PC to Mac and Back

PC to Mac and Back

Create on Mac, move to PC

· Save your files in PC 8.3 filename style, using PPT (for PowerPoint presentations) or PPS (for PowerPoint shows) as the extension ... the part after the period. Your filenames should look like XXXXXXXX.PPT or YYYYYYYY.PPS

· Uppercase/lowercase doesn't matter, but don't use punctuation characters or spaces in your filenames. Some punctuation marks are PC-safe but may cause problems in email or web applications if files are converted. Dashes (-) and underscores (_) are safe, though.

· Quicktime-compressed images won't work on the PC

· Quictime movies seldom work on PCs. Use MPEG or AVI instead.

· Links to external graphics files will break. Embed all graphics.

· Links to most media files will break UNLESS you copy the media file to the folder where the PowerPoint file is, and only then insert it. See Links break when I move presentation for more information.

· Check Format, Replace Fonts to see what fonts are used in your presentation. You can safely count on Arial, Times New Roman, Courier and Symbol being present on every PC. Tahoma and Verdana will probably be present on any PC with Office 97 or later, but may not be there if the PC has only the free PowerPoint Viewer. Mac versions of PowerPoint can't embed fonts.

· Use only RGB color for your PowerPoint graphics. PowerPoint will convert CMYK or Pantone colors to RGB anyway. It's better to do it yourself so you can control the conversion. In case that's not a convincing argument, try this: PowerPoint may substitute a red X for CMYK graphics. Ouch. Stick with RGB.

· Ungroup, then regroup imported graphics to convert them to PowerPoint shapes. Do the same to inserted charts if you don't need them to be editable on the other platform.

· Don't squeeze your text too tightly into placeholders. Font substitution and slight differences in text rendering on Mac vs PC can cause your text to get truncated or spill out of too-tight text boxes.

There are more Mac to PC tips here on Microsoft.com

Create on PC, move to Mac

· Don't use punctuation characters or spaces in your filenames. Some punctuation marks are Mac-safe but may cause problems in email or web applications if files are converted.

· Ungroup, then regroup imported graphics to convert them to PowerPoint shapes. Do the same to charts if you don't need them to be editable on the other platform.

· Links to external graphics files will break. Embed all graphics.

· Don't use WMV (Windows Media Player) files for movies or sounds. AVI or MPEG are better choices. WMP9 for Mac FAQ explains why and offers some workarounds. Several knowledgeable Mac users have suggested third party products such as Flip4Mac to enable Windows Media Player files on Mac.

· Watch your fonts. Check Format, Replace Fonts to see what fonts are used in your presentation. You can safely count on Arial, Times New Roman, Courier and Symbol being present on most Macs. Tahoma and Verdana will probably be present on any PC with Office installed, but may not be present if the Mac has only the free PowerPoint Viewer. Mac versions of PowerPoint can't use embedded fonts.

X-Platform in either direction, PC to Mac or Mac to PC

· Embedded objects (Word tables, Excel charts/sheets, graphs, etc.) may not translate well. Wherever possible, use the tools built into PowerPoint (ie, PowerPoint's table editor in PPT2000 and up on PC, PPT-X and up on Mac) rather than objects created in external programs.

· If you must use objects from external apps, ungroup then immediately regroup them before you send them to the other platform. This converts them to PowerPoint shapes. If they don't ungroup cleanly, it's a near-sure thing that they'd have caused problems on the other platform anyhow. Treat ungrouping as an Early Warning System.

· Whereas PowerPoint for Mac uses QuickTime to handle audio and video, the Windows version uses built-in Windows functions (MCI) to do so, which greatly limits the amount of file types that can be viewed on both platforms (only a few, like MPEG and AVI can be handled on both). More information on this here

· Fonts are "encoded" differently on PCs and Macs. That can cause some characters to change or disappear when your files move between platforms. See Mac vs. PC Character Encoding for more information and a PDF that includes a chart comparing the two encoding systems.

· Slide Shows - when you view a Kiosk Mode slide show on the PC, you can use the Tab key to move from one hyperlink to the next and the Enter key to activate the hyperlink. This doesn't work on Mac.

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E-mail comments to Lon Jarvis jarvislb@jmu.edu
last updated 1/7/07