Thread: Help! I have my whole story on 'text edit' for mac instead of word.. ooops !!?

Hello
Last year I started typing up a long story I have written and I got about half-way through. I can't remember but I thought I was using an old version of word. Have come back to it recently, found it on my computer and it opens in 'text edit' for mac, which is basically just a sticky note type program. After a few searches I realize I do not have word installed on my computer.

At the moment I can't find out how many pages or words long it is or any of that good stuff. Is there a way to download word or similiar program these days or do you still have to buy? Or is there another solution, maybe an online program where I could copy - paste the document and find out the word length etc?

I want to continue typing it up this week but do not want to do on text edit which is very unprofessional and limited.
Can anyone help? Thank you !!!!!!
K

I always use Google Docs. It's easy and you don't have to install anything, just create a fee google account. It's simple and easy to use and similar to Microsoft Word. It's got pretty much all of the tools that Microsoft Word has, like word count and thesaurus, and it saves your changes instantly.

Hi Gisele9,

I'm no expert (they'll be along shortly) however you might like to take a look at this, when they come off strike...

Open Source Mac - Free Mac software, all open-source, all OS X.

In the Google find they refer to a free "word" equivalent for Mac.

Cheers, Ian

PS: aah, Dreamworx beat me to the post (literally) with a great solution.

Text Edit produces the same sort of plain text produced by Notepad in Windows, Vim or Vi in Linux. Notepad, WordPad, and Word should all open it in Windows if it's a plain text file in ANSI or ASCII and is not corrupted. If you are running a Mac, Text Edit and whatever word processor you use should open the file.

Everything I write is composed first in Notepad in Windows or Vim in Linux. The files produced are plain text, true cross-platform files and can be opened by any operating system - Windows, Mac, Linux, or Unix.

thank you all so much !!!

There is a Mac version of Open Office here http://www.openoffice.org/porting/mac/download/so you can load the text file and save it as a DOC file, it is then usable on both Macs and PCs. If you don't want all the spreadsheets/drawing/presentation gizmos, you can choose the Custom option and not install them - It is almost indistinguishable from Office, has all the formatting features you'll want + about 10 dozen you'll never use!