Can someone help me out here with a word processing issue?

[Minnesota Libra]

A friend of mine loaned me some directions for some craft projects that I want to save for long-term use. I want to type these directions out in a word processing program and then save it all to a CDRW or CDR. So far so good but here comes the catch to all this.

At the moment, I have a computer with Windows 2000 Pro on it. As for word processing software I have Microsoft Word 2000, Microsoft Works Version 7 (1987 – 2002), and of course Word pad Version 5 (1981 – 1999).

I may be changing computers in a few months and if I do (keeping my fingers crossed here) I will have Windows XP Pro on it. So if I want the craft directions to transfer properly from Windows 2000 to Windows XP what word processing program should I use to do all this typing on? By the time I finish with all these craft directions I’ll probably have between 20 and 40 pages of typed material.

Any advice as to what to use???

Thanks so much for your time and for any help you can offer.:hug:

[dpbrown]

1. Save it as RTF

Should be fine no matter what you use later.

[Minnesota Libra]

2. What is RTF????? Please explain. nt

[dpbrown]

3. It's a format. It means "Rich Text Format"

It's something less than a full Word save but allows far more portability.

Choose "Save as..." and then select the format to save the document into.

It's really quite easy.

The document name (on Windows) will look like "Document.rtf"

[Minnesota Libra]

5. OH OK, I get it - thank you for the help..................

.....:grouphug:

[laheina]

4. Rich Text Format.

When you save a document, you can generally save it in which form you choose. In word, there should be a drop down box right below the location where your document will be saved in the "save as" window.

Let me know if you need more specifics.

[alarimer]

7. rich text format

But I think you can save it in .DOC or .TXT formats as well. Will your new computer have Word on it? If it does, you should have no problem at all.

[no name no slogan]

6. Word 2000 is compatable with WordXP & Word 2002

If you save it as a Word doc with MS Word 2000, it will be compatable with any subsequent version of MS Word (including Word XP, Word 2002, etc.). Word2k is also compatable with Word97 and Word95, too.

Rich-Text Format (.rtf) is more compatable, but limits you somewhat in your formatting choices. If you don't need fancy formatting, save it as an RTF file from Word, and you'll be fine.

The most compatable format would be plain text (.txt), but you are severely restricted in your format/styling choices.

Word is fairly universal as a format these days, and you can download free readers for it from MS's website if you don't have it installed on your system.

However, if you REALLY want to get technical/cross-compatable, you could do it in XML. But I won't go there ;)

[Minnesota Libra]

8. Thank you for your help - think I'll got for the "rtf" since I don't......

need to worry about a lot of formatting, just paragraphs and regular and bold type, and I could even get away with just caps and regular type. Thanks:grouphug:

[Minnesota Libra]

9. Everyone seems to agree my best bet is "rtf" so I................

....will go for that. :pals: Thank you much for responding. :grouphug: