I have a PC and am using Microsoft Word 2002. Each day, I send my son a file which he then opens on his iPad, using Pages. However, the file contains formatting that gets lost in the process, making it next to useless. Much of what I send consists of math problems that require numbers to be lined up correctly, so when the formatting gets lost, the numbers are no longer lined up, making the math. problems undoable.

Is there a way around this incompatibility problem? Isn't there a free Word program that we can install on his iPad that will keep the formatting which I send to him? I know there are several different programs, 'out there' which attempt to simulate Word, but I have heard that most of them are not really all that good, because they lose a lot of Word's formatting...which is exactly the problem that I'm trying to solve. So, I'm not really interested in any 'third party' program, but would rather find a version of Word from Microsoft, itself, that I can trust to retain all of its formatting. Is there such a thing? I have heard that Microsoft now offers a free version of Word to personal users (as opposed to businesses). Is that true? If so, how do we get it installed on his iPad?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

The problem is most likely that Pages on the iPad isn't parsing Word files correctly. If you want full compatibility, an iPad-compatible version of Word needs to be installed on the iPad. Other iPad-compatible word-processors, too, may do a better job of parsing Word files than Pages. Another option, depending on what file formats Pages supports, might be to save your documents in the RTF format before sending them.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Your son could install Word for the iPad.