If I buy a Mac laptop, can I open word documents in school on a PC?

Hello fellow teacher.

Yes you can have a MAC.

Yes you could use a flash or USB memory stick/drive.

However, if you take advantage of the fact that as a teacher you are entitled to a cheap complete version of Office for Mac you need never worry about conversion or conflicts. Besides its a very cool suite of software...Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Entourage as an alternative to outlook express, etc.

I've been using MAC for years...NO PROBLEMS.

NO CRASHES, NO VIRUSES, and getting cheaper whilst remaining faster and cooler than equivalent pcs....

I have never had a problem.. I am a student and open my Word documents typed up on my Mac at home on the college Windows computers all the time. You just have to purchase Office for Macs.

Microsoft Office is available as a MAC software install. so if you are saving from office on your mac and opening in office on your pc then much of the time things will be fine. As long as your two version of Office are similar..ie 2003 and 2003....

The other alternative you have is when you savea document on your mac to save it as an RTF file...which can be opened by both systems. though this might loose some of your formatting if it is overly extravagant.

NOTE: different versions of office cannot read all files correctly...they are backwards compatible but not forwards. ie you can save from Word 2003 and open fine on Word 2008....but you cannot save a word 2003 doc and open on a word 2000 system. UNLESS you have chosen "save as" and picked the correct earlier Word version to save as.

i'm fairly sure that as long as you're using microsoft word, then mac has made it can transfer between Macs and Pc's fine. Older versions of word (Like word 97 or maybe even 2000) might not work on macs. Check to see what program the school computer uses.

Pre OSX, Macs could open Windows Office files, but not the other way around. The Office versions from Version X to the present should work fine, cross-platform, either way.

You could buy MS-Office for your Mac. But, Bill Gates has more than enough money.

I do what you want all the time, with the free, MS-Office compatible, Neo-Office, from the Apple downloads site, or:

TIP: Please tell all your students to get Open Office for their Windows PC's, also free, from:

They'll love you for it!

MAC will save files as docs, but you must tell it to.