Opening Files

My wife some files that were sent to her from the school she teaches at. We have downloaded them and when we try to open them we get the message that an application cannot be found to open them. We believe the files are Microsoft word documents. How do we open them? We are using a mini mac with os x snow leopard.

Thanks

fweidner said:

My wife some files that were sent to her from the school she teaches at. We have downloaded them and when we try to open them we get the message that an application cannot be found to open them. We believe the files are Microsoft word documents. How do we open them? We are using a mini mac with os x snow leopard.

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Well it would help if you knew what they were. Assuming they are Word documents, then try opening them with LibreOffice. It's a free open-source office suite.

I thought that Pages could open Word files. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Is it just that Pages can save in Word format?

toMACsh said:

I thought that Pages could open Word files. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Is it just that Pages can save in Word format?

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Pages can open Word documents, but it's not free. I'm also not sure if it has a higher level of compatibility than LibreOffice does.

Pages can open Word documents, but it's not free. I'm also not sure if it has a higher level of compatibility than LibreOffice does.

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It doesn't. I've used both to open Word documents from MS Office for the Mac and Windows and while Pages generally does OK, things like borders, cells, and embedded graphics do not display correctly. OpenOffice and LibreOffice are not much better.