of computers."