Her Geekness gives more great advice: "Convert a File, Any File"

I'm a big fan of Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion, who is an expert trainer on many Adobe design products. She writes a column for CreativePro.com, and this week's is helpful to anyone who has to work with files provided by someone else - whether they are image files or not, and whether they are bleeding edge file formats or formats so ancient they probably came off a five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disk.

Read her excellent article here. Here's a brief recap...

General File Conversion

She specifically recommends two universal translator programs, MacLinkPlus Deluxe (for Mac) and its Windows equivalent, Conversions Plus, both from Dataviz.

Converting Layout Files

For those feeling the pain of converting layout-intensive files, she recommends Markzware plugins, which can convert Quark files to InDesign and vice versa, AND can do it cross-platform.

Fonts

Her Geekness also mentions a Mac/Windows font conversion tool, TransType Pro, from FontLab (for both platforms), which eliminates headaches caused by Type 1 fonts that are specific to one platform. I'm looking into this one especially, since I work in a mixed environment of Macs and Windows machines, and the font issues can be vexing.

Microsoft Office 2007-08 Files

And she tackles the new Office formats (.docx and the like). She says:

If you’re on a Macintosh, there are many free and low-cost utilities that convert the “x files” to earlier versions of Office programs. The official Microsoft converter is still in beta and is called the Open XML File Format Converter.. My luck with it has been hit-or-miss, though; and ditto with many of the freeware converters you’ll find if you Google “convert docx.”

She also points out that "If you use Leopard (Mac OS 10.5), you have good access to Microsoft's new format even if you don’t own any version of Office. TextEdit 1.5 can open .docx files, maintaining even the most complex formatting, and even save files in .docx format!" (my emphasis)

Ideas for tech tips

MS OFFICE

 

Outlook

            drag a mail item to the calendar to copy it into a new appointment item

            do a free/busy search when inviting colleagues to meetings

            organize mail in a subfolder

 

PowerPoint

            use the outline view to create slides quickly

            use the photo album feature for image-based presentations

 

Word

            Document Map feature

            making a PDF from a Word doc in Office 2007

Excel

 

Access

 

ADOBE

 

Dreamweaver

 

InDesign

            Creating and applying swatch (color) libraries

                        swatch library with official KU Colors

 

Photoshop

 

Acrobat

 

OTHER

 

EndNote

            Using groups in EndNote X1

 

Refworks

            Sharing your collection of references with others

Testing the post-by-email feature of blogger

This is only a test. I’m composing this entry in Outlook and sending it to blogger.com to be posted directly on the blog. We’ll see how mangled stuff gets!

 

Here are…some hyperlinks:

www.infotraining.ku.edu

www.lib.ku.edu

 

Here is…a TABLE:

 

I’ve given it some	Pretty formatting	Just to see..
What	Happens	To
It	Here	In the posting

 

And here is…a PICTURE:

 

Welcome!

This is a proof-of-concept blog, so posts may be sporadic, especially at first. We'll offer general technology tips of interest to the higher ed community (university faculty, staff, and students), with a special focus on tools and technologies used at the University of Kansas. Thanks for stopping by!