WTF is .docx and why should i care?

docx filesMicrosoft has recently unveiled their latest version of the Office suite for the Windows operating system, but they do not plan on releasing a Mac version for quite a while yet. “So what?” you ask. Well, they’ve gone and changed the standard Word file format (as in Word, the program 98% of the business world is utterly reliant on). And because this is available on Windows but not on Mac, if someone with this newest version of Office sends you a Word file, you will not be able to open it on your Mac. Grr…

The file extension is .docx So you may see something in your email inbox like “really_important_file.docx” that you cannot open.

Luckily the resourceful people on the interwebs have come to our aid. Enter the DOCX Converter for Office 2007. This website will allow you to extract the text from one of these impenetrable “new & improved” Word files. Cons of this method: Much of the formatting is lost in the conversion and you have to read the file on your browser window unless you copy and paste the text into Word.

The other, newer, Microsoft-sanctioned option is the Office Converter, a downloadable program that will chew up your useless .docx files and spit out a much more useable .rtf file (rtf stands for Rich Text Format). The Rich Text file is nice because a) it works in ANY text editor, and b) the rich text means that almost all text formatting will be preserved from the original file.

Read on for detailed tutorials on using both of these methods. Including pictures! Continue reading WTF is .docx and why should i care?

OS X Basics: The Save dialogue

save dialogue

Let’s keep this one real basic. I want to point your attention to a helpful post on The Unofficial Apple Weblog about how to master the save dialogue that you see universally across almost all applications on the Mac.

The Save dialog in Mac OS X can often [...]

Email: Making hyperlinks actually work in emails

Links in emails are tricky cuz sometimes you want the recipient to be able to click the link in your message but when they receive the message half the URL is blue and clickable but half isn’t! What gives?! Here’s a trick: put a long URL string in between the greater-than/less-than signs “< >” [...]

POS: Sales batching, the hows & whys

backend menuHere’s a handy tutorial for all of yalls that work with product in the product database, buyers, produce team, i’m talking to you here. Part of our backend system allows for the creation of product batches, essentially a group of items, for putting on sale all at once and [...]

OS X Basics: Viewing long filenames

view long filenamesA quick & useful tip for viewing long filenames in the finder courtesy of The Unofficial Apple Weblog:

Have you ever opened up a Finder window in column view and found yourself confronted with truncated file names? It’s quite annoying. Here’s a quick fix.

At [...]

hAhA: Collecting Double-takes

Thought i’d share a delightful strip from one of my favorite web-comics, xkcd. Tee-hee.

Collecting doubletakes

OS X Basics: The finder views

Hopefully we are all familiar with the Finder. Your documents are in the Finder, your Applications, all of it, accessible through the Finder window. The Finder is the filing cabinet for all of your computerological ‘stuff’ on the Mac. But unlike the standard filing cabinet, the Finder has some neat tools to allow you [...]

Don’t be threatened staff log, i come in peace.

blogginess-banner

Say “hey!” to the new People’s Co-op Tech-blog! An online digital compendium of the way things work (technologically speaking, of course) here at Peeps. The idea is to pour all of the material i have generated about cash register operations, computers, phones, you-name-it, into one place [...]

Don’t be threatened staff log, i come in peace.

blogginess-banner

Say “hey!” to the new People’s Co-op Tech-blog! An online digital compendium of the way things work (technologically speaking, of course) here at Peeps. The idea is to pour all of the material i have generated about cash register operations, computers, phones, you-name-it, into one place [...]

Don’t be threatened staff log, i come in peace.

blogginess-banner

Say “hey!” to the new People’s Co-op Tech-blog! An online digital compendium of the way things work (technologically speaking, of course) here at Peeps. The idea is to pour all of the material i have generated about cash register operations, computers, phones, you-name-it, into one place [...]