M$ Word woes

[Cyberus]

You know, I used Word loads at uni, and despite the fact that it pissed me off many a time, I think of myself as reasonably knowledgeable regarding its operation.

However, when I try and load a Word 97 created doc on Word 2002 all the formatting is {bleep}ed up. Despite the fact that Word 2002 says it 'fully supports documents formatted in Word 97, blah...'

What am I doing wrong, and furthermore, how do I know that when I email my CV to a potential employer, it will appear their end as it does mine?

[bloodline]

Cyberus wrote:

What am I doing wrong, and furthermore, how do I know that when I email my CV to a potential employer, it will appear their end as it does mine?

Convert it to PDF...? :-D

[Cyberus]

you know, I thought someone would say that!

edit: Alas, most employers request that you send a CV in Word format

[Vincent]

Try opening it in WordPad - if it doesn't have too much Word-filler then it should load up fine in that, then you can save it as an rtf, load that into Word 2002 and save it as a Word doc again.

[Magic-Merl]

Open Office is quite good with '97 docs.  Might be worth a go on M$oft.

[Cyberus]

Vincent wrote:
Try opening it in WordPad - if it doesn't have too much Word-filler then it should load up fine in that, then you can save it as an rtf, load that into Word 2002 and save it as a Word doc again.

Alas its all nicely set out using tables - its the tables that have gone haywire and are giving me gyp.

[Cyberus]

Ok, after having a rather heated debate with my housemate, who suggested using PDFs as well, perhaps I should modify this question...


Is there a way to save a Word document so it appears at the other end as it does on my machine.

i.e. if I have battled for hours to get the formatting how I want it, all nicely fitted onto two pages, I don't want my potential employer to open it on their machine and it suddenly be on three pages, with bits of table orphaned on to the next page.

My housemate seems to think this is unavoidable, but I really wanted it to look good when they opened it :-(

Thanks in advance

[blobrana]

Html?

They will no doubt still be using explorer....

[Cyberus]

Yeah, I will use html and pdfs.

Its just that some adverts I've seen stipulate CVs should be submitted in Word format.

Incidentally, I tried MSNing my CV across to a few friends to see how it looked on their machines. Turns out, that because I was using a fancy font it was displayed differently, but when I use Times New Roman its more predictable.

[Vincent]

Using a normal font like Times/Arial etc is a good idea - everyone else won't have the same selection of fonts as you ;-)