Opening Windows files

This article explains how to open various types of files received from Windows users.

Word, Excel and Powerpoint files

Microsoft Office is available for Mac, so if you need to use these files a lot and to use all the functions of these programs, get yourself the real thing. There is a home and student version which costs a lot less than the professional version.

If you have Apple's iWork apps, Pages, Numbers and Keynote, these can open and save files from Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint respectively.

The free program OpenOffice can open and save all the above.

In Mail or the Finder, you can simply use QuickLook to view all of them too. To use QuickLook in the Finder, select a file then press the spacebar.

Apple's basic free editor TextEdit does a good job with Word files, although some formatting may be lost.

.pub Publisher files

The only thing to do with MS Publisher files is to convert them to pdf. Search the internet for "PDF online" and use one of the free file conversion services; just upload the .pub file, and a PDF will be emailed back to you.

This also works for Word, Excel etc.

.mht files

The .mht filetype is an all-in-one-page Windows archived web page, most commonly from Internet Explorer, although MS Word can also save in this web page format. Images are embedded with the text into one file.

The Opera browser can open these web archive files. So can FileJuicer (€12.95).

.dat files

.dat attachments received in emails are probably Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (TNEF) from MS Outlook. Microsoft explains these here.

To extract the contents, download Josh Jacob's free program TNEF's enough.

Credits

The above tips have been shared on the Mac Ministry List over the years, most recently with .mht files in April 2011. Neville Reid compiled the page.

See also

• How to justify buying an iPad – includes similar tips for opening MS Office files