Newsletter created with template on Mac has many mistakes when opened on PC

[neco23]

I used a newsletter template in MS Word for Mac 2011 and it looks great on my computer. When I send it to my colleague, who has a PC, there are many changes to the document. Text boxes are moved around, overlapping, nonsensical, etc. It obviously looks fine when I send it as a PDF but she wants the original version, and since this is an exercise we will repeat every month, I need to know how to make the necessary changes.

I am by no means an expert with computers or with Word (hence why I use a Mac). When I was using the template, I just sort of moved things around and changed things at random until I made it look pretty, so I think that is the big problem. I'm not sure that I'll be able to change the existing document to be compatible, but if there's anything I can do initially to prevent this problem next month, I'd like to take those steps.

[macropod]

This kind of thing can happen because Word uses the active printer driver to optimise the page layout. Even when the same printer is used with different drivers (as must be the case when one uses a Mac; the other a PC), this can happen. Typically, the changes might mean the odd line ending up on a different page, but this can get messy when a novice does silly things like inserting empty paragraphs to force content to the next page - you might end up with pages containing just a line or two of text. Graphics will likewise move according to changes in their anchor positions and that can lead to objects overlapping. Short of sending PDFs, about the best you can do is ensure both users view the document using drivers for the same printer (the printer doesn't need to be available - provided you don't need to print).