File Format For Mac And Windows
May 3, 2018 - Whether you want to format a flash drive on your Mac or convert a USB. In the world run Windows, and Windows uses a different file system,.
The Microsoft Office file format is for Word, Excel and PowerPoint files between Mac and PC. The file format is called Office Open XML (OOXML) and was established by an international standards body. Office 2010 for Windows with service pack 2 or later and Office 2011 for Mac comply strictly with the standard. Office 2008 for Mac and 2007 and 2010 for Windows prior to service pack 2 comply about 98% of the way to the standard (there's a very minor exception in Excel).
Microsoft also ships the same set of fonts with Microsoft Office for Mac and PC.
As for having documents be identical when moving from one computer to another there are factors you must consider. This is true PC to PC, PC to Mac, Mac to Mac, and Mac to PC. Microsoft Word is a word processor that has text that flows, unlike a PDF or page layout program. Any difference in font or printer driver from one machine to another has the potential to affect spacing, breaks, window & orphans, paragraphs, etc. To repeat - these changes have nothing to do with Mac to PC, rather they are caused by computer to computer differences.
Your documents should look the same on the Mac as long as ALL of these conditions are met: Create a shared folder for windows to mac.
* The documents on the PC originated in Microsoft Word 2010 with service pack 2
* The documents were saved in a current OOXML file format in Word 2010
* The documents used only fonts supplied with Microsoft Office 2010
* Old versions of the same fonts are not installed or active on either the Mac or the PC
* The documents are opened on the Mac in Microsoft Word 2011
* The current versions of the Microsoft Office fonts are active on the Mac
* The printer driver on the Mac behaves identically to the printer driver that was being used on the PC where the documents were saved.
The behavior of Word is identical on the two platforms with regard to the formatting you expressed concern about. There are conditions that must be met if you want your documents to look alike when moving from one computer to another - regardless of platform. It's the fonts, file formats and printer drivers that are the sticky points when moving a document from one computer to another regardless of platform.
These are hard to control from a user perspective. In Word 2010 with SP 2 you could use macros to make sure your documents have only Microsoft Office fonts and are saved in the current file format before bringing them to the Mac, and even save them as a PDF for future reference. You won't have control over how exactly matching your printer drivers will be - even if you are using the same printer. Inevitably, some documents may need to be tweaked, as a result.
. If you want to share your files with the most devices and none of the files are larger than 4 GB, choose FAT32. If you have files larger than 4 GB, but still want pretty good support across devices, choose exFAT.
If you have files larger than 4 GB and mostly share with Windows PCs, choose NTFS. If you have files larger than 4 GB and mostly share with Macs, choose HFS+ are the sort of thing that many computer users take for granted. The most common file systems are on Windows, APFS and HFS+ on macOS, and EXT on Linux—though you may run into others on occasion. But it can be confusing understanding what devices and operating systems supports which file systems—especially when all you want to do is transfer some files or keep your collection readable by all the devices you use. So, let’s take a look at the major file systems and hopefully, you can figure out the best solution for formatting your USB drive.
Understanding File System Problems Different file systems offer different ways of organizing data on a disk. Since only binary data is actually written to disks, the file systems provide a way to translate the physical recordings on a disk to the format read by an OS. Since these file systems are key to the operating system making sense of the data, an OS cannot read data off of a disk without support for the file system with which the disk is formatted. When you format a disk, the file system you choose essentially governs which devices can read or write to the disk. Many businesses and households have multiple PCs of different types in their home—Windows, macOS, and Linux being the most common. And if you carry files to friends houses or when you travel, you never know what type of system you may want those files on.
Because of this variety, you need to format portable disks so that they can move easily between the different operating systems you expect to use. But to make that decision, you need to understand the two major factors that can affect your file system choice: portability and file size limits. We’re going to take a look at these two factors as they relate to the most common file systems:. NTFS: The NT File System (NTFS) is the file system that modern Windows versions use by default. HFS+: The Hierarchical File System (HFS+) is the file system modern macOS versions use by default. APFS: The proprietary Apple file system developed as a replacement for HFS+, with a focus on flash drives, SSDs, and encryption. APFS was released with iOS 10.3 and macOS 10.13, and will become the mandatory file system for those operating systems.
FAT32: The File Allocation Table 32 (FAT32) was the standard Windows file system before NTFS. exFAT: The extended File Allocation Table (exFAT) builds on FAT32 and offers a lightweight system without all the overhead of NTFS. EXT 2, 3, & 4: The extended file system (EXT) was the first file system created specifically for the Linux kernel. Portability You might think that modern operating systems would natively support each other’s file system, but they largely do not. For example, macOS can read—but not write to—disks formatted with NTFS.
For the most part, Windows will not even recognize disks formatted with APFS or HFS+. Many distros of Linux (like Ubuntu) are prepared to deal with this file system problem. Moving files from one file system to another is a routine process for Linux—many modern distros natively support NFTS and HFS+ or can get support with a quick download of free software packages. In addition to this, your home consoles (Xbox 360, Playstation 4) only provide limited support for certain filesystems, and only provide read access to the USB drives.
In order to better understand the best filesystem for your needs, take a look at this helpful chart. File System Windows XP Windows 7/8/10 macOS (10.6.4 and earlier) macOS (10.6.5 and later) Ubuntu Linux Playstation 4 Xbox 360/One NTFS Yes Yes Read Only Read Only Yes No No/Yes FAT32 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes/Yes exFAT Yes Yes No Yes Yes (with ExFAT packages) Yes (with MBR, not GUID) No/Yes HFS+ No (read-only with ) Yes Yes Yes No Yes APFS No No No Yes (macOS 10.13 or greater) No No No EXT 2, 3, 4 No Yes (with third-party software) No No Yes No Yes Keep in mind that this chart chose the native abilities of each OS to use these file systems. Windows and macOS both have downloads that can help them read unsupported formats, but we’re really focusing on native ability here. The takeaway from this chart on portability is that FAT32 (having been around for so long) is supported on almost all devices. This makes it strong candidate for being the file system of choice for most USB drives, so long as you can live with FAT32’s file size limits—which we’ll go over next. File and Volume Size Limits FAT32 was developed many years ago, and was based on older FAT filesystems meant for DOS computers.
The large disk sizes of today were only theoretical in those days, so it probably seemed ridiculous to the engineers that anyone would ever need a file larger than 4 GB. However, with today’s large file sizes of uncompressed and high-def video, many users are faced with that very challenge. Today’s more modern file systems have upward limits that seem ridiculous by our modern standards, but one day may seem humdrum and ordinary.
When stacked up against the competition, we see very quickly that FAT32 is showing its age in terms of file size limits.